A review of safe termination of pregnancy (TOP) provision in public sector health facilities in South Africa

In August 2019, in efforts to determine the distribution of facilities providing safe abortion care across south Africa, we conducted a secondary data review and analysis of existing databases sourced from SRH partner organizations involved in the monitoring of abortion-providing facilities, to assess the number and the type of abortion services reported by facilities in each province. Through this project, we aimed to determine whether the distribution of facilities offering safe abortion care adequately serviced individuals seeking to terminate a pregnancy, by applying Healy’s Safe Abortion Care model.

Our findings indicated disparity in abortion service provision across provinces. Based on Healy’s model, only two provinces met the standard of five abortion-providing facilities per 500,000 people. We also found that more facilities reported providing abortion services through the first 12 weeks of gestation, whereas the availability of abortion services beyond 12 weeks gestation was extremely limited in the public sector across all nine provinces.