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Unsafe Abortions Kill 70,000 a Year
Countries with restrictive laws most affected • Global report shows overall fall in terminations
About 70,000 women die every year and many more suffer harm as a result of unsafe abortions in countries with restrictive laws on ending a pregnancy, according to a report.
A woman in a maternity ward at Makeni hospital in Sierra Leone. A report found only 28% of married African women use contraceptives. (Photograph: Issouf Sanogo) The total number of abortions
across the globe has fallen, the influential Guttmacher Institute says,
but that drop relates only to legal abortions and is mostly the result
of changes in eastern Europe.
There were 41.6m terminations worldwide in 2003, compared with 45.5m in 1995. But in 2003, says the report, 19.7m of these were unsafe, clandestine abortions. The numbers of those have hardly changed from 1995, when there were 19.9m.
Almost all the unsafe abortions were in less developed countries with restrictive abortion laws.
"Virtually all abortions in Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean were unsafe," says the report. In Asia, safe procedures outnumbered unsafe because of the large number of legal abortions in China. Most of those in Europe and almost all in North America were safe.
The figures are hard to obtain in countries with restrictive laws from hospitals dealing with women damaged by backstreet or self-induced abortion. But the institute, which has been monitoring the numbers for many years, is confident of the picture it paints and hopes it will influence policy makers.
"Our hope is that the new report will help inform a public debate in which all too often emotion trumps science," said the institute president, Dr Sharon Camp.
Fundamental to turning the tide is preventing unwanted pregnancy, but in many countries there is little advice on family planning and contraceptive products are in short supply. "Women will continue to seek abortion whether it is legal or not as long as the unmet need for contraception remains high," Camp said. "With sufficient political will we can ensure that no woman has to die in order to end a pregnancy she neither wanted nor planned for."
The US has always been the biggest funder of family planning in developing countries, but a significant amount of it stopped under the presidency of George Bush, who reinstated a policy known as the "global gag rule" on arrival in office in January 2001.
It removed funding from any family planning organisation overseas that had anything to do with abortion, including counselling. Although European governments, including the UK, stepped up contributions, funds were short at a time when more couples were becoming interested in smaller families. "It really was a lost decade," said Camp.
President Barack Obama has rescinded the policy and more US funds are expected, but the process of ordering increased contraceptive supplies from manufacturers and getting them to where they are needed will take time.
Where contraceptive use has risen, such as in the former Soviet bloc countries, abortion rates have invariably fallen. Worldwide, the unintended pregnancy rate has dropped from 69 for every 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1995 to 55 for every 1,000 in 2008. The proportion of married women using contraception increased from 54% in 1990 to 63% in 2003.
However, only 28% of married African women use contraceptives. Lack of availability is the biggest issue.
The report points to a global trend towards the liberalisation of abortion laws, which has allowed women with an unwanted pregnancy to end it safely. Nineteen countries have relaxed their restrictions since 1997. But in three countries, Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua, tougher legislation has been introduced, the latter two prohibiting abortion even when the woman's life is at risk.
"We have seen an increase in women's deaths and teenage suicides in Nicaragua," said Dr Kelly Culwell, of the International Planned Parenthood Federation at the report's launch.
Camp deplored the exit of the pharmaceutical companies from research and development work on contraceptive products. "There used to be 13 major pharmaceutical companies with full-blown programmes of contraceptive R&D. Now there are none," she said.
Yet there was a real need for products women could use if they were having occasional rather than regular sex apart from the condom, which requires the consent of the man.
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Show AllAccording to Dr. Sharon Camp, "There used to be 13 major pharmaceutical companies with full-blown programmes of contraceptive R&D. Now there are none," This doesn't surprise me, but it sure does anger me. The big pharmaceutical companies are so worried about raking in billions of dollars that they forget the people that they are ultimately dependent upon. As long as there are women who do not have contraceptive rights there will be a need for abortions. That unsafe abortions are killing at least 70,000 women per year is absolutely wrong. This is not a question of whether abortion is right or wrong...it's a question of what can be done to alleviate the burden of women at risk. I do have to wonder at the tense of the last sentence of this article though - "Yet there was a real need for products women could use if they were having occasional rather than regular sex apart from the condom, which requires the consent of the man." WAS and WERE??? I'd say IS and ARE!
Joanelyia...I am with you on the last statement and your ANGER to the issue in general. Here we are in the 21st Century and this world is reverting to the Dark Ages very quickly. The idea that women around the world are still treated like objects by the laws that support male domination over women is disgusting!
