This according to a study by the World Health Organization, the same group responsible for that highly inaccurate study on global life expectancies, and published in the Lancet Journal, the same publication responsible for those atrociously incorrect civilian death counts in Iraq.

LONDON - Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is outlawed as they are in countries where it is legal, according to research published Friday.

In a study examining abortion trends from 1995 to 2003, experts also found that abortion rates are virtually equal in rich and poor countries, and that half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe.

The study was done by Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute in the United States and colleagues from the World Health Organization. It was published in an edition of The Lancet medical journal devoted to maternal health.

“The legal status of abortion has never dissuaded women and couples, who, for whatever reason, seek to end pregnancy,” Beth Fredrick of the International Women’s Health Coalition in the U.S. said in an accompanying commentary.

I find this highly improbable.

Before we get into numbers, let’s use our common sense.  In most of the free world laws respecting things like abortion are more or less the result of each nation’s popular opinions about it.  In nations where abortion is frowned upon by the society it tends to have more legal restrictions on it than in countries where abortion doesn’t carry as much of a stigma (except in America where abortion is legal not through the will of the people but rather through the will of Supreme Court justices who decided rather arbitrarily that killing your unborn child should be a “right").  Thus laws are tighter in countries in the Latin America region, where access to abortions are highly restricted, than in Europe where abortions actually outnumber live births.

So it seems more than a little absurd to say the legality of abortion has no impact on the number of abortions performed.  Laws reflect social standards and opinions, and in places where social standards and opinions frown on abortion you’re going to see fewer of those procedures.  This is just plain common sense.

And it’s born out by the article itself:

In eastern Europe, there are more abortions than live births: 105 abortions for every 100 live births, the research found. In Western Europe, there are 23 abortions for every 100 live births.

In North America, there are 33 abortions for every 100 live births, while in Africa, where abortion is illegal in most countries, there are 17 abortions for every 100 live births.

This data destroys the very premise of the study.  In Africa abortion is illegal in most places, so there are fewer abortions.  In Western Europe (Spain and Portugal, for instance, have very strict abortion laws) there are fewer abortions.  Eastern Europe where abortion laws are more liberal?  More abortions.

In short, this study doesn’t say what the people who published it say it does.  But that doesn’t stop headlines like the one above this article ("Legal status doesn’t deter abortion") from being published all over the place.

The real problem here is that the people behind the study themselves have an agenda:

“The continuing high incidence of unsafe abortion in developing countries represents a public health crisis and a human rights atrocity,” Fredrick wrote.

Right.  The number of people who have unsafe abortions is the “human rights atrocity.” Not the millions of babies who actually get aborted every year.

Objective?  Dispassionate?  Not even a little bit.

(via Dakota Women)