A leading sexual health organisation has praised the Netherlands for its liberal approach to sex, which has helped the country achieve one of the world's lowest abortion rates. A study released by the US-based Guttmacher Institute found there has been a global drop in the number of women choosing to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
Listen to an intervew with President of the Guttmacher Institute Dr Sharon Camp
Setting the standard
Chairwoman of the Guttmacher Institute Sharon Camp told Radio Netherlands Worldwide that the country has set the standard for the rest of the world:
"The Netherlands' example ought to be an inspiration for the rest of the world. You start when people are young and give them an unambiguous message, which is: human sexuality is fine, it's part of life, we hope you will wait to have sex until you're in a committed relationship but in any case it's not alright to become a parent before you're ready to raise a child and it's not alright to pass on a disease."
Decrease in abortions
Abortions decreased worldwide from around 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003, which Dr Camp described as a positive development.
"Most of the findings in the new report are good news. Around the world we see significant declines in both the numbers and rates of abortion. The main reason for that is that there has also been a significant decline in unintended pregnancy.... Overall, contraceptive use has increased from a little over half, to almost two thirds of women around the world."
Complications cause death
One of the main issues identified by researchers who wrote the report is the number of women dying from complications arising during unsafe terminations - around 70,000 each year. A further five million receive treatment for complications. Half of all the deaths from dangerous procedures occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where less than a third of women at reproductive age use contraception.
In Catholic countries where women rely on the state for medical treatment, there is also a higher rate of abortion for low-income women than those on higher salaries, who are able to pay for terminations themselves.
Dr Camp said she was not surprised by the finding that restricting access to abortion does not reduce the number of women who have the procedure.
"It's almost certainly counter-intuitive to those who seek to ban all abortion. The report's findings couldn't be clearer. What works is prevention, what doesn't work is prohibition."
Flickr photo "I had an abortion" by Willem Velthoven
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MAN EFFF ABORTION
"Isn't it amazing how women, while pregnant, will talk about their unborn babies as though they are human and women who do not want to have babies will call the life within them an embryo and fetus. Wow, an unborn baby being called and embryo or fetus to ease the conscious."
It's, frankly, more amazing that you decide to elevate one of those viewpoints over another. You could just as easily say, "Isn't it funny how pregnant women talk about these undeveloped collections of cells as babies when they are not yet?" But thank you for providing a perfect exemplar of how this issue is emotional, not rational. As the previous poster pointed out, if you took a moment to consider the subject of the article -- that the Netherlands has FEWER abortions because of its approach to sex education -- rather than being blinded by your excitement that you can rant about what you see as excessively liberal EU policy, you might come to the rational conclusion that supposedly "liberal" policies which lead to fewer abortions actually make sense and fit in with your views. Fancy that! But as a staunch right-to-my-life advocate, I'm not holding my breath.
"that the Netherlands has FEWER abortions because of its approach to sex education".....I doubt the Netherlands has fewer abortions because of it's approach to sex education; otherwise, there would probably no abortions. If, you are going to use that logic, then one could say "there are fewer abortions because of the approach of by some groups that abortions are wrong. It is both emotional and rational to see that abortions are wrong. It is wrong to abort a human (a baby not cells). It is not just liberal EU polices but Western values that are wrong about abortions. When a baby is no longer undeveloped cells, he or she (yes he or she and not it) should be worthy of having a right to live just like a person a murderer on death row. If the state has no right to execute murderers than one think that the state should not be sponsering abortions by paying for it. If by speaking out against abortions saves one baby then the effort is worth it.
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