The government has rolled out national contraceptive campaigns, but despite this there are still up to 500,000 clandestine abortions in every year.
In a country that has one of the highest levels of healthcare and education in Latin America – and where 98% of women give birth in hospital – the link between the ban on abortion and preventable maternal mortality couldn\’t be more exposed.
Campaigning groups estimate that up to 400 Argentinian women die every year as a result of botched terminations. According to a UNFPA report last year, abortion remains the leading cause of \”elevated\” maternal mortality in Argentina and is the primary reason the country has a relatively high and stubbornly resilient maternal mortality rate of 44 deaths per 100,000 births.
Maternal mortality is measured by the number who die having given birth, not by the number who die having been pregnant to any particular stage. Thus the number of abortions cannot contribute to the maternal mortality rate.
I think…..
It’s measured as however many per 100000 births, but tends to include all pregnancy related mortality – eclampsia/haemorrhage etc. It includes if the woman dies during pregnancy and during the first few weeks after delivery.
Here is the WHO definition.
The death of a woman while
pregnant or within 42 days
of termination of pregnancy,
irrespective of the duration and
site of the pregnancy, from any
cause related to or aggravated by
the pregnancy or its management
but not from accidental or
incidental causes.
As you can see the” related to or aggravated by” part allows lots of leeway in assigning in maternal mortality. For instance suicide by a pregnant woman is often considered a maternal death even though pregnant women are less likely to kill themselves than other women.
The WHO is well aware of the problem. Their solution, in the absence of first world style record keeping, is to regard all deaths from the beginning of pregnancy until 6 weeks after as maternal.
All of this makes comparing medical statistics between countries rather problematic. You have to have pretty large differences to be sure they are real, and sometimes not even then.