When I was doing research for the final project, I came across some interesting facts that didn’t make it on our website but that I wanted to address.
For China, we found that “In 1983 alone, a year with about 21 million births in China, 14.4 million abortions, 20.7 million (predominantly female) sterilizations, and 17.8 million IUD insertions were performed. A large proportion of these procedures were involuntary”. Although 1983 was around 40 years ago, it is still a huge medical malpractice that these things occurred. We also found that 2001, “the prevalence of birth defects reported in China was higher than that in most developed countries (Christianson et al. 2006), and the prevalence increased from 8.8 per thousand in 1996 to 15.0 per thousand in 2010 [Ministry of Health, People’s Republic of China (MOH) 2011]. According to a report of the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (Zhou et al. 2011), infertility also increased—from a national incidence of 6.9% in 1976–1985 to 17.1% in 2001.”. Child growth and development continue to be of huge concern in China.
Islam: In one article it said, ” In Kazakhstan, for example, where contraception has been difficult to obtain from government or private sources, the abortion rate is high: For every 1,000 women of childbearing age, 44 have an abortion each year. In Tunisia, by contrast, the abortion rate is relatively low. There, only nine per 1,000 women of reproductive age turn to abortion, both because a high proportion of women in that country (40%) are using a modern method of contraception and because many still desire relatively large families.” (Islam, Women and Family Planning). This shows how important having access to contraception is, for decreasing health risks in women of child-bearing age.
These additional statistics show the need for increased knowledge and protection of these issues.
