How Keeping Abortions Underground Makes Health Care Worse for Everyone

[ismnotwasm]

Like many African nations, Kenya's health care system faces many challenges, including severe rates of malaria and HIV/AIDS. But according to a new report published by the Kenyan Ministry of Health, one change could go a long way toward reducing stress on a hugely overburdened system: allowing more women to have an abortion.

Though Kenyans reconsidered an existing abortion ban when writing their 2010 constitution, the nation's top legal document still virtually forbids the procedure. Exceptions are only allowed during health emergencies, as determined by a trained health professional (although at least one US congressman was outraged that even these exceptions made it into the final constitution). Yet outlawing abortion has done little, if anything, to reduce the number of procedures. In 2012, the period of the study's analysis, researchers estimated that Kenyan women underwent nearly 465,000 induced abortions—about 48 for every 1,000 women of reproductive age, well above the estimated rates for both Africa (29 per 1,000) and the world (28 per 1,000).

But keeping abortions underground has led to an incredible rate of complications, putting a strain on an already overburdened health care system. In 2012, almost 120,000 Kenyan women, or more than a third of all women who underwent the procedure, experienced complications. The vast majority of these complications, the researchers found, followed "unsafe abortions" carried out by untrained people or "in an environment that does not conform to minimal medical standards."

Most of these unintended side effects were quite serious: 77 percent of these 120,000 women suffered complications that were "moderately severe" or "severe," according to the study. Out of 100,000 unsafe abortions in Kenya today, the researchers estimated, 266 women die. That rate is lower than the World Health Organization's estimate for all of sub-Saharan Africa (520 deaths per 100,000 unsafe abortions), but far higher than in developed regions, where the rate is estimated to be 30 per 100,000.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/08/kenyan-ministry-health-legalize-abortion-improve-health-care

[d_r]

1. this is the reality

the policy point that the anti-choice crowd never can seem to figure out. It is cognitive dissonance or something. There is no difference in abortion rates between countries where it is legal and where it is illegal (for example, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html?_r=0 ) and in those countries where it is illegal it is a serious health risk (for example, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/12/4/gpr120402.html ) if anyone were truly "pro-life" they would be working towards better health care, social services, access to birth control. But they would rather threaten and yell at people.

[MotherPetrie]

2. That's the point. Not to reduce abortions - lawmakers don't really give a shit about unborn babies -

But to keep women in their place.

[redqueen]

3. Yep. If they wanted to reduce abortions they'd give away free birth control. nt

[MotherPetrie]

4. Exactly. And leave the issue of abortion strictly between a woman and her doctor.

[niyad]

5. k and r

[libodem]

6. .