Overview - Abortion

This contributes significantly to unintended pregnancy rates, and in some cases even to coerced abortions (Watte & Zimmerman, 2002; Heise et al., 1995; Brown & Eisenberg, 1995; Gazmararian, 1995; Dietz et al., 1999). Access to contraception can be limited or non-existent in many of these areas, and even where they are available women often lack adequate education about reproductive health. In Uganda for instance men often tell women that they’ve had “family planning injections” that prevent them from impregnating anyone, and a near complete lack of adequate sex education leaves most women in no position to evaluate those claims (Guttmacher, 1999).⁵

The unborn are not the only issue

Abortion impacts more than just fetuses. Nearly half of the world’s induced abortions are illegal and take place under highly unsafe conditions in regions where there is little or no access to adequate reproductive healthcare. The end result is dramatic increases in illness and death among mothers and infants (Henshaw et al., 1999). Then there is the question of unwanted pregnancy. Where there is inadequate healthcare there are almost always inadequate family planning services as well. These subject women to enduring great hardship and life risk against their will and a greater chance of illness and poverty among their children that are not aborted. Many women seek abortions not because they “want” them or even believe in them, but because they feel they have no other choice. A great many die getting them. No abortion policy that ignores these facts will ever be viable.

Get-Tough policies do not work

If cracking down on abortions and unchaste behavior can reduce both, then health statistics should reflect this. They do not and never have. In 1995 (a typical year) of the world’s 46 million abortions, 19.9 million were illegal. The Developing World has roughly 75-80% of the world’s population, but accounts for 64% of its legal abortions and 95% of its illegal ones. Overall, abortion rates are not significantly different in the Developed and Developing Worlds, but illegal abortions are disproportionately shifted toward the latter (Henshaw et al., 1999). And in the absence of consistent access to quality reproductive healthcare, so is infant and maternal mortality.

Figure 1 shows a sample of abortion rates and maternal deaths from Developing and Developed nations. Nations where abortion is illegal have consistently higher rates of abortion and maternal death, which harsh punishment and social taboos have had done little to ameliorate. In Chile for instance abortion was punishable by prison when the data was gathered. Peru, Brazil, and most Central American countries also have severely punished abortion bans. They are also largely Roman Catholic societies with social and religious values that condemn abortion. Yet they still have abortion rates ranging from 50-100% higher than the United States.

In Nepal abortion is considered homicide and is treated as such by the legal system. According to some estimates 18-21% of Nepal’s total female inmate population and 15% of its 14-19 year-old inmates are imprisoned for having abortions (Guttmacher, 1999; Pradhan & Strachan, 2003). Reliable estimates of the abortion rate there do not yet exist and only a fraction are reliably reported (around 0.3% of married women), but there are widespread abortion caused health problems in rural areas and illegal abortion rates there are believed to be high (Pradhan & Strachan, 2003).

The highest abortion rates in the world are in Eastern Europe and former Communist/Soviet states, including Vietnam, Romania, Cuba, and Yugoslavia with year 1996 figures of 83.3, 77.7, 78, and 54.6 abortions per 1000 women age 15-44 (kw15-44) respectively (Henshaw et al., 1999). In these nations abortion is legal, but access to reliable contraception and decent reproductive healthcare is not and women turn to abortion because they have few other options for limiting births. Moral strictures on sexual behavior have little effect as well. In the Developing World most women getting abortions are married and few couples are going to find demands for abstinence compelling, and as already noted many women in these countries have little say in the timing and frequency of their sexual activity anyway.