Santiago, Chile, May 30, 2012 / 23:08 pm
A Chilean researcher and his colleagues say the Guttmacher Institute's response to a study on abortion's effects on maternal mortality has spread “erroneous and misleading information.”
Dr. Elard Koch, an epidemiologist at the University of Chile with the Chilean Maternal Mortality Research Initiative, said that his project's study showed restrictive abortion laws did not affect maternal mortality trends.
“In fact, maternal mortality ratios steadily decreased over the last fifty years, mainly associated to an increase in educational level of women and maternal health facilities and regardless of the extent of abortion restrictions in the country,” he said May 25.
He and his fellow researchers with the research initiative said “it is absolutely possible for developing countries to decrease maternal and abortion mortality without requiring any liberal law of abortion.”
Their study, titled “Women's Education Level, Maternal Health Facilities, Abortion Legislation and Maternal Deaths: A Natural Experiment in Chile from 1957 to 2007,” was published May 4 on the peer-reviewed online publication PLoS One.