Induced Abortions On the
Rise
Although abortion in
Costa Rica is illegal,
the Asociación
Demográfica
Costarricense (ADC),
estimates 27.000 induced
abortions per year are
performed in the country
of women between the
ages of 15 and 49.
The ADC in its report
titled "Estimación del
Aborto inducido en Costa
Rica, 2007" says that
there was one induced
abortion for every three
live births in 2007.
The report was prepared
by Cristian Gómez who
said that induced
abortions present health
risks for women and that
abortion is on the
increase.
The report takes into
account date compiled
from 1992 to last year
shows that induced
abortions went from a
rate of 10.6 for every
1.000 women between the
ages of 15 and 49 to
22.3 last year.
Gómez added that the
increase is due to
mainly to the rise in
unwanted pregnancies
that is a result of the
lack of sex education
and low use of
contraceptives and
believes that the
numbers support the move
to "demystify" abortion
in Costa Rica and to
ignore the false belief
that the absence of
maternal deaths from
abortion is the
correlative of the
absence of induced
abortion in the country.
Gómez says that it is
time to start taking
about the problem and
the risks to public
health and that the
criminalization of
abortion has not been
effective in reducing
induced abortions and
that public health
officials rethink their
strategies to reduce
unwanted pregnancies,
the main cause of
induced abortions.
The ADC report indicates
that the country's
health officials adopt
three basic principles:
updated sex education
secular, involvement of
men in the reproductive
responsibility and
access to the highest
contraceptive
technology. |
