ABSTRACT
An international consensus among a diverse body of policymakers already exists on the adverse effects of rapid population growth on economic performance, the environment, family welfare, health, and political stability. For reasons of politics many of these same leaders shy away from or ignore the role played by abortion in slowing birth rates. Perhaps the most distressing fact about abortion-related deaths and illnesses is that the vast majority of complications that lead to the outcomes are totally preventable. Because of the social stigma of abortion, the dispersion of medical technologies for safe procedures is held back even while progress is made on other forms of health care. Equally disturbing is the resounding silence on the part of international bodies concerned with health and development—the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the US Agency for International Development, to name a few—about the human and economic costs of illegal abortion. Abortion-related deaths and illness are to them an invisible plague.
