Only four countries have tightened their abortion laws in recent decades. Dozens of countries have increased women’s right to terminate a pregnancy.
Activists and politicians demanding abortion rights in Poland are disappointed. The new prime minister Donald Tusk has done nothing for five months to repeal the strict abortion law enacted by the previous conservative government.
The women accuse the new government of trying to freeze the issue of abortion, even though all government parties promised to legalize abortion during the elections.
– We feel disappointed and betrayed. The rights of Polish women are treated as a side issue, says the activist Dominika Ćwiek according to the British newspaper The Guardian.
Women’s organizations plan to demonstrate in favor of the right to abortion on Women’s Day on Friday.
Women in many US states are also fighting for abortion rights. 14 states have banned abortion after the US Supreme Court ruled the other year that there is no federal right to abortion. The states themselves regulate the matter.
France, on the other hand, decided this week to be the first country in the world to enshrine the right to abortion in the constitution. Prime minister Gabriel Attal justified the decision by that otherwise the right to abortion is at risk and at the mercy of decision makers.
President of France Emmanuel Macron presented Women’s Day in his speechthat the right to abortion would also be included in the fundamental rights of the EU.
60 percent of women live in countries where abortion is relatively free
Although the denial of abortion rights in Poland and the United States has received widespread attention, the trend in the world over the last three decades has been towards broader abortion rights, says a reproductive rights advocate organization Center for Reproductive Rights.
Only four countries have tightened their abortion laws, in addition to Poland and the US states, the Central American countries of Nicaragua and El Salvador.
El Salvador completely banned abortions in 1998 and Nicaragua in 2006. In neighboring countries, Honduras banned abortions more than 40 years ago, and Guatemala and Panama also have strict abortion laws.
At the same time, however, more than 60 countries or territories have moved towards recognizing abortion rights, the Center for Reproductive Rights points out. A third of the world’s women live in the 77 countries where an abortion can be obtained up to a certain week of pregnancy by requesting it.
Only 6 percent live in countries where abortion is completely prohibited. In the rest of the countries, an abortion can be obtained under certain conditions, either on broad grounds or under strict conditions, for example to save a woman’s life.
in Finland was accepted only the second year the new abortion law, according to which the pregnancy can be terminated based on the request of the pregnant woman until the end of the twelfth week of pregnancy. In the previous law, the opinion of two doctors was required for an abortion in most cases, and a reason had to be presented for the abortion. The new law entered into force at the beginning of September.
Three out of ten pregnancies are terminated
According to the World Health Organization WHO around 73 million abortions are performed worldwide each year. On average, three out of ten pregnancies are terminated.
About 134 million children were born last year, says the statistics website Our World in Data.
The number of abortions per thousand women has remained stable since the 1990s, at around 39, says the American organization Council of Foreign Relations.
However, the number of abortions has decreased in those countries where abortion is legal, although China and India are not included in the statistics. At the same time, the number of abortions has increased in countries that severely restrict the right to abortion.
In countries that guarantee the right to abortion, almost 90 percent of abortions are safe, while in countries that prohibit abortion, the figure is 25 percent. An estimated 5-13 percent of maternal mortality is due to unsafe abortions. Most of them are made in developing countries.