MEDIA KITS
An Overview of Abortion in the United States
NEWS RELEASES
Growing Movement Calls for Steps to Make Contraceptives Easier to Obtain and Use
(10/29/2008)
Abortion Laws Liberalized in 16 Countries Since 1998
(10/27/2008)
Abortion on the Rise in Mexico Despite Legal Restrictions
(10/06/2008)
EVIDENCE CHECK
Advisory on the Impact of Parental Involvement Laws (October 2008)
Antiabortion activists claim that state laws requiring parental involvement (such as notification or consent) for minors to obtain abortions have been a major contributing factor to declining abortion rates among minors in the United States. However, most studies on the subject have serious flaws and are not able to substantiate the claim.
Advisory on the Mental Health Impact of Abortion (October 2008)
Based on the best scientific evidence currently available, there is no credible evidence that abortion, in and of itself, causes mental health problems for most women.
Review of Key Findings of "Emerging Answers 2007" (November 2007)
Review of an authoritative report on the effectiveness of sex education programs concluding that there is not sufficient evidence to justify the widespread dissemination of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
NEWS IN CONTEXT
Uruguay’s President Vetoes Bill to Liberalize Abortion Access
U.S. Government Blocks Contraceptive Services in Africa
Legal Abortion Upheld in Mexico City
State Legislative Trends at Midyear 2008
Uruguay’s President Vetoes Bill to Liberalize Abortion Access
***Update: Since the publication of this item, Uruguay’s President Tabaré Vázquez has vetoed the legislation to liberalize Uruguay’s abortion law. It appears unlikely that the legislature will be able to overturn his veto.***
In a move aimed at reducing the harmful impact of clandestine, often unsafe abortions, Uruguay’s Senate voted on November 11 to allow abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The lower chamber, the House of Deputies, had voted in favor of the measure the previous week. However, Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez has promised to veto the legislation, leaving its enactment uncertain.
The veto threat notwithstanding, the Uruguayan legislature’s move to decriminalize abortion follows a worldwide trend: Over the past decade, 16 countries have increased the grounds on which abortions may be legally performed. Only two countries have moved in the opposite direction during that period, according to a study published in the September 2008 issue of International Family Planning Perspectives.
Some of the most notable changes in abortion policies occurred in heavily Catholic Latin America. In 2006, Colombia’s constitutional court struck down the country’s blanket prohibition of abortion to permit termination of pregnancy when a woman’s life or health is endangered, as well as in cases of rape, incest or severe fetal impairment. In 2007, the government of the federal district of Mexico City passed a law permitting abortion without restriction up to 12 weeks’ gestation, a policy that was upheld by the Supreme Court of Mexico in September 2008. Meanwhile, the only countries to remove all grounds for abortion were both in Latin America as well: El Salvador (1998) and Nicaragua (2006).
Countries with highly restrictive abortion laws often have high abortion rates. For instance, Mexico’s abortion rate increased by one-third between 1990 and 2006, despite a virtual ban on the procedure countrywide. (This study predated the change in Mexico City’s abortion law.)
Globally, abortion rates are roughly equal in countries where the procedure is legal and where it is illegal—26 and 29 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age, respectively. However, the health consequences vary greatly; abortion is generally safe where it is broadly legal and mostly unsafe where restricted. Worldwide, clandestine abortion remains one of the leading causes of maternal death and injury.
The lowest abortion rate in the world is in Western Europe (12 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44), where contraceptive services and use are widespread, and safe abortion is easily accessible and legal under broad grounds. The evidence confirms that the best way to make abortion less necessary is to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
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The global trend to liberalize abortion laws
The increase in Mexico’s abortion rate
Unmet need for contraceptives in developing countries
The worldwide benefits of contraception
U.S. Government Blocks Contraceptive Services in Africa
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) instructed its staff this month to pressure at least six African governments to withhold U.S.-funded contraceptives from London-based Marie Stopes International (MSI), one of the world’s leading providers of family planning services in developing countries. This is the latest move by the Bush administration in a progression of increasingly restrictive family planning policy decisions that put politics first and women’s needs last.
This directive from the Bush administration takes a broader reading of the Kemp-Kasten amendment—which prohibits foreign aid for any organization that “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization”—than has ever before been applied. The administration alleges that MSI’s work in China with UNFPA violates Kemp-Kasten, basing its decision to deny even indirect support of MSI’s programs on the same unfounded rationale it has used to defund UNFPA since 2002.
