Sep

13

Illegal Abortion in Nigeria Costs Innumerable Women’s Lives

Filed Under Africa, International, abortion, anti-choice extremism, human rights, misogyny, patriarchy, reproductive justice, women’s health  | Posted by Cara |

This is wholly unsurprising and yet still incredibly tragic: unsafe abortions in Nigeria are strongly linked to high maternal death rates. And when they say high, they really mean high.

THE statistics are alarming, over 760,000 abortions yearly in the country resulting in over 140,000 hospitalisations.

Abortions has been identified as the major reason Nigeria records one of the highest cases of maternal mortality ratio of 800 deaths per 100,000 births yearly in the world.

These figures, alarming as they are, have been referred to as conservative estimates by researchers and institutions working in the country.

. . . A recent study by CAUP pointed out that a vast majority of women would have had at least one Un-safe abortion by the age of 49 years.

Even worse: unsafe abortion contributes up to 30-50 percent of deaths in Nigeria. No, that does not say “maternal deaths.” It says “deaths.” Period.

Abortion in Nigeria is permitted only to save a woman’s life. Clearly, that restriction is costing a hell of a lot of lives.  Of course, the issue of abortion is also inexplicably tied to extreme poverty and lack of access to contraception.

This, right here, is precisely why groups like Amnesty International need to promote reproductive rights as human rights– and not just in cases of rape or health risks, as their current stance states. If the right to not die on a makeshift operation table, at the hands of an untrained individual with unsafe medical equipment isn’t a human right, I’m not really sure what is.


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Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Anna on September 13, 2007 7:22 pm

    Oh my – the suffering of women. This is really incredible – incredibly awful. Amnesty (& the rest of the planet!) needs to get with it.

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