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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 no. 17. 19th July 1972

Facts About Abortion

Facts About Abortion

1.Abortion is practised universally whether legal or not. For example, in France, where it is illegal, abortions are estimated to equal live births.
2.Though very few in number, some pregnant women do commit suicide as a direct consequence of their unwanted pregnancy.
3.The health risk of illegal abortion is not borne equitably, the rich tending to get safe medical abortions in private clinics while the poor are forced to use the hack street non-medical abortionist.
4.legal abortion can be simple, non-repugnant and in countries with high standards of medical care, such as Czechoslovakia, as safe as pregnancy.
5.Psychiatric after-effects of legal abortion are in-frequent and minimal (4) and occur mostly in women whose psychiatric condition predated conception.
6.Legalised abortion reduces both the rate of and mortality from criminal abortions. Note that the Swedish failure to find a reduction in criminal abortion rates as cited by Professor Liley reflects not a liberal abortion law as he suggested, but a law which tin the 1950s and early 1960s) in practice actually approximated to the present New Zealand law. This is reflected in the decline in abortions from 0.90 per 100,000 of population in 1951 to 0.37 in 1960 (11). Tietze claims that criminal abortion continues in countries like Hungary because it is secretive while legal abortion lacks privacy. Thus, if privacy could be achieved by allowing abortion as an outpatient procedure in a doctor's office, rather than by requiring the approval of a panel of doctors in a hospital, further declines in the number of illegal operations could be expected.
7.Future fertility is not impaired by uncomplicated medical abortion.