Women must rise up and speak out on multiple fronts...we must educate the young about their bodies and the right to self protection and liberation. Sadly, I think the young women right here in our own country know too little about their h(er)story, their rights and respecting their own bodies. I pray for the day we all rise up and demand equality here and around the world.
True there could be more R&D for better contraception. But to me the main problem is failure to deploy what we already have based on the "no abortion" test. This is really a catch 22. You cause the need for more abortions because you don't want abortions.
Lower tech contraception like diaphragms and spermicide are fine to prevent pregnancy. If used conscientiously they will prevent pregnancies and lessen the chance of catching some diseases. There are daily pills. There are "morning after" pills. There are female condoms, but I am not sure how acceptable they are and how well they work.
The fact that women do not have access to contraception is partly because men like to keep women dependent. Another huge factor is that poor people have little access to any routine health care for themselves or their children. We need community health centers within walking distance of neighborhoods.
We need education for men that emphasizes their role in protecting the health of women and taking responsibility for children throughout their lives. We need to change the definition of what is macho or manly. A male gerbil can cause a pregnancy. It is nothing to be especially proud of.
We need laws that respect the unique role of women as bringers of life, and give them support in how they control that. Safe and legal abortions are a part of the mix. With proper attention, abortions will be required only once in a while.
Free, safe contraception is very important to the freedom of women, the welfare of children and to the environment. This has been known for a long long time but unfortunately still has to be repeated. The "no abortion" test for funding family planning must go!
Joe
Far too many males in many cultures in a patriarchal world simply refuse to accept their responsibilities for birth control. Spreading their sperm around and the pleasure of their worshiped cocks is the limit of their concern, sometimes verbalized as a find 'em, feel 'em, f*** 'em, and forget 'em in what is euphemistically called "male culture". An ongoing, little discussed, pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases is another result producing enormous human and social costs. As so often in the realm of health statistics, the warrior state of the US, far outdistances comparable countries in incidence of unwanted pregnancies, STDS and, if the religious right has it way will join the high ranks of back alley abortion deaths. Patriarchy, militarism, and capitalism are the real social diseases and they seem to be sexually transmitted along male lines, but so far no miracle antibiotics or antiviral compounds have been found to control them.
Send the Pope all your unwanted children.
The pedo priests will thank you and pray for your souls.
While very appropriately mourn the death of 70,000 women killed unnecessarily, where is our anger and grief and outrage at the deaths and lost potential of 40,000,000 (looks bigger with the zeros actually written in, doesn't it?) children?
This is not a religious outcry. I see the wonder, the potential, and the humanity in every one. Every loss, woman and unborn child, is a tragedy.
There is a very big difference between a fetus and a human being. One is not alive, the other is. Aborting a fetus is not killing a baby, never has been. Killing a woman because you want to abort a fetus is murder/manslaughter.
There are over 6,000,000,000 people on this planet, half of them are not earning enough to avoid starvation. And you have the balls to bitch about fetus' that might have been born only to starve. You are a fool.
Bitch? No. Mourn? Every day.
I agree with Saturnalia there, but if you still want to see a potential in fetuses how about Malnutrition, Violence, Serfdom..
All of those things are tragedies, veenataos. It seems though that you and Saturnalia are proposing the elimination of that part of the population that suffers from these societal maladies; the poor.
On the other hand, I propose -- with words, action, and my own cash -- that we give those same people the tools, the capital, the education, and the political support to make a decent living, conquer malnutrition and unsafe water, start their own businesses, defeat the violent oppressors, and establish a society and government that honors and supports their individual humanity and dignity.
Really? Humans are breeding so fast that the ecosystem can't support the humans on the planet now, and you think you're going to alleviate the suffering by teaching them how to consume better? Funny. When I was born the human population was just over 4 billion, when my grandfather was born the human population was less than 1 billion. When my grandfather walked the earth, the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland had so many fish that a ship could drop a net and feed a small town, today those fisheries have been tapped out. When my grandfather walked the earth, the mortality rate was quite high. They didn't have antibiotics, nor any sort of reliable birth control, and abortion killed far more than the rate people are dying at today.
I don't actually propose eliminating the poor, that's what the us army and air force do when they launch wars of aggression on behalf of the corporations of the usa that kill millions of living people every frickin decade since the 1950s... The rich treat the poor as the ancients treated Christ, torture them to death.
The fact is that the population of humans is killing the planet, we will breed ourselves into extinction if we don't limit the growth of our population.
Malthus would be proud.
In truth, societies with a high value on self-determination (freedom) and self-governance have much lower birth rates than those living under tyranny and poverty. They are healthier, wealthier, maintain a cleaner environment for the level of food and goods produced, and don't often go about their own countryside committing genocide.
