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TEXT SEVEN When Catholic clergy or pro-life politicians argue that abortion laws should be tightened, they do so in the belief that this will reduce the number of terminations. Yet the largest global study of abortion ever undertaken casts doubt on that simple proposition. Restricting abortions, the study says, has little effect on the number of pregnancies terminated. Rather, it drives women to seek illegal, often unsafe backstreet abortions leading to an estimated 67,000 deaths a year. A further 5m women require hospital treatment as a result of botched procedures. In Africa and Asia, where abortion is generally either illegal or restricted, the abortion rate in 2003 was 29 per 1,000 women aged 15-44. This is almost identical to the rate in Europe-28-where legal abortions are widely available. Latin America, which has some of the worlds most restrictive abortion laws, is the region with the highest abortion rate , while western Europe, which has some of the most liberal laws, has the lowest . The study, carried out by the Guttmacher Institute in New York in collaboration with the World Health Organisation and published in a British medical journal, the Lancet, found that most abortions occur in developing countries-35m a year, compared with just 7m in rich countries. But this was largely a reflection of population size. A womans likelihood of having an abortion is similar whether she lives in a rich country or a poor or middle-income one . | 
