Reproductive rights in Latin America seen a steady increase of feminist abortion activists, despite religion making the issue taboo. Even when legislation has become more lenient (as has been the case recently with Mexico City and Chile), women often face institutional barriers to gaining access to abortions. When it comes to reporting data on abortions in Latin America, estimated abortion levels are often heterogeneous and highly variable due to legal frameworks and social stigmas. According to the World Health Organization, in 2008, approximately "4.2 million abortions were conducted in Latin America and the Caribbean, almost three-fourths of them in South America. Virtually all these procedures
Reproductive rights in Latin America its own country, which has resulted in the United States banning federal funding for international NGOs. Considerably damaging to groups in Latin America was Ronald Reagan's 1984 Global Gag Rule which prohibited international organizations receiving US federal funds from performing or promoting abortion as a method of family planning. Latin America is home to some of the few countries of the world with a complete ban on abortion, without an exception for saving maternal life. During the Cold War, reproductive restrictions were directed at controlling overpopulation through technocratic regulatory mechanisms and vertical population control campaigns. The United Nations International Conference