Poor Women in Developing World Bear Millions of Unintended Pregnancies

According to the new report—Fertility Regulation Behaviors and Their Costs: Contraception and Unintended Pregnancies in Africa and Eastern Europe and Central Asia — 35 poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions (Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Djibouti, and Yemen) have the world’s highest birth rates (more than five children per mother) while also reflecting some of the world’s poorest social and economic results, with low levels of education, high death rates, and extreme poverty. Moreover, many poor women turn to abortion as a last-resort means of birth control. Some 68,000 women die each year as a result of unsafe abortion, while another 5.3 million suffer temporary or permanent disability as a result.
The report also says that pregnancies which are less than 15 months spaced apart more than double the risk of the mother dying. Children born 3 years after a previous birth are healthier at birth and more likely to survive. Teenage pregnancies carry a higher risk of obstetric complications such as obstructed labor, eclampsia and fistula formation, and yet teenagers are less likely to receive antenatal or obstetric care, making them twice as likely to die during childbirth as women over the age of 20.