The critical connection between maternal mortality and unsafe abortions
With the 2015 target of the Millennium Development Goals approaching, the United Nations recently issued a report detailing the progress made on each goal. While some goals have made major gains and will reach their targets by 2015, “Goal 5: Improve maternal health”, is not seeing the gains other goals have made. The stated target of Goal 5 was to “reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio”. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia account for most of the maternal mortality cases.
The report notes that maternal mortality rates could decrease by ensuring that women receive ante-natal care, give birth in the presence of skilled health professionals, and have unobstructed access to family planning and contraceptives. Though the report mentions access to family planning and contraceptives, it makes no explicit mention of access to safe abortions. The connection between maternal mortality rates and lack of access to safe abortions is critical, and cannot be ignored. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has repeatedly made the connection between maternal mortality and unsafe abortions, noting the “high rates of maternal mortality due to high numbers of abortions among adolescents, and unsafe, clandestine, and illegal abortions”.
July’s summit on family planning in London raised $2.6 billion dollars to improve access to family planning and contraceptives for an additional 120 million women by 2020. One article suggests that “[w]hat vaccinations are to infant mortality, contraception is to maternal mortality.” The organizers of the family planning summit claim that the money raised will result in 200,000 fewer women dying in pregnancy. While it is important for women to be able to obtain contraceptives wherever they are in the world, it is equally as important that women have access to safe abortions if contraceptives fail, or if a rape victim seeks an abortion to help end the psychological trauma still lingering from her assault. If women are forced to resort to unsafe abortions because they are illegal, unaffordable, or unobtainable, the maternal mortality rate will stay steady.