8 during the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), the state party received and accepted recommendations from different states calling for universal access to reproductive health services including by ensuring the implementation of the RPRHA and increasing access to modern contraceptives.79 B. Continued criminalization and restriction of women’s access to abortion services In its summary report, the Committee recommended that the state party “[a]mend articles 256 to 259 of its Criminal Code…to legalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, threats to the life and/or health of the mother, or serious malformation of the foetus and decriminalize all other cases where women undergo abortion, as well as adopt necessary procedural rules to guarantee effective access to legal abortion”80 and to “[c]onduct research on the incidence of unsafe abortions in the [s]tate party and their impact on women’s health and maternal mortality and morbidity, and make such information available to the Committee in its next periodic report.”81 Current legal framework on abortion. Abortion remains criminalized under the RPC with no clear exceptions even in cases of pregnancies endangering the life or health of the women, those resulting from rape or incest, and those involving fetal impairment.82 The RPC imposes prison sentences ranging from 1 month to a maximum of 20 years for an individual found guilty of performing, providing assistance, or having an abortion.83 As will be discussed in more detail below, a constitutional provision which calls on the state party to “equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception”84 has also had a chilling effect on women’s and girls’ access to abortion.85 i. Key updates on access to safe and legal abortion since 2016 Proposed recommendation: Establish a system to regularly gather national and disaggregated data on the incidence of abortions and number of abortion-related complications and deaths and its causes and analyze their impact on the country’s public health and sustainable development. Since 2016, the state party continued to fail to comply with the Committee’s recommendation to gather and present to the Committee data on the incidence of unsafe abortions and its impact on women’s and girls’ lives and health, including maternal mortality and morbidity. The absence of official data, in the state party’s 2015 report to the Committee and even under the recent 2017 NDHS, conceals the grave impact of the penal laws on abortion on women’s rights and essentially prevents the state party from developing appropriate laws, policies, and programs. So far, available data and estimates on the incidence of abortion in the country are based on independent studies which reported that 610,000 illegal and unsafe abortions took place in the country in 2012—an increase from 560,000 in 2008—with an estimated 100,000 women hospitalized for abortion complications in 2012.86