Impact of COVID-19 on Access to Abortion Care in Europe

14 June 2021

Access to abortion care is an important and politically charged topic. It is a human rights issue affecting essential aspects of women’s healthcare. As a global disruptive event, COVID-19 affected abortion access in many European countries.

Government policies on abortion are a longstanding topic of heated political debate. The COVID-19 pandemic shook health care systems to the core adding to the complexity of the issue, as the imposed national lockdowns and mobility restrictions affected millions of women’s timely access to abortion care across the globe.

In an article entitled “The impact of COVID-19 on abortion access: Insights from the European Union and the United Kingdom” published last month in the journal Health Policy, researchers from Finland and France examined how all of the European Union countries and the UK responded to the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 crisis in terms of providing access to abortion care.

Link to article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.05.005