In a report titled “Making the invisible visible”it was pointed out that each year there are 121 million unintended pregnancies in the worldwhich is equivalent to more than 330,000 per day, according to figures collected between 2015 and 2019. Most of these pregnancies are unwanted and 61 percent are terminated.
According to a report made by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), one in two pregnancies in the world is not planned and the majority of these unintended pregnancies end in abortion. On the other hand, according to the UN, the 45 percent of all abortions are performed unsafely. In turn, the same body estimates that this practice is responsible for between 5 and 13 percent of all registered maternal deaths.
“It is one of the reasons why we called the report “Making the invisible visible”. Until recently, there were no country-level estimates of the incidence of unintended pregnancy. Only now do we know the rates. As a society, it is assumed that women want to have children and whether or not they really want it doesn’t matter. Society expects women to become mothers,” she declared. Rebecca Zerzaneditor of the work to the BBC Mundo portal.
“So one of the reasons why this is such a new topic is that, until now, most women just haven’t been asked about their intentions and what they want for their bodies and for their futures,” she said. UNFPA researcher, adding: “In general, this issue is seen from a moral perspective: a woman made bad decisions, got pregnant and has to take care of herself. Or it is a sad situation: the woman was raped and became pregnant. When we launched the report, some also said that it was a matter of personal responsibility”.
In the report, it was detailed that in places where women do not have the power to decide whether they want to get pregnant or not, there tend to be worse levels of gender equity and development. At a global level, the conditions that lead women and girls to become pregnant without choosing it are diverse, such as exposure to sexual violence, barriers to access to education, a brake on economic empowerment and the lack of information on reproductive health.
In studies carried out in United States and Brazil It was indicated that the cost for the health systems in those countries reaches billions of dollars and it was described: “A woman who goes through an unintended pregnancy will have maternal health costs, costs if that pregnancy is complicated, expenses related to the You will also have a higher rate of maternal mortality, and women who do not want to continue the pregnancy could face even higher costs for health services, whether it is getting an abortion or, if you have to terminate your pregnancy unsafely , with an increased risk of mortality or disability.
“It was only in 2015 that we began to try to measure the bodily autonomy of women. The most recent data shows that in 68 countries around the world, 25% of women report that they cannot say no to sex. In other words, a quarter of the women in the places we analyzed felt that they could not refuse to have sex. Whether they were financially or socially dependent on a partner or they felt pressure from their in-laws, they felt like they had no choice, so that’s a big factor,” said Rebecca Zerzan.
Included in the investigation is a report on teenage pregnancies. “Teen pregnancy is often associated with young people acting recklessly and making bad decisions, but in reality when we look at the numbers of pregnancies for girls between the ages of 15 and 19, we see that the vast majority of those pregnancies occur in the context of a marriage or formal union. Many are child brides. Knowing that you were unable to make the most important reproductive decision in a woman’s life has a tremendous impact. All the decisions that this woman will make for the rest of her life could be colored by this situation, and her options are reduced, ”said the author of the report to the British media.
According to the researcher, the effects on children born of unwanted pregnancies is a topic to be investigated and she highlighted: “There is not much information about it, but there is some research that shows that they could be less vaccinated and that their mother in general had less prenatal checkups, which can result in things like low birth weight or slower physical development. The report concludes that the solution to this crisis is not simply to give more access to better contraceptive methods, but to achieve gender equality. Certainly having greater access to better contraceptive methods is part of the solution, but that alone is not going to eliminate unintended pregnancies, because in large part unintended pregnancies are the direct result of limited choice.”
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