Abortion and Family Planning


Each year, women undergo an estimated 50 million abortions. Of these, 20 million are unsafe, costing some 78,000 women their lives, and for every woman that dies from unsafe abortion, several others suffer lifelong disability and pain or complicated future pregnancies. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), complications of unsafe abortion are responsible for 13% of all maternal deaths. Each day 192 women die because of complications arising from unsafe abortion; that is one woman every eight minutes, nearly all of them in developing countries.

These women are likely to have had little or no money to procure safe services; many of them are young, perhaps in their teens, living in rural areas and having little social support to deal with their unplanned pregnancy. Some of them have been raped, and some have experienced an accidental pregnancy due to the failure of the contraceptive method they were using or the incorrect or inconsistent way they used it. Some of them lacked knowledge of methods to prevent unintended pregnancy or did not have the means to obtain them. Some may have found contraceptive services hard to reach, while others may have been turned away by judgemental or insensitive providers. A large percentage of them may have first attempted to self-induce the abortion and failing that, they may have turned to an unskilled, but relatively inexpensive and affordable provider.

The primary cause of abortion is unplanned pregnancy. Family planning programs that emphasize counseling, repeat contact with clients, and offer a broad range of methods from which a client can choose can help couples determine whether, when, and how often they will have children. Access to safe and voluntary family planning counseling and services and to a range of modern, safe, and effective contraceptives allows them to control their reproductive lives.

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