Abortion Policies

The Reproductive Risk Index rates countries on their official abortion policies, placed in five categories. Of the 133 countries in this study, 49 allow abortion on request or on broad social and health grounds. Only 13 of these nations are in developing regions and include Bangladesh, India, China, Tunisia, Turkey, South Africa, and Cuba. Another 40 countries—including six developed countries—permit abortion on limited health grounds. In the remaining 44 countries, abortion is illegal or available only in cases of rape and incest or to save a woman’s life.

Worldwide, more than one-fifth of all pregnancies—nearly 46 million—are terminated each year. An estimated 36 million procedures take place in the developing world and 10 million in the developed world. Twenty million of these abortions are carried out under illegal and often unsafe conditions.

Abortion is with few exceptions an outcome of unwanted pregnancy. Women who want to terminate a pregnancy tend to ignore the legal status of abortion and are often willing to risk unsafe abortions. In the poorest countries, however, women face a much higher risk of death from unsafe abortion. In Africa, one in every 150 abortions leads to death compared to one in every 85,000 procedures in the developed world. This high risk means that nearly 70,000 women die each year—one every seven minutes—from botched abortions. Hundreds of thousands more end up with chronic health problems.

Over the last two decades the world has seen some liberalization of abortion laws, motivated primarily by health concerns. Since 1994, Albania, Germany, South Africa, Burkina Faso and Cambodia have all relaxed legal restrictions on abortion. Only El Salvador and Poland tightened restrictions over the same period. Restrictive abortion policies mainly affect the poor who rely on the public sector for all their health needs; women who have the means can usually obtain abortions from the private sector.

Unplanned Pregnancy and Abortion
Region	Total annual pregnancies (in millions)	Planned pregnancies and births* (percent of total)	Unplanned Pregnancies
			Pregnancies that end in abortion (percent of total)	Pregnancies that end in unplanned birth** (percent of total)
Worldwide	210	62	22	16
Developed Countries	28	51	36	13
Developing Countries	182	64	20	16
Africa	40	70	12	18
East Asia	40	61	30	9
Rest of Asia	83	66	17	17
Latin America & the Caribbean	18	48	23	29
Eastern Europe	11	37	57	6
Rest of Europe	7	67	21	12
Japan, US, Canada, Australia & New Zealand	10	55	23	22