Abstract
Picture this situation in a grandmother's old tale. Her story reflects perfectly one of the main problems of illegal abortion. Way back in 1920, when she was 16, her friend was pregnant as a result of incest. Incest refers to having sexual relations between persons who are so closely related that their marriage is illegal or forbidden by custom. As it was not a favorable condition for a woman at that point of time, the grandmother decided, along with her sister, to help her, by putting something sharp into her womb to perform a kind of an abortion. However, the friend died after the act.
The sad part of this story is that such incidents are commonplace in the present world as well.
Statistics reveal that only 39.3 % of the world population lives in countries where abortion is authorized as a choice made by women, with restrictions of time (in terms of viability, as we will see later). This means that 71% of women from industrialized countries can choose to interrupt their pregnancy if it is not desired.
However, many countries do not authorize abortion except in drastic cases, in conditions where there are health problems for the woman (13.8 %) or when their life is in danger (25.7%). Poland changed its liberal laws to very restrictive ones. Latin-American countries emphasized the restrictive character of their laws.
In conservative countries, it is quite hard to think about abortion in a liberal way. This is the case of many countries, such as England, Spain, USA and Ireland.
Abortion is illegally practiced on 20 million women each year, while officially we know that 42 million of women undergo the process each year. This represents almost half of the abortions made in the world each year. Moreover, the saddening part is that in addition to being extremely expensive, it is performed under very bad conditions, leading to death in a lot of cases.
