Abortion Provider Appreciation Day March 10th of every year, a day to honor the personnel who provide services to ensure women have access to safe abortion services.
Since 1996, March 10th of every year has been recognized as Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, a day to honor the service providers, including doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, counselors, etc., who prioritize the welfare of fellow humans. They perform their duties with courage and without fear to ensure women have access to safe abortion services.
March 10th is the day Dr. David Gunn, an American obstetrician-gynecologist, was shot and killed by anti-abortion activists in 1993. Although the United States does not have laws prohibiting abortion, doctors providing these services face life-threatening risks of assassination. After Dr. David, four more doctors were shot and killed during this period.
Thus, providing abortion services to ensure women’s safety is considered a job that requires ethical courage and is a “behind-the-scenes” effort to reduce the over 47,000 annual deaths and cases of sepsis from unsafe abortions worldwide. It is possible that these women who died could be someone close to us, a daughter, sister, wife, or even our mother.
In Thailand, doctors providing abortion services risk legal charges under Section 302 of the Penal Code, requiring legal proof that the doctor acted under the conditions of Section 305 concerning health issues. In 2018, it was found that doctors providing safe services were charged under Penal Code 302, while illegal abortion providers were not prosecuted, even though they caused women to suffer life-threatening hemorrhages requiring hospital treatment.
On March 10th, there is a call to amend abortion laws to be fair, and it is welcomed that the Constitutional Court unanimously accepted the petition regarding the constitutionality of the Penal Code related to abortion on November 13, 2018. Justice is here