BBC: Bans 'do not cut abortion rate'

[Qutzupalotl]

Source: BBC

Restricting the availability of legal abortion does not appear to reduce the number of women trying to end unwanted pregnancies, a major report suggests.

The Guttmacher Institute's survey found abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is legal and regions where it is highly restricted. It did note that improved access to contraception had cut the overall abortion rate over the last decade.
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The survey of 197 countries carried out by the Guttmacher Institute - a pro-choice reproductive think tank - found there were 41.6m abortions in 2003, compared with 45.5 in 1995 - a drop which occurred despite population increases.
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Even in countries where abortion is legal, availability and cost may prove major obstacles. In India for example, where terminations are legally allowed for a variety of reasons, some 6m take place outside the health service.


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8305217.stm

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This won't exactly be earth-shattering around here, but it's good to see one of our criticisms of the right's agenda validated by a study.

[ck4829]

1. It's so obvious, yet this really is vital information. K&R.

[csziggy]

2. But Bans DO increase the number of women who die or have complications from backroom abortions

Of course, that makes no difference to the "right to lifers".

[hamsterjill]

3. Absolutely!

The right to lifers don't care about anything that doesn't have an umbilical cord attached.

[Zoeisright]

5. Took the words right off my keyboard.

Yep, the 'pro-lifers' don't care how many girls and women die, as long as the holy embryo is protected.

[fascisthunter]

16. anti-abortions feel death is a proper punishment

for attempting to have said abortion. These people make me sick.

[Tsar_Bomba]

4. I will bet the income level of women in areas

where abortion is illegal is at a high level. Making abortion illegal only affects poor and lower middle class women all the other can afford to go to areas where it is still legal.

[Iowa]

6. This is critical information to the abortion debate, yet we seldom hear about it.

I noticed that the article referred to the the study as being completed by the Guttmacher Institute which they described as a "pro-choice reproductive think tank". This, of course, is code: for "the study is biased". What they failed to mention is that the study was done in collaboration with scientists from the World Health Organization in Geneva. Here's a link to more information:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html?_r=3&oref=slogin

IMO, this should pretty much destroy the Republican party's manipulative use of the abortion issue as a tool to peel off votes from groups that might otherwise vote Democratic, i.e. Catholics. Example: My elderly parents are devout Catholics who have always voted Democratic. But they were really bothered by the abortion issue because the Church was shilling for the Republican party by leading people to believe that if they voted for Dems, they were complicit in "killing babies". I showed them this study a couple of years ago. It made a huge difference. Once they realized that the push to make abortion illegal had nothing to do with "ending abortion", and that it was all about punishing women, they felt much, much better about their solid Dem voting record.

This study should be spread far and wide.

[NC_Nurse]

7. Sadly, wingnuts don't care about facts - or women for that matter.

[Festivito]

8. Beyond this, bans cheapen the idea of abortion.

Abortion becomes worth the trade of a jail sentence for a term with fine, and not a worthily heartfelt decision between a doctor, a woman and her loved ones.

Keeping abortions free and legal means people can develop their own desires not to have one. They can, in Jefferson style idealism, build a wall of separation between themselves and the idea of abortion -- thereby reducing abortions to the status of being below zero abortions.

The current so-called pro-lifers are sellouts, fools or rubes.

[d_r]

9. its been known for a while

that there is no difference in abortion rates between countries where abortion is illegal and countries where it is not.

EDITED TO ADD: Here is a link to the report: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/AWWfullreport.pdf

(I guess I knew that from the 1995 study)

[Hepburn]

10. The bans just make them more dangerous. n/t

[JDPriestly]

11. Of course, those of us women old enough to remember the times before

Roe v. Wade know that this is true. Anti-abortion laws just mean more deaths associated with abortions, not really fewer abortions. Abortions used to be done not just in illegal backrooms but in hospitals under a different name. The anti-abortion movement should be applying its energy to ways to help women, especially single mothers, have real choices in their lives. Women have abortions for many reasons, but those women who have them only because they fear that they cannot support a child financially should be helped.

It is a different matter when the abortion is for medical reasons or because there was a rape or incest or some other reason of that kind. Most women want to have children. A woman who simply doesn't want to be a mother (and I have known some) should not be forced into that role either.

[sakabatou]

12. Filing this in my "Obviously" cabinet.

Now, if only the anti-choicers will realize this.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. "inconsistencies in insurance coverage of contraception increases US abortion rate"

Western Europe is held up as an example of what access to contraceptive services can achieve, and the Netherlands - with just 10 abortions per 1,000 women compared to the world's 29 per 1,000 - is held up as the gold standard.

Here, young people report using two forms of contraception as standard.

Even the UK, which has a relatively high rate, fares well in comparison to the US, where the number of abortions is among the highest in the developed world. The institute says this rate is in part explained by inconsistencies in insurance coverage of contraceptive supplies.

In much of eastern Europe, where abortion was treated as a form of birth control, abortion rates have dropped by 50% in the past decade as contraceptives have become more widely available.

Since that's a relevant point for the current healthcare discussion, I thought it worth bringing up.

[d_r]

14. do the double Dutch

thank you very much, do the double double Dutch

[fascisthunter]

15. D'oh!

[JNelson6563]

17. But it DOES increase the death-of-the-mother rate.

Banning abortion is the least effective way of preventing abortion.

Julie