Publication Date: 08/02/2004

Description: When properly performed by qualified medical personnel, abortion is one of the safest of all medical procedures – safer than pregnancy, childbirth, or even an injection of penicillin. Yet every year nearly 70,000 women die from complications of unsafe abortion – one every eight minutes. Thousands more suffer long-term injury. This tragedy occurs because an estimated one-third of all pregnancies are unwanted, but safe abortion services are not universally permitted or accessible to women.