Guyana Delegation Agrees: Maternal Mortality Not Linked to Unsafe Abortions
Posted on | July 10, 2012 by Elizabeth Charnowski |
As the Chilean study found, the reduction in the maternal mortality rate is NOT related to the legal status of abortion. The CEDAW Committee once again tried to show that there is a link between the number of unsafe abortions and the high rate of maternal mortality. One of the Committee experts asked the Guyana delegation what the country is doing about limiting the number of unsafe abortions in order to decrease the somewhat high maternal mortality ratio (98 per 100,000 births).
By respectively correcting the CEDAW Committee expert, the Guyana minister’s response was that there is NO data to show that maternal mortality is linked to unsafe abortions. The possible link is completely fabricated.
Without directly correcting the Guyana minister, two CEDAW committee experts responded by assuring the Guyana delegation that their data comes from credible sources such as NGOs and UN research.
The Guyana minister also gave evidence as to why unsafe abortion is not linked to the maternal mortality rate. First of all, abortion is actually legal in Guyana. There are public hospitals in the country in which all health care is completely free. The public health system must provide abortions and does provide them. There is no data to show whether women still go through unsafe abortions because there are skilled health care providers that will voluntary provide abortions for women.
Second of all, the Guyana report shows that the large reduction in maternal mortality in Guyana over the past few years may be attributed to increasing the number of trained health professionals, straightening the monitoring and evaluation process, as well as educating about nutrition which has actually led to a 34% reduction in anemia. You can read the entire report here.
The link between unsafe abortion and maternal mortality does not exist, no matter what the CEDAW committee keeps saying.
