IN HIS open letter to Cardinal Winning Ron Ferguson mentions abortion briefly and says that all churches are opposed in principle and only regard it as morally permissible in very restricted circumstances (July 4).
The Safe Motherhood initiative of WHO is a global effort to reduce maternal deaths in the world by half by the year 2000. Complications resulting from unsafe abortion are an important cause of maternal mortality and morbidity. It is estimated that at least 75,000 women die each year from unsafe abortion.
Where abortion is illegal and mostly unsafe it has a negative impact on reproductive wellbeing and on women's health. In many countries with restrictive abortion legislation between one-fifth and one-third of maternal deaths are due to abortion.
Many developing countries still have hardline abortion laws. The Catholic Church exerts strong influence in SubSaharan Africa, Latin America, and other Asian countries on their governments to refrain from legalising abortion and providing contraception on request.
This influence prevents a reduction in the maternal mortality and morbidity. The so-called pro-life movements in many countries ensure that many women will continue to die from unsafe abortion.
Governments have to be influenced to change restrictive laws and put in place facilities for abortion and contraception as has been done in the UK.
In Romania too, for example, after many years of high rates of maternal mortality, more than 85% abortion-related, the maternal mortality decreased between 1989 when abortion was legalised and 1992 from 170 to 60 per 100,000 live births, a decrease due to the abrupt decline in abortion-related deaths.
If the WHO target is to be achieved decriminalisation of abortion is a necessary means of protecting the life and health of women.
Professor Sir
Malcolm Macnaughton,
15 Boclair Road, Bearsden.
July 6.
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