Abortion in Context: United States and Worldwide. (Issues in Brief).(Statistical Data Included)

Abortion is one of the most divisive and emotional issues facing U.S. policymakers today. This should not be surprising, given that individuals' attitudes about abortion are shaped by their convictions regarding religion, morality, human rights, public health and the status of women in society. Moreover, lawmakers in the United States are not alone in their struggle over abortion policy. Abortion is controversial in many countries, and nations from every region of the globe are wrestling with questions about abortion, unintended pregnancy and the appropriate role of government in these matters.

Many of these policy debates are driven by the motivation to reduce abortion rates, and among some policymakers, the answer is to make abortion difficult to obtain or even illegal. Yet an examination of statistical trends reveals that the legal status of abortion in a country is not strongly correlated with the rate at which it occurs. Indeed, in many countries where the procedure is illegal, women obtain abortions at very high rates. Similarly, in some countries where abortion is legal and very widely accessible, abortion rates are low.

Clearly, factors other than legality are at play here. The primary factor is the rate at which women experience unintended pregnancies. Some women who have an unintended pregnancy will seek an abortion regardless of its legal status--even if they have to jeopardize their lives by undergoing an unsafe, illegal procedure. Thus, while there may be little relationship between abortion legality and abortion incidence, there is a strong correlation between abortion legality and abortion safety.

In 1999, The Alan Guttmacher Institute issued a major report, Sharing Responsibility: Women, Society and Abortion Worldwide, that brings together the latest research findings from approximately 60 nations about abortion law, the incidence of abortion and the conditions under which abortion occurs around the world. By discussing abortion in the context of unplanned pregnancy and placing the U.S. situation in a worldwide context, that report and this companion Issues in Brief strive to increase understanding of the role that abortion plays in women's lives. This information can improve policymakers' ability to ensure that women seeking to fulfill their childbearing goals--in the United States and around the world-are able not only to protect their lives and health should they decide to have an abortion, but to avoid unplanned pregnancies in the first place.

Unintended Pregnancies

Of the estimated 210 million pregnancies that occur annually around the world, nearly four in 10 are unplanned. In the most general terms, unplanned pregnancies occur when couples fail to reconcile their desire for sexual intercourse with their intention or reluctance to conceive a child at a particular time. However, reconciling these aspects of their lives requires couples to perform a complex balancing act, which may be influenced by their individual circumstances, features of their relationship and societal norms. And that balancing act becomes increasingly difficult when couples want small families.

Throughout this century, as modernization, urbanization and women's levels of education and participation in the labor force have grown, small families have increasingly become the norm worldwide. American women typically want two children, as do women in European countries and many parts of Asia. In Latin America, the average preference is between two and three children. Only in Sub-Saharan Africa do women still want relatively large families--five or six children, on average--but even there, desired family size has declined (from seven or eight children) since the 1970s.