Abortion Incidence
One study estimated that, despite legal restrictions, in 1994 there were 400,000 abortions performed illegally in the Philippines and 80,000 hospitalizations of women for abortion-related complications; It was reported in 2005 that official estimates then ranged from 400,000 to 500,000 and rising, and that the World Health Organization estimate was 800,000. Seventy percent of unwanted pregnancies in the Philippines end in abortion, according to the WHO. Approximately 4 in 5 abortions in the Philippines are for economic reasons, often where a woman already has several children and cannot care for another.
While some doctors secretly perform abortions in clinics, the 2,000 to 5,000 peso (USD $37 to $93) fee is too high for many Filipinos, so they instead buy abortifacients on the black market, e.g. from vendors near churches. Two-thirds of Filipino women who have abortions attempt to self-induce or seek solutions from those who practice folk medicine. 100,000 people end up in the hospital every year due to unsafe abortions, according to the Department of Health, and 12% of all maternal deaths in 1994 were due to unsafe abortion. Some hospitals refuse to treat complications of unsafe abortion, or operate without anesthesia, as punishment for the patients. The Department of Health has created a program to address the complications of unsafe abortion, Prevention and Management of Abortion and its Complications.
Read more about this topic: Abortion In The Philippines
Famous quotes containing the words abortion and/or incidence:
“It is always the moralists who do the most harm. Abortion is the logical outcome of civilization, only the jungle gives birth and moulders away as nature decrees. Man plans.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher and Robert Ley did pass under my inspection and interrogation in 1945 but they only proved that National Socialism was a gangster interlude at a rather low order of mental capacity and with a surprisingly high incidence of alcoholism.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)