As the professional organization of abortion providers in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Colombia, NAF provides clinical standards and guidelines that can be used at any abortion-providing facility. NAF Members receive Quality Assurance and Improvement (QAI) site visits from trained NAF quality assurance clinicians to assist providers in adhering to the standards set forth in NAF’s Clinical Policy Guidelines for Abortion Care.
Clinical Policy Guidelines
Evidence-based guidelines that set the standards for abortion care in North America.
NAF believes in setting the highest standards of quality abortion care. NAF’s Clinical Policy Guidelines for Abortion Care (CPGs) serve as a convenient and readily usable set of systematically developed statements that assist practitioners in their efforts to provide quality, patient-centered care. First published in 1996 and reviewed annually, the CPGs distill a large body of medical knowledge into guidelines developed by consensus, based on rigorous review of relevant literature and known patient outcomes.
The CPGs are intended to provide a basis for ongoing quality assurance, help reduce unnecessary care and costs, help protect providers in malpractice suits, provide ongoing medical education, and encourage research. The CPGs strive to allow for individual practitioner choices, patient care concerns, and provide a baseline of quality abortion care.
NAF’s Medical Department works with NAF’s more than 400 institutional members to ensure compliance with the Clinical Policy Guidelines by conducting Quality Assurance and Improvement (QAI) site visits during which each guideline is addressed. Members who have completed the site visit process receive a certificate of compliance. Members also complete self-evaluations annually and receive a window decal signifying their compliance.
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NAF Ethics Statement
A common ethical framework for all health professionals working in abortion care.
This Ethics Statement has been developed by the Board of the National Abortion Federation to provide a common ethical framework for all health professionals working in abortion care. It explains how the traditional medical ethics framework of principlism (which focuses on the principles of justice, autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence) supports and guides their work, and it is intended to be read in conjunction with NAF’s Clinical Policy Guidelines for Abortion Care (CPGs).
NAF Statement on Self-Managed Abortion
NAF strongly opposes the criminalization of actions taken by people to voluntarily end their pregnancies.
All people have the right to access abortion care from a qualified health care provider. As a membership organization, NAF supports abortion providers so that they are able to provide the highest-quality care to their patients. NAF works to remove barriers to abortion care. We are committed to disseminating evidence-based standards and guidelines related to abortion care throughout pregnancy.
NAF believes that all people should be able to consult with and obtain care from a clinician at any point during the process of terminating their pregnancy. NAF recognizes, however, that there are situations in which pregnant people will not be able to access the care they need within the current health care system. NAF further recognizes that there are pregnant people who might choose to obtain care outside of the health care system. In these instances, pregnant people (and those who support them) must have access to accurate information about abortion and high-quality follow-up care.
Adopted by the NAF Board of Directors