The claim was made in a report* by researchers from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organsation (WHO). The researchers and other commentators in The Lancet are using the figure to argue that so-called 'safe' abortion should be legalised worldwide.
As I told the media this morning, the WHO routinely makes unsubstantiated claims about so-called 'unsafe' or illegal abortion. WHO is one of the world’s major pro-abortion bodies. The Guttmacher Institute is the research arm of the worldwide pro-abortion lobby. The report is pro-abortion propaganda, and should be dismissed as such.
Promoters of legal abortion have a proven track-record of making wildly exaggerated claims about the number of so-called 'unsafe' or illegal abortions. Such false claims were made in 1967 to lobby for the UK's Abortion Act and in the 1970s to justify the US's Roe v Wade decision. The late Dr Bernard Nathanson, the US abortion pioneer who became pro-life, admitted that he deliberately exaggerated the estimated number of illegal abortions five-fold when campaigning for abortion legalisation.
The truth is that countries with strict laws against abortion have lower maternal death rates than countries which allow abortion widely. Ireland, where abortion is banned, has one of the world's best maternal health records. Legalised abortion does nothing to improve medical care.
* "Induced abortion: incidence and trends worldwide from 1995 to 2008", The Lancet, Early Online Publication, 19 January 2012 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2961786-8/abstract
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