Safety of Abortion Depends on the Law of your Country

Increased Use of Contraceptives Can Prevent Increased Need of Abortions

One new study found that almost half of the 55 million abortions that happened worldwide between 2010 and 2014 were unsafe and almost 97% of these unsafe abortions occurred in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We term an abortion to be unsafe when it is terminated by an individual who lacks the necessary medical skills or in an environment that does not even have the basic medical facilities. Sometimes, such unsafe abortions can result in death! Other times, almost one-third (31%) of abortions were less safe where either of the two conditions was true, the abortion was performed by an untrained person in a safe environment or by a trained person using unsafe methods such as sharp curettage. Some abortions happened under least safe circumstances (14%) by untrained individuals using the most dangerous methods such as use of herbal concoctions. Such an abortion could leave a bit of the pregnancy tissue in the uterus, cause vaginal or cervical injury and infections.
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Stricter Rules, Higher Unsafe Abortions Rates
The safety quotient of an abortion procedure depended on the strict enforcement of abortion rules. Maximum number of safe abortions were performed in countries with less restrictive laws, high economic development and well-developed infrastructure. 

Strict Abortion Rules Prevent Women from Speaking Up for Themselves

In countries which have a full-fledged ban on abortions or allow only the woman’s life/physical health to be saved, only 1 in 4 abortions were safe, whereas in countries where restrictions are less stringent and on a broader scale, 9 in 10 abortions were performed safely. One thing that must be clearly understood is that, restricting access to abortions does not grant access to reductions in the number of abortions.

Western and Northern Europe and North America are some of the countries where abortions can be carried out in the safest way. This is because, they have flexible laws on abortion, increased use of contraceptives, economic development, gender equality and high-quality healthcare.
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Women get pregnant sometimes due to inevitable reasons and when they can’t find a way out to get aborted, many of them even commit suicide. Almost 23,000 women die every year due to complications that arise from unsafe abortions. The variation in the number of safe abortions performed vary drastically between countries. Almost 54% of abortions performed in low-economic countries fall into the ‘least-safe‘category while fewer than 1% of abortions performed in high-economic countries falls into this category. Also, are you aware that where you live affects your health quotient? Read more on the relationship between quality of life and your place of living at www.firsteatright.com. Ensuring increased availability, accessibility and affordability of contraception can minimize unwanted pregnancies and thereby, abortions. But this needs to be combined along with safe abortion methods to reap total benefits. 

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