A bit better

A new report on abortion offers glimmers of hope

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Readers' comments



matt rodstrom

I think that the questions of abortion boil down to a question of rights. A woman has the right to control her own body, and, people generally, have the right not to be killed. Now what qualifies as a person, to a secular state, might be up for question, but the rights "people" have are clear, and neither should be straight up sacrificed for the other, especially not the one about killing.

Now if you agree with me about the above, but think that abortions should be legal without any kind of qualification, I would like to understand how it is that you can think that a slightly pre-mature baby inside the womb is, in and of itself, so different from a baby of the same developtment outside of it that it should be denied the rights of personhood whilst is so protected.


Abortion should be the last resort, but as the Catholic Church and idiotic local customs strive to keep people, and especially women, ignorant and subservient to the male machismo, this struggle will continue. It is interesting to note that in rich and educated Catholic countries where the Church's influence has weakened, and abortion is legal and easily available, the incidence is low. Yet in poor countries, where papal domination is the greatest, poverty, malnutrition, ignorance and misery as well as overpopulation abound. A solution as cheap and simple as a condom is condemned by a church that is centuries out of touch with the real world, and dominated by males who "educate" freely about family values, but have not experienced having one. Little wonder Protestant nations have always been decades more advanced than the traditional RCC dominated ones, and even less wonder that in Brazil, Protestant churches are sprouting and attracting the RCC's traditional customers. I am a firm believer in the power and justice of the marketplace. Let's not even talk about Islam!


42 million deaths a year is sickening. Put in context Hitler murdered several million over 8 years.

This is almost the population of England being murdered every year.


Juan Diego to answer your question. Will it make it safer? The answer is yes it will.

1) It will make it easier for women to find clinics that have legit doctors because these clinics will no longer have to hide and can purchase the equipment need to perform the operation. Before they might not been able to import the equipment because of fear and they couldn’t let the population know they do it.
2) Education will be more available because it is no longer illegal to talk about it and you can go to the clinic and receive information about your choices.
3) If it is legal then there is no need to go to underground clinics, which might have fake doctors, and unclean equipment.
4) The staff will be nicer to the patients receiving this treatment.
5) When you have a legal clinic, then it will have to abide to the government or international standards and this can be checked, but underground clinics can only be busted.

There are so many problems in the world, this is a medical treatment. No woman wants to be in this position, it is hard enough. They don’t need to be looked at as criminals. The doctors who save lives should not become criminals because people want to put their nose into other peoples business.

Should this even be debated: A 14 year old girl is gang raped and gets pregnant, she wants to have an abortion. Who in their right mind thinks that they have the right to say she can’t have an abortion? Are these people going to take care of this girl, make sure she gets to go to school, pay for a babysitter, pay for dippers, pay for food, pay for the baby’s school, pay when the baby gets sick, and are they going to pay for this girl to receive help because every time she looks at the kid she is going to remember the time she was raped and her dreams to become a doctor are over because she now has to raise a kid when she is a kid her self.


Nobody likes abortion, as this article correctly concludes. And some of the comments on the article stress the key strategies to reduce it: education (particularly of girls and women, highly discriminated against in many places, despite the prevailing official rhetoric) and universal access to family planning. The effective combination of these two variables has contributed not only to reduce abortions but also to promote socioeconomic development.

You do not have to be a rocket scientist, or an economic development specialist, to perceive that a smaller-size family has on average much better chances to educate their children than a larger-size one. Education and family planning, therefore, must be the focus of international cooperation between the advanced and the lower-income countries. Let us reduce the number of abortions. But let us also promote the welfare of the families in the developing world by helping them educate their children. And family planning is conditio sine qua non to accomplish this goal.

Juan Diego

I live in Peru and the abortion debate has recently started again, but for pregnancies due to rape and fetal malformations. If I understand correctly, the idea behind legalizing abortion in poor countries is not to decrease its number, but to make them safer.
What I would want to know is whether this would actually make them safer...sure, this works in rich countries were legislation and the rule of law is strong and effective, but in a country like Peru, where informality and low incomes is common, I am not sure such medical procedures would become safer.

We have a poor health infrastructure anyways, and it's vox populi which women are more prone to have abortions: poor & uneducated. Even if the State sponsors abortions and carries them out in State hospitals, I doubt quality would increase. In fact, I would not be surprised if this creates a new market for pseudo legal abortion doctors that charge more and give the same service as before. Everybody can get a false permit here, and I am sure this happens in many other poor countries...this could simply multiply bad facilities, bad abortions and ultimately, increase abortions since uneducated people would think it is easier and more accessible than before.

