Nino Tsuleiskiri
Speeches:
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In Georgia during last decade medical service providers became decentralized and universal health care provision were launched. These changes in health system triggered increase in number of health providers and proportionally need for regulation of service provision and financing.
Non-preventable abortion in Georgia is legal and provision of service is distributed to primary and secondary health providers. Law of Georgia on health care allow abortion on request up to 12 weeks of gestation therefore mandates 5-day mandatory waiting time between consultation and abortion procedure. State policy regarding abortion is to increase childbirth while women’s choice and health is unsatisfactory level.
Despite liberal policy there still is low accessibility and availability to safe abortion services which is caused by uneven distribution of service providers that provide abortion service, ununiformed referral system, and diminishing number of abortion provider physicians (church influence, conscientious objection). As a result, women are forced to travel for service.
In Georgia unsafe abortion is widespread in spite of medical activity regulation on physician and medical facility levels. Due to no medical service quality appraisal, it is impossible to track standards of service provision and identify medical facilities where quality is not sufficient. For example, system does not track service providers where only D&C method is used or how frequently it is used. If consider D&C method, along with general anesthesia, no counseling, no post-abortion family planning and etc. as unsafe way of abortion service provision. Two above-mentioned issues make it difficult to prevent unsafe abortions.
Women searching for abortion services encounter accessibility and availability barriers that are Not enough Abortion Providers, Cost and Travel, Judgmental Gatekeepers, Conscience Clauses, Bad Referrals, Anti-choice Organizations (church), which makesprevention of unintended pregnancy difficult, leading to high abortion rates, low quality.