An update on abortion rates around the world offers little comfort

TRACKING abortion rates is no easy task. Some countries under-report them, thanks to a bias against the procedure. Others do not track them at all. A new paper in the Lancet, however, uses a range of sources to estimate the number of safe and unsafe abortions in 2008. These numbers have been collected only twice before, in 2003 and 1995. The update is not encouraging. The Guttmacher Institute, a population research group that supports abortion, and the World Health Organisation found that the global abortion rate has stalled. It fell precipitously in the 1990s, but recently the rate has not budged, barely dipping from 29 abortions per 1,000 women (aged 15 to 44) in 2003 to 28 abortions per 1,000 women in 2008. Eastern Europe has the highest abortion rate in the world, at 43 per 1,000. The geography of abortions has also shifted. In 2008, 86% of abortions were in the developing world, up from 78% in 1995. The share of unsafe abortions rose as well, from 44% in 1995 to 49% in 2008. Laws that restrict abortion did not seem to lower the number of procedures. On the contrary, restrictive laws were associated with higher rates.