http://www.mahablog.com/2005/12/03/why-we-fight-alito/trackback/ Latin America holds some of the world’s most stringent abortion laws, yet it still has the developing world’s highest rate of abortions - a rate that is far higher even than in Western Europe, where abortion is widely and legally available.
Usually left out of our endless abortion debates is the simple fact that making abortion illegal doesn’t stop it. Making abortion illegal only drives it underground, where it is unregulated.
Forero of the New York Times continues,
Regional health officials increasingly argue that tough laws have done little to slow abortions. The rate of abortions in Latin America is 37 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, the highest outside Eastern Europe, according to United Nations figures. Four million abortions, most of them illegal, take place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000 women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute,
Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland have abortion rates below 10 per 1,000 women of reproductive age; in all other countries of Western Europe and in the United States and Canada, rates are 10-23 per 1,000.
Romania, Cuba and Vietnam have the highest reported abortion rates in the world (78-83 abortions per 1,000 women). Rates are also above 50 per 1,000 in Chile and Peru.
Abortion is legal (with varying gestational limits) in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Cuba, and Vietnam. It is banned in Peru except to save the mother’s life. It is banned completely in Chile. Clearly, there is no correlation between abortion rates and abortion laws. (More on abortion laws worldwide here.)
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