What Happens to Abortion Rights for Refugees in Africa when They Cross Borders?

Blake Erhardt-Ohren, University of California, Berkeley
Ndola Prata, Bixby Center for Population Health and Sustainability, UC Berkeley

25% of refugees can become pregnant and have a higher unmet need for reproductive health services than others. We investigated the impact of forced displacement on African refugees' legal access to abortion. We used refugee UNHCR data and the Center for Reproductive Rights' abortion law data. We assigned each country an abortion law category between 5 (abortion prohibited altogether) and 1 (abortion on request). Out of 6,860,398 female refugees aged 12-59 years who sought asylum in 2022, 32% migrated within Africa. 23% sought asylum in countries with more restrictive laws, 41% sought asylum in countries with similar abortion laws, and 36% sought asylum in countries with less restrictive laws. These results point to the need for more funding, guidance, and support to humanitarian response actors to provide access to safe abortion and post-abortion care services wherever they implement other services due to the complex legal landscape refugees experience during displacement.