Via USA Today (via the Associated Press), The Lancet just published a study finding very high correlation between abortions and laws restricting same. Seems the more Draconian your anti-woman laws are, the higher the abortion rates, and the more likely that the abortions will be unsafe.
About 47,000 women died from unsafe abortions in 2008, and another 8.5 million women had serious medical complications. Almost all unsafe abortions were in developing countries, where family planning and contraceptive programs have mostly levelled off.
Abortion rates were lowest in Western Europe — 12 per 1,000 — and highest in Eastern Europe — 43 per 1,000. The rate in North America was 19 per 1,000. Sedgh said she and colleagues found a link between higher abortion rates and regions with more restrictive legislation, such as in Latin America and Africa. They also found that 95 to 97 percent of abortions in those regions were unsafe.
The authors defined unsafe abortion as any procedure done by people lacking needed skills or in places that don’t meet minimal medical standards. Sedgh said some women in Africa resort to using broken soda bottles or taking strong doses of medicines or herbal drugs to induce abortions.
A broken soda bottle? Really? That’s actually worse than that Pennsylvania girl who home-aborted with a pencil when left with no other recourse. I never thought I’d hear a horror story worse than that one, but there you have it.
The idea that women will abort their pregnancies with or without legality is not surprising. The correlating idea that the countries with the more restrictive abortion laws are very probably the same ones that do not educate about sexuality, and/or do not make readily available contraceptices, was not studied unfortunately. I would not be surprised in the least, personally, if anti-abortion sentiment correlated very highly with anti-sex-ed and anti-contraception.
Remember, sex ed, abortion and contraception are women’s rights issues. Removing any or all of those three is equivalent to damning women to indentured servitude as baby-makers.
