ABSTRACT
Complications from unsafe abortions account for approximately 40 percent of maternal deaths worldwide. The morbidity associated with unsafe abortion remains a severely neglected public health problem. While unsafely induced abortion is the greatest single cause of mortality for women, it is also the most preventable. The World Health Organization recognizes abortion as a crisis issue, and in 1991 recommended action to ''encourage governments to do everything possible to prevent and eliminate the severe health consequences of unsafe abortion''. The conceptual link between abortion and family planning is obvious and fundamental: effective contraception is the most efficacious means of preventing unwanted pregnancies and so preempting the need for abortions. All over the world, women have begun to voice outrage over the millions of women who die each year from preventable causes. The toll from unsafe abortion is particularly unacceptable because these deaths and suffering could have been prevented.
