A recent study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute (www.guttmacher.org) shows that the number of abortions being provided worldwide fell from 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available. The reason for this is largely that more women have access to and are using contraceptives.
However, 40% of the world’s women live in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws, including 92% of women in Africa and 97% of women in Latin America. This means that for a significant number of women, the abortion they have is unsafe -- 70,000 women are killed each year and 8,000,000 suffer complications as a result of these unsafe abortions.
As has been the case for some time, this report confirmed that abortion occurs at roughly the same rates whether or not it is legal. The difference is in whether or not the abortions are safe.
In Canada, where abortion was decriminalized in 1988, women’s access remains inadequate and uncertain. Women living in cities in the southern part of the country face fewer barriers than women in rural, northern and eastern regions, but barriers exist everywhere. Prince Edward Island has no abortion services whatsoever. Henry Morgentaler continues to fight legal battles to provide abortion services in New Brunswick.
In the present political climate, little action is being taken at any government level to increase accessibility of abortion. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine a move backwards in terms of accessibility or even legality.
The right of women to control our bodies, including our reproductive capacity, is essential to our health, empowerment and equality. This is particularly so in a society where women continue to experience high levels of sexual violence, do not have adequate information about or access to contraception, make only 73 cents for every dollar earned by men and do not have access to quality, affordable child care.
In a country that claims women have achieved equality, we deserve to be trusted to make appropriate reproductive decisions and to be able to find services to support those choices.
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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Solid information on abortion services..but I would like to remind folks that the right to abortion does not encompass the entirety of reproductive rights. I would like to encourage people to apply an intersectional analysis to this issue and resist framing the debate as a pro-choice vs anti-choice(pro-lifish).
ReplyDeleteIn fighting for reproductive rights of women it is important to frame the issue from the perspective of marginalized women and include the rights to adaquate resources to give birth and raise a child if desired...and to include looking at eugenics and sterilization policies and activities that are currently taking place in Canada and around the world.