WUNRN
Medical News Today
PERU STUDY SHOWS RESTRICTIVE LAW
FAILS TO LIMIT NUMBER OF ABORTIONS
03 Feb 2009
PERU - Despite abortion being severely legally restricted - and potentially
unsafe - in Peru, the incidence of abortion is as high as or higher than the
incidence in many countries where it is legal and safe, found researchers from
Peru, the United Kingdom and the United States in an article published in the
CMAJ- Canadian Medical Association Journal. http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/180/3/298
Clandestine induced abortion is a significant public health issue in many
countries where access to abortion is severely legally restricted. Abortions
are often available only in cases of rape or incest or when a pregnancy
threatens the health or life of the woman, causing many women to pursue
clandestine abortions, which are often unsafe. Forty percent of women live in
countries where abortions are legally restricted.
As comprehensive official statistics are lacking, this study provides valuable
public health data.
The researchers conducted a population-based survey of almost 8000 women aged
18-29 years in 20 Peruvian cities. They found that 11.6% of women reported
having abortions and 7.5% of sexually experienced 18-year-olds - the youngest
age surveyed - reported having had abortions.
"We hope that this study will contribute to increased awareness of the
scale of the problem and political willingness to address it, for which there
is public support in Latin America," write Dr. Bernabé Ortiz from the Universidad
Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru and coauthors.
They state that provision of contraception and education needs to be greatly
improved and will lead to reduced abortion rates as half of the sexually-active
women in the study did not use birth control.
In a related commentary, Professor Rebecca Cook of the University of Toronto's
Faculty of Law writes that laws limiting access to abortion do not reduce the
number of abortions but reduce safety.
"When governments ignore evidence, such as that presented in the study by
Bernabé Ortiz and colleagues, and refuse to collect official statistics on
abortion or ensure transparent access to legal abortion services, they are
increasingly held accountable by national, regional and international human
rights courts and tribunals for the arbitrary exercise of their power,"
states Professor Cook. "They are also increasingly held accountable for
causing preventable deaths and disabilities of women."
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