Toll of Illegal Abortions

The Beeb has a story on the apparently new statistic that unsafe abortions are responsible for the deaths of 68,000 women a year.  The majority of the deaths are due to clandestine abortions.  The death rates are higher in developing countries that have poor access to care, and those that have made abortion illegal:

The mortality rate due to unsafe abortion in less developed nations was 330 per 100,000 abortions: in Africa, 680; in southern and southeastern Asia, 283; and in Latin America, 119 per 100,000. Most recent data on mortality due to legal induced abortion in the United States indicated less than one death (0.6) per 100,000 legal abortions.  In other developed nations, where abortion is also legal, the rates were similarly low— Canada, 0.1; Netherlands, 0.2; England and Wales, 0.4; Denmark, 0.5; Finland, 0.7; and Scotland, 1.0 per 100,000 legal abortions.

Even in the United States, illegal abortions have a much lower mortality rate than in developing countires; however, illegal abortions have a higher mortality rate than legal abortions, across the board.  Many argue that making abortion legal is the solution (warning, graphic picture), while others advocate access to contraception.  The reality is that legal abortions are regulated, and it's those health and safety regulations that make abortion safe.  Of course, there are a lot of stupid regulations, or ones that are downright harmful.