2011 was a really terrible year for abortion rights. Really, incredibly terrible.
Abortions happen all over the world, regardless of legality. There’s some correlation, though, between liberal abortion laws and low abortion rates, and conservative abortion laws and higher abortion rates. There’s also correlation between liberal abortion laws and low instances of death from abortion, and conservative abortion laws and high numbers of women dying.
Great link, thank you! The first two correlations seem to me to be caused by liberal contraceptive laws and norms, while the latter seem like they’re caused by liberal abortion laws and norms, and those two causes are probably correlated. I’m interested in how strong that correlation is. Also, I wonder what causes that outlier of Eastern Europe on the international graph? My first guess was that it was related with income levels, but South Central Asia and large portions of Eastern Asia aren’t exactly better off.
There have been some really interesting articles written about this, which I unfortunately don’t have time to track down now, but it seems to go back to norms under Communist governments. In some places, like Romania, abortion was illegal and women were monitored to make sure that they weren’t terminating pregnancies. But through much of the Soviet Union, abortion was legal and was a principle means of birth control, since hormonal contraceptives were not widely available. Since the introduction of hormonal contraception, Eastern Europe has seen a dramatic decline in its abortion rate (90 per 1000 women of childbearing age in 1995 and 44 by 2004).
Mike, I’m sure others are more qualified to answer your question, but from a quick search it would seem like the legacy of decades in which there was little access to modern contraception in many Eastern Bloc countries, whereas abortion was legalized early on. In short, the opposite of the situation in Western Europe, where contraception became legal and accessible before safe abortion in most places.
Mike: As I understand it, abortion is still illegal in Poland, which might create a fairly big wobble as far as the abortion rate in Eastern Europe goes.
Abortion is legal in Poland under three circumstances:
- if pregnancy is a result of crime (incest, rape);
- if pregnancy endangers health or life of the would-be mother;
- if prenatal diagnosis (or other medical tests) reveal that there is a high chance that the fetus is heavily damaged, deformed or suffers from other health defects (in the last case it’s impossible to abort after the child would be able to live outside the mother’s organism).
Generally, women in Poland have 12 weeks to abort (I think it’s a reasonable amount of time).
In the United States, the states with conservative abortion laws have lower rates and states with liberal abortion laws have higher rates. Why do you think it is reversed here?
Could it be that other factors like economics have more to do with the rate?
Also abortion rates are very sketchy throughout the world. Even the U.S. CDC admits their abortion date is very incomplete because counting abortions is not mandatory in many places. Same in Canada and many other places. I think the U.S. is actually one of the better counters and that isn’t saying much.
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