As for wars that kill millions, there have been more dead from the policies and internal turmoil cause by their own government than killed in most wars. In the last century alone: Russia & Soviet Union - 23,000,000. Nazi Germany - 8,000,000. Cambodia - 1,500,000 at least. China - 56,000,000+. Note that all of these examples (the "top" 4 by a large margin) were totalitarian, socialist/communist governments.
Lastly, I cannot agree that a fetus is not alive, while a born person is. Once created, a fetus, left alone without interruption, will consume nutrition, expel waste, grow, move, and exhibit mental development and activity. Even though some are spontaneously aborted (miscarried or stillborn) doesn't diminish the aliveness of fetuses. Some people die prematurely from internal causes; that does not mean that they were never alive. I don't disparage your viewpoint -- I vehemently disagree with it.
[Malthus would be proud]
He was also right. The ecosystem is collapsing, or do you ignore the stories on the subject of Global Warming and the collapse of the biodiversity of the planet?
Your numbers for the dead in war are off quite a bit, firstly those nations also had to deal with invasions and wars that they started or participated in. Over 75 million died during the second world war, and it's impossible for anyone to say who killed whom with any degree of certainty. In the first world war more than 20 million died.
In the nineteenth century a democratic nation (the usa) embarked on a policy of exterminating the natives of North America, and glorifies to this day those who were hailed as 'injun fighters', even though most of the people killed by those soldiers were old men, women and children. In the twentieth century that 'democratic' nation killed who knows how many people in the Philippines, Latin America (which year did the usa not invade one of the nations there?), Russia(1919-20), Japan(1941-45), Germany(1917-18, 1941-45), Korea(1950-53), China (1901, 1950-35[yes, the usa did invade China during the Korean war]), Vietnam, Cambodia (the usa supported pol pot, and helped him to take power by launching an invasion of that country during the Vietnam war), Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other nations. I'd be very surprised if the usa had not killed more people than the totalitarian states did in the past century.
A person is a single individual who is capable of living. A fetus is a parasite that requires its mother to sustain it until it can live on its own. If/when it can live on its own it's a person. If you want to argue that a person has the right to attach him/herself to another to ensure their survival you'd be laughed at. You don't have the obligation to let another person attach themselves to you in order that they can use your kidney to filter their blood, or your heart, or your lungs. Why then, do you want to demand that every pregnant women be forced to that very thing?
"Why then, do you want to demand that every pregnant women be forced to that very thing?"
I never did make that demand at all. There is a great difference in mourning the loss of life perpetuated by abortion, both safe and unsafe, and its side effects, and using government force to punish the act. I have not stated a position on the legal status of abortion, because what I think about it was not pertinent to the conversation. In truth, I believe that the legality of the act will have little to do with its frequency or tragedy.
I would like to see an end to the tragedy. Criminalizing unwanted pregnancy does not further that goal.
We disagree substantially on the definition of "living being". I respect and understand your viewpoint though, and I hope that you can understand mine.
Sorry, I misunderstood your argument. I too would like to see an end to unwanted pregnancies, if we could have an ideal world there would never be a person who wanted an abortion because they'd never be preggers in the first place.
I do understand what you want to say about a fetus being a living being, but I can't agree that the potential of a life is the same thing as an actual life. I know two couples who had the experience of carrying a fetus to term only to see the baby die; one because the throat never developed and the child died of starvation, the other never took a breath because it died during childbirth.
A genocide of women, in short. Where it's easy to see the work of the Roman Catholic Church in all of this ... from El Salvador and Nicaragua, and the Vatican's stranglehold on Latin America, as well as in Africa, where AIDS deaths soar and the Pope still harps on about the evils of condoms. Hopefully the Church will change from within, or people will simply stop paying attention to what they don't need to pay attention to. You don't have to belong to an organization that still tromps along in the path of the Inquisition, and the glory of darkness and ignorance, as if it were a noble tradition.
First, I refer the author of the piece replied to here to my contribution and invite him to react to it.
Second: There is a cause and an effect on the issue of HIV infection and AIDS disease. Which should be dealt with in order to ensure that people are not infected by HIV and do not die due to AIDS: The cause or its effect? Hint: By "cause" is meant what is responsible for the emergence of HIV, or the creation of HIV --- in a USA laboratory, by Hillery Koprowasky?; and by effect is meant the infection by HIV and the development of AIDS after the infection by HIV.
Third: Between prevention and cure: Which is necessary, wise, better and noble: Prevention or cure?
Fourth: If what is put forward as a preventive measure for HIV or AIDS can still be prevented, is it wiser, better and nobler to do so or not?