Though the stated purpose of this action is to reduce abortion, the effect will likely be the opposite. The impact of African ministries of health refusing to provide condoms, intrauterine devices and other contraceptives (including those donated to the ministries from other governments, as has been reported) to MSI clinics will leave some countries unable to meet the national demand for contraceptives. For instance, MSI provides a quarter of contraceptive services in Malawi. In Sierra Leone, where MSI is a major provider of contraceptives, supplies are expected to run out as soon as November, leaving 10,000 women who typically rely on MSI clinics with no access to birth control.
“These supplies, donated by the U.S. government in the name of the American people, will likely expire on the shelves of national storage centers before countries are able to put in place alternative distribution systems,” said Dr. Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute. “In the meantime, the people of Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe will be left at increased risk of unintended pregnancy and HIV/AIDS.”
More than 100 million married women living in developing countries have an unmet need for contraceptives, according to a recent study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute. Unmet need is greatest, and has declined the least, in Sub-Saharan Africa, where high rates of unintended pregnancy lead to high rates of unsafe abortion. A recent Guttmacher-WHO study confirms that broad access to contraceptives is linked to a reduced need for abortion. The lowest abortion rate in the world in 2003 was in Western Europe (12 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44), where contraceptive services and use are widespread and abortion is legal under broad grounds, safe and easily accessible.
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The unmet need for contraception in developing countries
The facts on abortion worldwide
The broad benefits of investing in international family planning assistance
Legal Abortion Upheld in Mexico City
By a vote of 8 to 3, the Supreme Court of Mexico recently affirmed the federal district of Mexico City’s right to legalize abortion, confirming that the legal status of the procedure can be determined at the state level. In effect since April 2007, the Mexico City law allows providers to offer first-trimester abortions without restriction. Outside of the capital city, abortion is permitted only in particular cases, such as rape or to save the life of the mother, as determined by state. Mexico City’s law is one of the most liberal in Latin America.
Abortion rates have little to do with the legal status of abortion, according to evidence from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization. In 2003, abortion rates were roughly equal in developed regions (26 abortions for every 1,000 women of childbearing age) and developing regions (29 abortions per 1,000 women), despite abortion being largely illegal in developing regions.
Health consequences, however, vary greatly depending on the legal status of the procedure: Abortion is generally safe where it is broadly legal and mostly unsafe where restricted. Legalizing abortion is a necessary, but not sufficient, first step for making abortion safer; the procedure must also be performed by trained providers at appropriate facilities.
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Declining abortion rates worldwide
Putting worldwide abortion into context
The facts on abortion worldwide
State Legislative Trends at Midyear 2008
Through the first half of the year, there has only been moderate activity around reproductive health issues in state legislatures. In this as in other election years, legislators have been reluctant to address potentially divisive social issues; furthermore, the economic downturn has required legislators to focus on state budgetary issues. With most legislatures already adjourned, it appears that the most significant developments of the year still lie ahead, in the form of ballot initiatives that will come before voters in three states in November. Advocates in two states (South Dakota and Colorado) have secured sufficient signatures to force a vote on measures that take different approaches toward the long-term goal of banning abortion. In California, meanwhile, the electorate will vote for the third time in four years on an initiative to require parental notification prior to a minor’s abortion.
The South Dakota measure would ban most abortions outright. This is the second attempt to ban abortion in South Dakota in the past two years. In 2006, voters defeated an initiative that would have prohibited abortion except in cases of life endangerment. In contrast, the measure before voters this year seeks to ban abortion except in cases of life endangerment, rape and incest and if “there is serious risk of a substantial and irreversible impairment of the functioning of a major bodily organ or system.” As was the case with the 2006 initiative, the purpose of this year’s attempt is to bring a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Abortion opponents in Colorado are taking a more indirect approach to the same long-term goal of banning abortion: A proposed amendment to the state constitution on the ballot this November would define a person throughout Colorado law as a “human being from the moment of fertilization.” By declaring that legal personhood begins at fertilization, the initiative could pave the way for banning common methods of birth control, including oral contraceptives, which may sometimes act postfertilization (although their primary mode of action is to block ovulation).
The third initiative related to reproductive health issues will be yet another attempt to secure approval for a measure to require parental notification when a teen in California seeks an abortion. Similar proposals were presented and soundly defeated in 2005 and 2006. Passage of the California measure would bring to 36 the number of states requiring parental involvement for minors seeking an abortion.
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Major state legislative actions so far this year
State legislation enacted in 2008
The status of state law and policy on key reproductive health and rights issues
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