 Here's the link to the article so you can read it for yourself. http://news.yahoo.com/s/n...
As my friends here probably know, I am very much pro-choice and believe that all women should have the right to decide what happens in their body. I also try to be respectful of opinions that differ from my own. There are some very interesting points in this article that I'd suggest PL-ers should consider.
"The number of abortions fell most in developed countries where it is legal compared to poorer countries where it is largely banned and considered unsafe..." I find this VERY interesting. Many PLers believe that if terminations were to become illegal in the US again, then the #s preformed would go down considerably. This statement suggests that isn't true. In countries where women are risking their lives & health having illegal terminations are on the rise. Here's another quote that supports that, "The report said an estimated 20 million unsafe abortions occurred in 2003, 97 percent of them in developing regions and places where the procedure is banned."
This was another important statistic for me, "Western Europe had the lowest abortion rate in the world in 2003 at 12 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, the study said citing broad use of birth control methods as a reason. The rate was 17 for Northern Europe and 21 for North America." Considering birth control failure rates range from about 1-18 per 100 (depending on method) these numbers of 12-21 out of 1000 suggest that most women seeking terminations were using birth control. If it was that most were not, the numbers would be much higher.
This is an alarming statistic; "Each year, about 70,000 women die due to unsafe abortion and an additional five million suffer permanent or temporary disability," Again, this is during ILLEGAL abortions. These 70,000 dead women, and FIVE MILLION INJURED are actual women, mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives- not embryos who's "life" is non-viable, and who do not possess characteristic of life.
And finally to compare the relatively low risk involved in early, legal terminations with carrying pregnancies to term: "... more than 535,000 pregnancy-related deaths in 2005, nearly all in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia." And "The figures in individual countries varied from a low of one maternal death per 100,000 live births in Ireland to a high of 2,100 deaths per 100,000 births in Sierra Leone..."
Even for those who honestly believe life starts at conception, how can you deny these numbers? How can you value the "life" of an embryo over that of an actual, living, thinking, feeling woman? How does making terminations illegal, and allowing more women to die support your values of life?
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