A word on motherhood

I get the feeling from comments I get on this blog, that people assume that women have no need for abortion. This ignorance is important to acknowledge because so many people associate the need for abortions with irresponsibility or immorality in women. This ignores the serious risk of pregnancy. I've never been through it myself but I recognize my extreme good fortune to be a middle class, American woman. If I ever become pregant, I should have very good healthcare.

Pregnancy is actually still a very dangerous thing even in this day in age. We must understand the serious need for contraception, adequate health care and SAFE, avaliable abortions. I found some amazing statistics about motherhood, violence against women and abortions.

Women's situation is dire...
· In developed countries, one woman in 2,800 dies from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. In developing countries, one woman in 67 dies.
· In Sweden, the country with the lowest risk, one woman in 29,800 dies from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. At the other end of the scale are Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, where death comes in pregnancy or childbirth for one woman in six.
· Teenage girls over 15 years of age are twice as likely to die from childbirth as are women in their 20s, while girls under 15 face five times greater risk.
· At least 35 percent of women in developing countries receive no prenatal care. Almost half give birth without a skilled attendant (doctor, nurse or trained midwife), and 70 percent receive no care in the six weeks after delivery.
· Obstructed labor, common worldwide, is treated in developed countries by Caesarean section. Where emergency care is not available, the mother and child usually die. If the woman survives, she may incur an obstetric fistula, an opening between the vagina and rectum or bladder. The result is unrelenting incontinence, which leads to odor, infections and social ostracism.
· More than one-third of all pregnancies worldwide are unwanted. Each year, some 20 million unsafe abortions are performed, killing nearly 78,000 women and disabling hundreds of thousands more.
· A quarter of all unsafe abortions—some 5 million—are performed on adolescent girls aged 15-19.
· Current funding is sufficient to provide only one-eighth of the world’s currently needed reproductive health supplies, including maternal and neonatal healthcare commodities. Up to a third of maternal mortality and morbidity could be avoided if women had access to information and a full range of modern, safe and effective family planning methods.
· One in every three women worldwide has been beaten, raped, coerced into sex or physically abused in some way – often by someone she knows. In the United States, homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women.
· Women have an enormous impact on their families’ welfare. One million children die each year because their mother has died. The risk of death for children under 5 doubles if their mothers die in childbirth. Women also contribute a larger percentage of their earnings to their family than men do.
· Low-income women are far less likely to have skilled care during childbirth. In Bolivia, 97.9 percent of births to women of the richest fifth of the population have a skilled attendant; while just 22.7 percent of the poorest women receive such care during childbirth.