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Author Topic: Abortions illegal but on the rise
writer
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Babbler # 2513

posted 06 December 2004 12:16 AM      Profile for writer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:

Rates continue to climb in Catholic Latin countries
Poorer women more likely to risk death, prosecution

Monica Maureira remembers how -- as the nurses interrogated her and the doctors lectured her -- she watched her hands going transparent from the blood loss.

She was 16 years old and hemorrhaging after a clandestine abortion in Chile, where abortion is illegal and considered immoral.

"I remember the nurses telling me that if I didn't give them the name of the doctor who gave me the abortion, they would let me bleed to death," Maureira says.

She lived to tell her story, but many women don't.

Across the Latin-speaking Americas, an estimated 5,000 women die every year as a result of clandestine abortions, according International Planned Parenthood Federation.

An estimated 800,000 women are hospitalized due to complications, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, based in New York and Washington.

Abortion is prohibited across most of Latin America -- Cuba and Puerto Rico being the exceptions.

While some countries allow abortion in cases of rape or danger to the mother's life, there are no exceptions in Chile, Colombia or El Salvador.

Those three countries prosecute hundreds of women for having abortions.


by JEN ROSS
SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO STAR


From: tentative | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Hailey
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Babbler # 6438

posted 06 December 2004 01:02 AM      Profile for Hailey     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
deleted

[ 06 December 2004: Message edited by: Hailey ]


From: candyland | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sara Mayo
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3714

posted 06 December 2004 04:59 PM      Profile for Sara Mayo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Really interesting article. The stats about decreasing abortion rates when access is easier certainly puts the anti-abortion rhetoric to shame.

quote:
But despite the legal risks, Latin America continues to experience abortion rates that are much higher than those in most countries where it is legal.

...
Up to 200,000 illegal abortions take place in Chile every year — twice as many as the total number of annual therapeutic abortions in Canada, which has more than double Chile's 15.8 million population.

The abortion rates are highest in Chile and Peru, where one woman in 20 has an induced abortion. In Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, it's about one woman in 30. In Mexico, one in 40.

Dr. Ramiro Molina, director of the Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Chile, led a 10-year study in three impoverished communities on the outskirts of Santiago.

Clinicians provided direct medical attention for women at high risk of pregnancy. A social worker also called them regularly and worked around their schedules.

They had access to all birth control methods, education, counselling and follow-up visits.

The abortion rate dropped 82 per cent in some communities after this intense grassroots intervention.

Public health advocates cite the study as proof that abortion rates can be lowered through improved availability, delivery and quality of contraception, and the establishment of post-abortion contraceptive counselling in hospitals.
...
Casas says she doubts abortion will become a priority for politicians in Chile because it doesn't touch their lives.

"The political elite, or the people who have money, happen to have access to abortions under optimal conditions: a doctor, a clinic, anesthesia ...

"Or they can even go to Miami, to a clinic, so it's not an issue for them. Poor women risk their lives."



From: "Highways are monuments to inequality" - Enrique Penalosa | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged

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