Ipas > Fifteen nations make abortion more accessible

Fifteen nations make abortion more accessible

May 19, 2005

As part of a global trend, 15 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America have recently eased restrictions on abortion.

Courtesy of IndexOpen.

In the last decade, 15 countries have passed laws making abortion legal under more circumstances, while only five—including the United States—have taken steps to make abortion illegal or more difficult for women to obtain. According to a new study published by the Center for Reproductive Rights, Abortion and the Law: Ten Years of Reform, these findings point to a global trend of governments removing legal barriers to abortion.

Ten years ago, at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, governments agreed to a Platform of Action for achieving women’s equality. The Beijing Platform recognizes unsafe abortion as a major public-health concern and expressly calls on governments to reexamine restrictive laws that punish women for seeking abortion care.

Each year, an estimated 20 million women around the world who are unable to access safe, legal care are forced to seek unsafe abortions. Nearly 70,000 die as a result, while countless others suffer injuries and disabilities. Such statistics clearly illustrate the connection between women’s health and abortion law reform: removing legal barriers to abortion can save women’s lives, promote their health and empower them to make decisions crucial to their well-being.

As well as providing vital support for abortion law reform efforts, the Beijing Platform’s mandate reflects a global trend toward liberalizing abortion laws—a trend that first gained momentum in the late 1960s and continues to this day. Currently, more than 61% of the world’s people live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on broad grounds or without restriction as to reason.

Since the adoption of the Beijing Platform, 15 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America have eased restrictions on abortion. For example:

Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea and Mali have converted from being among the countries with the most restrictive abortion laws to recognizing such grounds for abortion as saving a woman’s life and protecting her health in cases of rape, incest and fetal impairment.
From having one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, under which women were imprisoned for abortion-related crimes, Nepal became a model for change globally by making abortion legal without restriction in 2002.
Also in 2002, Switzerland, which previously had one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, passed a law similar to Nepal’s.

One the other hand, only a small handful of countries have passed laws that restrict rather than increase women’s access to abortion. Among them are:

El Salvador, which in 1998 amended its laws to make abortion illegal without any exceptions. Under the previous law, abortion was permitted to save the life of the woman and in cases of rape and fetal impairment.
The United States, which adopted its first-ever federal ban on abortion known as the “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.” The ban outlaws a range of the safest and most common abortions, performed as early as 12 weeks, without providing any exception if the woman’s health is at stake. So far, enforcement of the law has been blocked by several federal courts.

Along with the report, The Center for Reproductive Rights has also released The World’s Abortion Laws 2005, a world map illustrating the varying degrees to which more than 190 countries around the globe permit access to abortion.

With permission from the Center for Reproductive Rights.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258