Abortion is legal, free and widely available in the Netherlands, for example, yet that country is home to one of the world’s lowest abortion rates. By contrast, abortion is completely illegal in countries as diverse as Peru, the Philippines and Uganda, but all have abortion rates that far exceed the rate in the United States.
LEGAL AND RARE
Where abortion is illegal, the rates often surpass that of the United States and can far surpass the rates in many other countries where abortion is legal.
Most recent rates per 1,000 reproductive-age women
Legal ————— Illegal
Belgium7Dominican Republic47
Germany8Peru56
Netherlands9Philippines27
Switzerland9Uganda54
United States21
Sources: Guttmacher Institute and WHO Regional Office for Europe.
The Common Thread: Unplanned Pregnancy
Put simply, abortion rates around the world are high where unplanned pregnancy is high, and they are low where women and couples are better equipped to prevent those pregnancies they wish to postpone or avoid altogether. In the industrialized world, unintended pregnancy rates are lowest in western and northern European countries, where sexual activity from the teen years on is generally accepted as a fact of life. In these countries, therefore, “personal responsibility” is equated much less with refraining from *** than it is with a commitment to using contraception consistently and correctly.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/09/1/gpr090102.html
What do you think about this?
I didn’t realize the USA is a developing country.
My bad.
Does this mean the USA is neither a developed country, nor a developing country? The abortion stats are right in-between.
Clearly level of development is an important factor because it affects the accessibility and availability of birth control.