Do liberal abortion laws coincide with lower abortion rates?

     The World Health Organization and The Guttmacher Institute, which study reproductive health, just published a paper in The Lancet, among the most respected medical journals anywhere, which says they do. The Guttmacher Institute reports, too, the more self-evident truth that "when contraception rates are high, abortion rates are low."

     Ironically, the study says, where abortion is illegal and/or heavily restricted, particularly in parts of Africa and Latin America, women have far more abortions, per capita, than in parts of the world where it is legal, such as Western Europe and here, in the U.S. And in South Africa, where abortion is permitted, the death rate for women who die as a result of unsafe abortions has declined 90% since abortion there became legal in 1996.

      World-wide abortion rates dropped from 35 per 1,000 women in 1995 to 29 per 1,000 in 2003. (A decline of six per 1,000 over eight years is significant.) From 2003 on the rate has steadied. A primary reason for the leveling, the study says, is a decline, globally, in access to birth control. Birth control has declined largely, the study indicates, because Western aid money for contraception has fallen off as aid to fight AIDS and malaria has grown.

      The increasing far-right drumbeat against choice and birth control are not only misogynistic. They defy science, ignore what we know about human behavior, and are destructive to women everywhere and to their families.

__________

^{[The chart is from the Guttmacher Institute. The percentages, by region, of abortions that are considered medically unsafe by Guttmacher and by the World Health Organization, are cut off from the chart on the right-hand side, so I have reported the 2008 figures for that below the chart.]}

^{Note:  Unsafe abortions as a percentage of total, by region:}

^{Latin America  95%}

^{Africa  97%}

^{Asia  40%}

^{Europe  9%}

^{North America  40.5%}

^{Oceana  15%}