Abortion: access to the right is also access to health – 03/13/2024 – Balance and Health

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Last week, France included abortion as a right in its Constitution. And, when we talk about abortion and women’s rights, we are also talking about health.

In today’s edition, I explain this relationship and why illegal abortion is one of the main causes of maternal mortality in the world.

73 million abortions per year

It is a fact that abortion, or the voluntary termination of pregnancy, is carried out daily everywhere in the world by many women.

According to estimates from the WHO (World Health Organization), around 73 million abortions occur worldwide every year, of which 61% are unwanted pregnancies.

The biggest problem highlighted by the entity is that almost half (45%) of abortions performed are insecurewhich puts the woman’s life at risk.

Almost all of these higher-risk procedures (97%) are carried out in low- and middle-income countries, while rich Western countries, such as France, account for less than 3% of practices considered unsafe.

Still according to the entity’s data, 3 out of 4 unsafe interrupts occur in Latin American countries.

Abortion is, therefore, a global public health problem. Termination of pregnancy, when carried out in a qualified office or hospital, is safe and presents low risk for the woman. However, practices using inappropriate tools, self-induced or without medical supervision can result in complications. serious.

A 2020 survey shows how every eight minutes a woman in a low- and middle-income country dies due to complications linked to unsafe abortion. Despite being a problem known for a long time, few public policies to reduce abortion deaths have been put into practice around the world, and specific legislation to allow abortion as a reproductive right varies from country to country.

The same study shows how the removal of restrictions on legal abortion from 1998 to 2001 reduced women’s deaths from complications of the practice by 91% – that is, ensuring a safe and legal abortion does not increase the number of women hospitalized or with health problems arising from the procedure, on the contrary.

It’s in Brazil?

Currently, abortion is only permitted in Brazil in cases of rape, fetal anencephaly or risk of death for the woman.

Althougha report from Sheet published last week showed how women go through humiliation and difficulties to access this right even in cases permitted by law.

Among other issues, the main obstacle continues to be the refusal of doctors and judges, alleging the so-called conscientious objection, when a medical professional says he or she is morally opposed to the practice of abortion and denies the service.

In practice, refusal should not occur when there is only one doctor available to treat the patient, her condition indicates a risk to her life or failure to provide care results in physical harm. The scenario, as we see, is very different.

Official numbers — as many are still performed unsafely — indicate that 2,946 women underwent legal abortions in 2023. There are around 155 reference hospitals in the country — concentrated in less than 2% of cities.

Other surveys indicate that 7 out of 10 women have had an abortion before the age of 40, with half (52%) doing so before the age of 19. From 2012 to 2022, 483 deaths and more than 1.7 million hospitalizations resulting from unsafe abortions in the country, based on data from SIH-SUS (Hospital Information System of the Unified Health System).

What many people do not know is that many of these hospitalizations are of girls aged 14 or younger, where access to legal abortion is only 8% of cases. It is worth noting that any pregnancy in girls under 14 is considered rape of a vulnerable person.

Brazil still has a long way to go before reaching the result achieved by France last week. It remains to be seen how many more girls and women will die along the way.

SCIENCE TO LIVE BETTER

News and studies on health and science

• Covid increases the rate of obese and sedentary children. The Covid pandemic caused changes in the eating behavior of children in the United States and led to an increase in childhood obesity diagnoses in the country, according to a survey by the Boston School of Public Health published in the journal Jama Pediatrics. The rate of obese children rose from 19.3% to 22.4%, from August 2019 to August 2020, and there was also a reduction of 17 minutes per day in the practice of intense physical activity in the routine of school-age children in 2020 to 2022.

• Differences in risk factors for fractures in men and women. According to the Brazilian study ELSA, the main risk factors for frailty syndrome in men are osteoporosis, low weight, heart disease and hearing loss. In women, diabetes and stroke may indicate a greater risk of developing the disease. The study was conducted by researchers from UFSCar (Federal University of São Carlos) and University College London and received financial support from Fapesp (São Paulo State Research Support Foundation).

• Type 2 diabetes in adults may be linked to sleep duration and eating. Research has found an association between short nights of sleep (up to 6 hours) and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in adults in the United Kingdom, when compared to those who slept 7 to 8 hours per night. The survey, which evaluated more than 247,000 adults in the region, also indicates that dietary changes can reduce the risk, but the relationship persists even in people with a healthy diet. The article was published on Jama Network Open.