Abortions fall as fewer women have unwanted pregnancies

Published on Tuesday 13 October 2009 22:05

THE number of women having an abortion or unintended pregnancy is dropping worldwide as the use of contraception increases, a report says.

Abortions fell from an estimated 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6m in 2003, the research showed.

But experts from the Guttmacher Institute – a not-for-profit sexual health organisation based in the United States – said too many women are still undergoing unsafe abortions, with 32 countries having laws that make abortion illegal.

The report said progress had been made on reducing abortions and unintended pregnancies but it was uneven, with developing countries mostly progressing at different rates.

A total of 40 per cent of the world's women live in countries with "highly restrictive" abortion laws – virtually all of them in the developing world, the study said.

In Africa, 92 per cent of reproductive-age women live under such abortion laws, and in Latin America, 97 per cent do so.

These proportions have not changed markedly over the past decade, said the study, called Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress.

Nineteen countries have "significantly reduced" restrictions in their abortion laws since 1997, while only three countries have "substantially increased" legal restrictions.

Unsafe abortion causes an estimated 70,000 deaths each year and five million women are treated annually for complications resulting from unsafe abortion. Another three million women with complications go untreated, the report said.

Dr Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute, said: "The gains we've seen are modest in relation to what we can achieve. Investing in family planning is essential – far too many women lack access to contraception, putting them at risk."