Abortion is probably the most controversial method of family planning due to the ongoing debate over the legal status of fetuses.
Abortions performed to save a woman’s life are the least controversial. Of 193 countries surveyed by the United Nations, all but four nations allowed women to obtain abortions where carrying a pregnancy to term would potentially threaten the woman’s life.
Once we move past saving a woman’s life, however, things change drastically. Seventy-one nations, for example, make abortions to preserve the physical health of the woman illegal. One hundred and ten nations do not allow women who get pregnant due to rape or incest to obtain abortions. Finally, only 52 nations allow abortion on demand for any reason. (1)
Which does not mean, of course, that women in those nations don’t get abortions. In the United States, for example, although abortion did not become legal until the early-1970s, in many areas such laws were routinely ignored by health officials.
Data on abortion rates worldwide is difficult to come by, but data from developed nations demonstrates that abortion is used most frequently by single women.
In the United States in 1985, for example, almost 61 percent of pregnancies in unmarried women were aborted compared to only 8.4 percent of pregnancies in married women. In Canada, 31.4 percent of pregnant single women chose abortion in 1994 compared to 6.4 percent of pregnant married women. (2)
Footnotes:
1. World Abortion Policies 1999. United Nations, 2000.
2. Characteristics of women who obtain induced abortion: a worldwide review. Akinrinola Bankole, Susheela Singh and Taylor Hass, Family Planning Perspectives, v.25, No.2, June 1999.