An abortion is a procedure to end a pregnancy. It is also sometimes known as a termination of pregnancy. The pregnancy is terminated either by taking medicines or having a surgical procedure.  It is considered a harmful act, it happens when a woman has sexual health issues, including early marriages, unplanned pregnancies, and sexually transmitted diseases which can increase the burden on women’s health as a woman gets compelled to do an abortion.

But, in Pakistan, abortion has been legal under certain circumstances since 1990. The rules have been kept deliberately vague in order to appease conservative religious and social groups; the procedure can be undertaken if the mother’s life is at risk, but it appears that it’s up to the mother and her healthcare provider to decide that.

According to a Foreign Policy article in 2021, only 35 percent of Pakistan’s women use contraception or other methods of spacing out children; the majority of those are from upper socioeconomic strata. When poor Pakistani women, usually married and already the mothers of several children, find themselves pregnant, they often use abortion as a means of birth control. Not because they don’t want to be mothers, but because they can neither afford another child nor can their bodies endure yet another pregnancy, as stated.

Similarly, NPR reported in 2018 that Pakistan has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. It is estimated that 890,000 induced abortions are carried out every year in the country and the procedure contrary to the general perception that it is sought by unmarried women is wanted by married women, with four to five children, who consider abortion an ‘easier family planning tool’ rather than using contraceptives. 

Thus, it stressed that access to abortion services should extend to pregnant adolescents: “The absence of sexual health education in the country means that most adolescents are unaware of how the reproductive system functions and how contraceptive devices and methods may be deployed to prevent pregnancies.”

 

By: Noor Bakhsh Saleem

Turbat