A broad report on unintended pregnancy and abortion in six Indian states provides important data about women’s reproductive health care in the country, where unsafe abortion is the third leading cause of maternal mortality. About half of pregnancies in the six states are unintended, and a majority of those are terminated. Though abortion has been legal in India since 1971, the Guttmacher Institute and research partners found that access, quality, and incidence is drastically different from state to state. Guttmacher, a MacArthur grantee, recommends improving access to accurate information as well as the availability and quality of reproductive health care by training and certifying more doctors, nurses, and other health practitioners on abortion care.
