Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare - New York Times - The Diigo Meta page

• 14 Oct 08
  

  Todd Way

  A worldwide study by the World Heath Organization finds that the criminalization of abortion does not reduce the incidence, but the availability of contraception does.

  abortion health

  • The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available
  • In Eastern Europe, where contraceptive choices have broadened since the fall of Communism, the study found that abortion rates have decreased by 50 percent, although they are still relatively high compared with those in Western Europe.
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  • • In Uganda, where abortion is illegal and sex education programs focus only on abstinence, the estimated abortion rate was 54 per 1,000 women in 2003, more than twice the rate in the United States, 21 per 1,000 in that year. The lowest rate, 12 per 1,000, was in Western Europe, with legal abortion and widely available contraception.
    • The Bush administration’s multibillion-dollar campaign against H.I.V./AIDS in Africa has directed money to programs that promote abstinence before marriage, and to condoms only as a last resort. It has prohibited the use of American money to support overseas family planning groups that provide abortions or promote abortion as a method of family planning.

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