The ones who survive have still had abortions too and thus raise the rate. Hence you should care in relation to this argument. You should also care in relation to the long term injuries that people who have unsafe abortions can have, only 25% escape unscathed (as per WHO, 2004). Which then puts financial stress on the state to provide medical care and makes them a less productive member of society.
My point being that the abortion rate in places where it is legal comparative to where it is illegal is much the same. You can continue to say that the actual numbers of legal abortions are higher than illegal ones but that's simply because (a) it is legal in more countries (Almost 2/3 of the world’s women currently reside in countries where abortion may be obtained on request for a broad range of social, economic or personal reasons - if we're using wikipedia as a source) and (b) the countries in which it is legal tend to have higher populations. (Eg China)
If the rates in places where it is illegal closely mirror the rates where it is legal then it doesn't work. By making it illegal you would not save anymore lives, you'd simply drive it underground.
As 48% (as per The Lancet, 2007) of all abortions worldwide are unsafe abortions it's obvious it needs to be legal as illegality makes no difference.
From the Guttmacher institute:
Quote:
An examination of statistical trends reveals that the legal status of abortion in a country is not strongly correlated with the rate at which it occurs. Indeed, in many countries where the procedure is illegal, women obtain abortions at very high rates. Similarly, in some countries where abortion is legal and very widely accessible, abortion rates are low.
Clearly, factors other than legality are at play here. The primary factor is the rate at which women experience unintended pregnancies. Some women who have an unintended pregnancy will seek an abortion regardless of its legal status—even if they have to jeopardize their lives by undergoing an unsafe, illegal procedure. Thus, while there may be little relationship between abortion legality and abortion incidence, there is a strong correlation between abortion legality and abortion safety.
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Similarly legal and safe abortion results in a VERY significant drop in maternal mortality rates. For example lets look at Romania, this graph shows how much it effects legality has on maternal death:
