Vol. 73/No. 45      November 23, 2009

Nonetheless the report, “Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress,” states that 70,000 women still die each year as a result of illegal or unsafe abortions. Eight million each year need medical treatment due to complications; nearly half never receive treatment. The report was released in mid-October by the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute.

Increased use of contraception has given many women around the world more control over when and if to have children. This has led to a drop in the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions, the report says.

The global rate of unintended pregnancy among women aged 15-44 declined from 69 per 1,000 women in 1995 to 55 in 2008. This decline was greatest in the more industrially developed countries.

The most restrictive laws against abortion rights are in the semicolonial or least industrialized countries, excluding China and India, which have relatively “liberal” abortion laws.

Close to 100 percent of abortions in Africa are unsafe, even though after 2003 abortion was legalized throughout much of the continent in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s health.  
 
Abortion safe, legal and free in Cuba
In Latin America, the percentage of unsafe abortions is similar to that in Africa, with the exception of Cuba where abortion is legal, safe, and free, and possibly of Puerto Rico and Guyana, the only other countries in Latin America or the Caribbean where abortion is legal under most circumstances.

But even where abortion is legal, access to it isn't guaranteed, especially for working-class women.

In India there are only 10 abortion centers per 1 million people. Most are in cities, even though 70 percent of women live in rural areas. Abortion centers often lack water, toilets or a clean operating table.

In some countries where abortion is illegal, the law is not enforced across the board. In the Dominican Republic abortion is not legal under any circumstances. However, many hospitals there perform abortions when a woman’s life is in danger.

In Uruguay abortion is permitted only to save a woman’s life, to protect her physical health, and in cases of rape. However, there is a vocal women’s movement there that has organized large demonstrations to demand legalizing a woman’s right to choose abortion. While the movement has not succeeded in overturning antiabortion laws, abortion counseling is provided in government clinics.  
 
Abortion: a safe medical procedure
The report notes that abortion, when properly performed, is a very safe medical procedure. It cites Romania, where abortion was banned in 1966 leading to a soaring maternal death rate. In 1990, a year after a popular uprising overthrew the Stalinist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, abortion was legalized and the maternal death rate dropped.

In South Africa, abortion was legalized in 1996, two years after Nelson Mandela became president, marking the end of apartheid.

“Before the new law was established, there were 425 deaths arising from abortion every year,” Roland Mhlanga, head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, told IPS news service. “Now the number is less than 20.”

Along with increased access to contraception and the loosening of legal restrictions on women’s right to abortion, the report notes that technical advances have greatly enhanced the procedures’ safety.  
 
Many still denied right to choose
In spite of all these advances, “the proportion of women of childbearing age who live in countries with the most restrictive abortion laws—those that ban the procedure completely, or permit it only to save the woman’s life—has not declined in the past decade,” the report states.

It is working class and rural women who have the least access to abortion. “Middle- and upper-class urban women who have the means to pay private doctors” have growing access even in countries where abortion is illegal, the report notes.

An updated “Overview of Abortion in the United States,” released by the Guttmacher Institute and Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, describes the continued war of attrition against a woman’s right to choose, even though it is legal.

While the number of abortion clinics has remained constant, since 1980 there has been a sharp decline in hospitals that offer the procedure. In 1980 more than 1,400 hospitals performed abortions. By 2004 that number had dropped to 600.
 
 
Related articles:
Health-care bill attacks right to abortion
No common ground!  
 
 
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