INDUCED ABORTION AND HEALTH PROBLEMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

: Induced abortion remains illegal in many developing countries and little is known about its prevalence or the associated morbidity, mortality, costs, and individual human tragedies. In 1977, the International Planned Parenthood Federation surveyed member family planning associations to obtain their best estimate of the number of abortions/1000 live births in 1976. The associations were also asked to code the reliability of their estimates and to indicate whether they were based on abortion data or on local experience. Of 60 developing countries in this survey, 15 (25%) based their reports on data, 23 (38.3%) on local experience, and 22 (36.7%) on best guesses. For both Latin America and the Indian Ocean region, about 1/2 the countries used estimates based on data. For the regions, only 1 country in each region used data for its estimates. For these 60 countries we estimate 13.7 million induced abortions were carried out in 1976, yielding a ratio of 207 abortions/1000 live births. This ratio varies from 8.9 in East Africa to 325.2 in Latin America. Since realistic bounds of associated mortality were between 1/1000 and 1/100 abortions. We calculate that 68,570 (between 13,710 and 137,130 women died from induced abortion during 1976 in these countries. Over 1/2 of the deaths occurred in the Indian Ocean region and nearly a 1/4 in Latin America. We submit these crude estimates in the hope that they will stimulate more accurate epidemiological studies of the health and economic costs of induced abortion in developing countries. We also hope that these countries will improve reproductive-health services so that women will not feel compelled to seek illegal abortion.