Bring abortion out of the shadows to save women's lives, families

More than 250 health professionals, advocates and MPs from Africa and beyond gather in Accra, Ghana on unsafe abortion.

Unsafe abortion is one of the continent’s biggest threats to women’s health. While abortion is safe in countries where it is legal and provided by trained medical professionals, clandestine abortion in most of Africa leads to death and serious injury.

More than 26,000 African women die as a result of unsafe abortion annually. Another 1.7 million are hospitalised, and many others suffer serious health complications, but do not seek treatment.

More than 90 per cent of African women of childbearing age live in countries with limited or no access to safe abortion procedures.

Recent data show 5.6 million abortions are carried out in annually, but only 100,000 are performed under safe conditions.

This means about 5.5 million African women risk their lives and health when they decide to terminate a pregnancy.

Drinking bleach detergents or inserting sharp objects into their cervix are only two of the horrifying methods they use. These are not risks any woman should be forced to take.

The terrible toll of unsafe abortion goes beyond the individual woman. Losing their mother and caregiver devastates the lives of children and families. Losing a healthy woman leaves a huge dent on the community. Unsafe abortion is also a serious drain on limited public health resources. African governments spend about Sh11,400 to provide care for a woman disabled by unsafe abortion.

While some African nations have loosened abortion restrictions, 14 countries still prohibit it under all circumstances – even to save the pregnant woman’s life. This flies in the face of considerable evidence that legalising abortion saves lives and reduces high maternal mortality rate.

South Africa serves as an example where just six years after it liberalised its abortion laws, the number of women dying from unsafe abortion dropped by 50 per cent.

Restrictive abortion laws are not effective at achieving their purported goal of stopping women from obtaining abortions.

Evidence shows abortion happens at about the same rate in regions where it is highly restricted and where it is legal. The key difference is safety.

If countries want to reduce abortion, they should focus on reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies.

Unfortunately, in Sub-Saharan Africa, about 60 per cent of women who want to avoid a pregnancy do not use family planning and rely on less effective traditional methods.

Research shows expanding the availability of family planning methods in Sub-Saharan Africa to women who want to delay pregnancy, would reduce the number of unsafe abortions from 5.2 million to 1.2 million.

The number of women needing care for complications from unsafe procedures would fall from 2.2 million to 500,000. Achieving these reductions will require significant financial investment from African governments and donors.

The evidence is compelling, but if it falls on deaf ears women will continue dying and suffering from unsafe abortions. But as this week’s conference in Accra shows, people are listening. Governments should take heed and help enact laws, policies and programmes to protect women and build stronger families, communities and ultimately, nations.

— The writer is the President of Guttmacher Institute