Perhaps you expect this to be a pro-life piece? Sorry, look elsewhere. WARNING: this article is likely to raise the blood pressure of anti-abortion folk.
The Guttmacher Institute has issued a report which states that increased contraceptive use worldwide has resulted in fewer abortions. The number of abortions worldwide fell from 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003. It is likely that contraception will continue to rise, and abortions will continue to fall. The proportion of married women worldwide who use contraceptives rose from 54% in 1990 to 63% in 2003. Just guessing, if we could get to 100%, would that eliminate another 10 or 20 million abortions annually?
Sub-saharan Africa is an exception to the trend. 38,000 women died in unsafe abortions in 2003, nearly half the planetary total. Contraception there has lagged other regions, partly due to the active resistance of Catholic Churches there. The report estimated that almost half the 41 million abortions of 2003 were conducted in a way that endangered the life of the woman. Around 8 million of the women experienced complications.
The Guttmacher Institute, in the interest of honesty, does favor access to contraception and to abortion. But I think that the data they compiled does point to contraception as the only realistic alternative to abortion, long term. Telling women they can't have abortions tends to drive them underground to unsafe abortions. Pushing contraception, and making it inexpensive, actively tends to create conditions in which fewer unwanted fetuses come into existence, resulting in a lack of interest in abortion.
Okay, I have said my piece. Rant if you wish.
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Comments: 6
Its estimated that hundreds of thousands of babies with Down syndrome are aborted every year. As a special education teacher, I'm appaulled. What did people with Down syndrome ever do to suffer such a holocaust?
This might be a radical concept, but in a time, in a world where Sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, overpopluated areas and abortion is rampant, I believe ALL contraception should be free to anyone requesting it.
Before that, women were not just dying from abortions performed in unsafe conditions, they were often plagued with a life of sterility, when they wanted children later on in life.
Also, I must say to someone up there who teaches down's syndrome children and the like. there is nothing wrong with these children, I worked on a TV show with a DS boy, he was sweet and intelligent, but he was also unhappy as his life was, he felt, not good as far as his health concerns, so is it right to bring a child into the world who will be ridden with sickness and an early death? I don't think it is right, if you know a child will be predisposed to Cistic Fibrosis or some such, why bring someone into the world who will be sickly and die young? cruel!