I am still old-fashioned enough to believe that abortion is a necessary, last-resort procedure to be used only if the life of the mother is at risk or if the fetus is nonviable. But it seems to be becoming just another form of contraception, and in a few cases, the method of preferred contraception.
Just a quirk of the numbers but the proportion being aborted today are about the same proportion as infant mortality claimed some 300 years ago. Globally the number of abortions is about 25-30% of the number of live births. In Sweden it is just over 30%.
- In the 1700s infant mortality killed about 20% of children under 1 year old.
- Today the infant mortality rate is less than 0.3%
- Today around 30/130 = 23% are aborted.
Swedish Radio (Ekot) carried this report today:
Better counseling can reduce repeated abortions
Repeated abortions can be prevented if abortion clinics improve their contraceptive counseling, according to a new study.
Siri, who has gone through several abortions, thinks that counseling in connection with abortion is important. “You feel immediate shame and guilt because your pregnancy is unplanned. Then it is about being treated with empathy and respect in a longer meeting. Perhaps the contraceptive advice should not be just 15 -20 minutes.”The mother of two, Siri, has undergone unplanned pregnancy several times, and has found it difficult to find a suitable contraceptive..
This is a recurring theme in the doctoral thesis that midwife Helena Kilander from the Höglandssjukhuset in Eksjö has completed at Linköping University.
She followed 987 women who had abortions in 2009. A quarter of the women came back to make a new abortion within a couple of years. Many of them had received birth control pills, but did not take the tablets.
…………. Every day, almost 100 women in Sweden have abortions. And it is more common here, than in the other Nordic countries, that women have repeated abortions. “Although there are few negative long-term effects of undergoing abortion, it is common for this to be a stressful event in women’s life”.
………
By the numbers:
- SCB: 110 – 115,000 babies are born in Sweden every year. (In 2016 it was higher than usual at about 117,000).
- Around 36,000 abortions are carried out every year.
- 25% of those surveyed had repeat abortions.
- Some women have multiple (4 – 5) abortions.
Paradoxically, what used to be the duty to use abortion as a last resort to preserve the life of the mother has been “liberalized” into a woman’s absolute “right” to kill her own unborn children.
Tags: Abortion
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