What I mean here is that while condom may be argued as a preventive measure for HIV or AIDS, but IT IS NOT, as it does not give 100% prevention, it is known that chastity or abstinence gives a prevention of 100%. That means that NOT to have sexual intercourse is not to use condom and, hence, not to be infected by HIV and AIDS 100%, because something--HIV--cannot come out of NOTHING--no sexual intercourse. It follows therefore that chastity or abstinence is a preventive measure that is wisest, best, and most noble for ensuring that NO ONE is infected by HIV. QED!
This is PURE REASON and not based on religion and the Vatican!!!
Prince Pieray Awele Odor
Lagos, Nigeria
Actually condoms work quite well at preventing stds. I've used them faithfully for the last 20+ years and have never caught any form of a sexually transmitted disease, nor have I impregnated a women. There is not a shred of evidence that HIV was manufactured by a human lab in the states, that's another urban myth/conspiracy theory that has no credibility.
The idea that humans are going to be abstinent/faithful-to-only-one for their entire lives is laughable. Unless Nigeria has no problem with women being raped (or forced into prostitution, or who just like a bit of nookie once in a while) I guess you think all fetus' are welcome and can be fed in a rich and prosperous society. Oh, wait a sec. Nigeria is not that prosperous, in spite of the resources extracted by multi-nationals, nor is it a particularly safe country to visit due to the large number of poor who have to steal to survive.
It is clear to me that the author of the reply that I am replying to here intended his or her reply for me or, in other words, reacted to my piece. Therefore, a very brief reply is given here.
My first reply is to repeat what I said earlier, emphatically this time, so that he or she will see and understand and not see alone, as he or she evidenced. NO CONDOM GIVES 100% PROTECTION AGAINST HIV.
That is a very undeserved generous statement. Now let me assert that there is no research available to me that shows that any condom provides 60% protection against the HIV. I mean HIV. I wish to hear from the author on this.
My second reply to him or her is that chastity or abstinence is possible and is practiced by this author, Prince Pieray Awele Odor, and has been practiced by me who is now 53 years.
Only a strong religious commitment to God, to one’s honour, dignity and respectability, to the dignity, honour and respectability of another person, man or woman, good value for one’s life and the life of another person, and, lastly, the fact that there is NO PROOF THAT SIN IS NOT PUNISHED AFTER LIFE HERE while there is, at least, a natural tendency to punish a wrong (sin) are necessary and sufficient to make a person practice NO SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE and sexual intercourse only in marriage.
It is evident, from what the person wrote, that he or she does not have these requirements, unfortunately. Not even the sense of dignity, honour and respectability for himself or herself—-which makes opening up or exposing his or her private part to another person who is not his wife or her husband—-is possessed by him or her, unfortunately.
My third reply is that poverty should restrain a person doing what costs money to redress and not what cannot be redressed—the MURDER of a child in the womb who was given life by the person who knew before hand that having sexual intercourse gives life to a person. This is besides the commandment against murder practiced by all religions.
Prince Pieray Awele Odor
The reply given here to this author's view suffered oversight.
There are evidences that HIV was produced in the USA and he or she needs to read the arguments on the issue including and especially the revelations that were made by Dr. Ben Sweet and Mr. Edward Hooper among more than several other authors who have written outside the restraint by politics on the issue in order to be convinced.
As for me, my proof that it was produced in the USA and that the USA government played a part in its production is that if these were not so---that is, if the HIV was produced anywhere else in the world by any other person or people---the government of the USA would have found out who produced it BY ANY AND ALL MEANS; and it would have ensured that the person or government was punished for Crime Against Humanity.
Prince Pieray Awele Odor
"A genocide of women, in short."
Huh? Despite the incoherence of the phrase, the concept is a bit self-limiting isn't it? Did you really mean an intentional elimination of the entire female gender?
From what pinnacle of religiosity, morality, or spirituality does anyone judge abortion as "unsafe" or "safe"? From what basis of knowledge does anyone judge and justify abortion as "unsafe" or "safe"? Based on what value for human life does anyone judge and justify abortion as "unsafe" or "safe"?
Is any abortion safe? I mean, is any abortion not a callous, criminal and sinful murder of a child who is safe in his or her mother's womb? What makes "safe abortion" safe: A child who is safe in his or her mother's womb is NOT murdered consequent on its performance?
Why are some people able to murder or do grave evil to other people and to corrupt people without feeling it, showing compunction, and even justifying it?
Prince Pieray Awele Odor
Lagos, Nigeria
LMAO! "Safe" abortions kill millions of human beings. Sounds like a good trade off to me.