India Abortions Dropping, New Government Figure Shows; 6M Abortions Done
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 14, 2010
New Delhi, India (LifeNews.com) — A new governmental report shows the number of abortions in India is on the decline, but its says more than 6 million abortions are still done annually in the Asian nation. Family Welfare Statistics shows 6.41 million abortions done at 12,510 different institutions in 2008.
That’s an improvement over the 7.25 million abortions estimated in 2005, the 7.21 million abortions in 2006, and the 6.82 million abortions in 2007.
The high abortion totals for Indiana regions include Uttar Pradesh, which saw 89,194 abortions in 2008 followed by the 63,875 abortions done in Tamil Nadu, according to figures from the Times of India.
The Indian states of Orissa, Assam and Maharashtra rounded out the top five.
The newspaper said that, because abortions are legal in China and India, just 28 percent of women in Asia live in nations where unborn children are protected under law.
Despite the fact that abortions are legal, they still claim many women’s lives, in addition to the unborn children who are killed.
Union health secretary K Sujatha Rao told TOI, "We have been working with doctors to better train them in techniques of abortion so that MTPs can be made safer. At present 8% of maternal mortality in India is due to unsafe abortions. So reduction in abortion numbers as a whole will automatically decrease mortality figures also."
In May, a woman died from a botched legal abortion at a Marie Stopes International abortion center.
According to the Republica newspaper, a woman identified as Durga Devi Khadka went to a Marie Stopes center for an abortion of her 10-week-old unborn child. She died at the MSI facility located in Damak Municipality-15 of Jhapa district on Sunday night.
In January, an Indian doctor was arrested in a newly-reported case of a botched abortion that killed a woman. The Times of India indicated the Vikhroli police recently registered a case of medical malpractice against Dr. Vinod Ganpati Prabhu.
Prabhu did an abortion on a woman who was three months pregnant in April 2006 at the Priya Maternity Home.
The newspaper indicates a panel of five doctors from JJ Hospital investigated the failed abortion and submitted their report to police on December 30, asking that Prabhu be charged.
Before that, LifeNews.com reported on another Indian woman who died from a botched legal abortion recently and was at least the third to die from a legal abortion and have her case make the Indian media.
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