140 International Family Planning Perspectives

Illegal or clandestine abortion has been a relatively neglected issue, in spite of being recognized as an important com-ponent of reproductive health and rights since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. An estimated 19 million unsafe abortions take place world-wide each year—almost all of those occurring in the devel-oping world.1 The conditions under which such abortions take place result in serious consequences for women and societies: For example, 13 % of maternal deaths in the de-veloping world are attributed to unsafe abortions.2 In ad-dition, large costs are incurred by public sector health care systems because of the provision of medical care to women suffering from abortion complications. However, insuffi-cient information at the country level perpetuates the in-visibility of the problem and results in governments givin