The best solution for unwanted pregnancies is EDUCATION, taking the easy way out is unlikely to solve the problem in the long term. So it is actually "a bit worse".

Juan Diego


I'm sorry but you've totally missed my point...I sincerely doubt making abortions legal in developing countries would make the procedure itself safer because rules are not enforced. Little would change.

For example, driving under the influence for some time now in many Latin American countries has been legally punished by revoking someone's license. However, since it is not enforced, nothing has changed...what initially was thought to decrease accidents/deaths due to drunk driving has done little to stop it.

My whole argument stopped short from calling abortion illegal, which it is, yet alone inmoral, which it also is. Our Constitutions preserve human life, from its conception. Exceptions are made, when the mother's life is in danger, and maybe there should be a debate whether they should be extended for a limited number of cases (I've recently heard of cases where a fetus had no brain, but the mother had to wait until after birth for the baby to die anyways).

Finally, your example of a girl gang raped has a counterpart. Just last week I found out of a similar case in which the mother accepted the terrible thing that had happened and loved her child very much. Extremely forgiving, real and possible.

Jessica K.:

Don't confuse a cause with a consequence. The fact that countries with liberal abortion laws have less abortion rates does not mean that those very same laws cause the decrease in abortions. It is highly more likely that better education and family planning cause those figures since there are less reasons why to have an abortion.


The problem with relying upon "education and family planning" in many countries is this:

Activists who seek to prohibit abortions generally frown upon 'artificial' birth control and family planning, as well.

I don't mean all (or even most) ordinary citizens who happen to be pro-life feel this way.

But I do mean that the leaders of the 'criminalize abortion' movement are seldom content with just that. Instead, birth control is seen as not fostering procreation, and sex education seems driven to scare young people with lurid stories about the horrors of sex before marriage. Save it for someone you love? And don't even get them started on embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage.

Chariots of Fire

The intrinsic value of human life should not so quickly be considered in purely academic terms. As noted, liberalization of abortion laws always gives rise to an increased number of abortions. Safer for whom? Life is rarely fair,by its very nature. In all human life is the potential for great beauty and creativity, It is this belief in the ability of beauty to rise from tragedy and disappointment that drives humans to hold life as intrinsically valuable.

A decrease from 42m human lives lost to 40m human lives lost is not a glimmer of hope. It is a testimony to a loss that is beyond the imagination. Let us hope that abortion goes the way of slavery, locking the mentally ill in chains, and child labor. It is the death of human life. If an unborn child is not human, there would be no controversy. It is certainly not a cat. If it is not alive, then it is dead, and no abortion would be needed. A single abortion is not a statistic. It is the death of one human being.



I do not think a lot of people would insist that the unfortunate girl of your example should not have an abortion, although if she didn't and went on to raise the kid that would be a very noble thing to do.

But I am still going to frown upon doctors and women who perform late-term abortion on perfectly normal children who were conceived under no extenuating circumstances. They are simply murderers.


I think that the will more liberal abortion laws and informing people about protections there will cases of abortions. As stated in the article the places that have less abortion laws have less cases of abortions. Also wiht more restrictions there are -alley abortions which are even worst.I think there should be more liberal abortion laws in countries that restrict it, because that way there will less cases where kids are born and live a bad life because they weren't wanted.

Juan Diego


Abortion should only be treated as an option when the mother's life is really in danger. Leave the Church aside, it is a scientific fact that life starts as soon as a child is conceived. Whether conception was a mistake, an error or due to rape, someone's life is in question. As hard and difficult as this may be, nobody, not even a mother, has the right of ending that life...contitutions in a series of countries make this illegal. To call it names as "machismo" is just because people run out of arguments.


I can't believe the Economist swallows such simple correlations and buys the Guttmacher institute's conclusions.

The fact that legal abortions fell worldwide does nothing to prove that legalization doesn't increase the abortion rate. The reason for the fall could easily be (a) fewer couples of child bearing age [a truism in almost the entire developing world] (b) Access to better contraception in the developing world

To buy questionable studies from obviously biased parties indicates The Economist would rather believe anything that supports its position rather than critically examine the data!

Cives Romanii

free abortion laws may generate the birth of an abortion industry, as it's the case in Spain.
Abortion should be regulated in the way the relevant society does feel it should, and not in the way some politicians or opinion leaders believe it should.
The results would differ from country to country, but, at least, we would have a social consensus on what is right or wrong to do.
On the other hand, all alternatives should be available to women in perceived need of abortion.



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