January 18

BBC - A rising proportion of abortions worldwide are putting women's health at risk, researchers say.

The World Health Organization study suggests global abortion rates are steady, at 28 per 1,000 women a year.

However, the proportion of the total carried out without trained clinical help rose from 44% in 1995 to 49% in 2008.

The Lancet, which carried the report, said the figures were "deeply disturbing".

[...]

They concluded that while the abortion rate had fallen since 1995, that drop had now levelled off, and overall, the rise in world population meant that there were 2.2 million more abortions in 2008 compared with 2003.

In the developed world, the proportion of pregnancies ending in abortion fell from 36% in 1995 to 26% in 2008.

Countries with restrictive abortion laws did not have a corresponding decrease in abortion rate - in some cases, the reverse was true.

Professor Beverly Winikoff, from Gynuity, a New York organisation which pushes for access to safer abortion, wrote in the Lancet: "Unsafe abortion is one of the five major contributors to maternal mortality, causing one in every seven or eight maternal deaths in 2008.

"Yet, when abortion is provided with proper medical techniques and care, the risk of death is negligible and nearly 14 times lower than that of childbirth.

Lancet Podcast
Lancet Comment
Guttmacher: The long-term worldwide decline in abortions has stalled.
Guttmacher Lancet reproduction: Induced Abortion: Incidence and Trends Worldwide from 1995 to 2008 [pdf]