More than one out of every five pregnancies around the world end in abortion, a new study says.
Of the estimated 210 million pregnancies worldwide each year, about 38 percent are unplanned and 22 percent – about 46 million – end in abortion, says the study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Women living in countries where abortion is illegal still seek out abortions. About 78,000 die every year in complications from unsafe procedures, the report said.
“It is clear that women the world over go to great lengths to terminate an unplanned pregnancy,” Jeannie Rosoff, the institute’s president, said.
Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, called the number of abortions “scary and horrifying.”
“It’s staggering to hear the number of unborn babies who are being put to death each year around the world,” he said.
“The lack of respect for human life at its most vulnerable is leading us ever further into what Pope John Paul II has called a culture of death,” Zwilling said.
But Kelli Conlin, executive director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League in Manhattan, said the high rate of unplanned pregnancies is the key issue.
“Whether you’re pro-choice or right-to-life, we should have the common goal of reducing the unintended pregnancy rate and that’s why good family planning care at the local, state and federal levels are very important,” she said.
About 35 out of every 1,000 women of childbearing age have abortions every year, the report said.
The rates are similar in developed and developing countries, the researchers found.
“The fact that the rate is that high in the developing world, where abortion is illegal, and therefore expensive or unsafe, it indicates to us how motivated women are” to get abortions when they want them, said Susheela Singh, the institute’s director of research. “They seem to find a way, even when there’s a risk.”
About 26 million women have legal abortions per year – and about 20 million have illegal ones, the report said.
Eastern Europe has the highest abortion rate. In Romania alone, nearly 80 out of every 1,000 women have an abortion each year.
Western Europe has the lowest rate, 11 per 1,000. The U.S. rate is 23 per 1,000.