Gender equality and abortion
The World Economic Forum recently released its 2010 Global Gender Gap Report. By comparing men and women on measures such as salaries, political participation, literacy, and health, the WEF report ranks nations on their achievement of gender equality. Unsurprisingly, high equality was found to correllate with economic prosperity. What I found illuminating is that, despite the usual pro-abortion insistence that abortion is necessary to achieve women’s rights, there is little or no correllation between gender equality and abortion on demand. Among the top ten countries, we find a wide range of abortion laws:
#1: Iceland. Abortion on demand.
#2: Norway. Abortion on demand until 12 weeks and in hard cases up to 18 weeks.
#3: Finland. Abortion requires the consent of two physicians. Abortion for socioeconomic reasons is prohibited after 12 weeks; the limit is 20 weeks when there are health risks or the mother is younger than 17.
#4: Sweden. Abortion on demand up to 18 weeks.
#5: New Zealand. Abortion requires the consent of two physicians. Legally accepted reasons include health, mental health, fetal disability, and incest. After 20 weeks, only the life of the mother is a legally accepted reason.
#6: Ireland. Abortion is illegal unless the mother’s life is at risk.
#7: Denmark. Abortion on demand up to 12 weeks.
#8: Lesotho. Abortion is illegal unless the mother’s life is at risk.
#9: The Philippines. Abortion is illegal unless mother’s life is at risk.
#10: Switzerland. Abortion on demand in the first trimester; later abortions allowed for medical reasons.
Canada, which has no restrictions at all on abortion, was ranked #20; the United States came in at #19.
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New Zealand for the win, although our abortion law is no where near as restrictive as it sounds – we basically have abortion on demand as the two physicians pretty much always give consent.
Lesotho and Philippines? Neither are very prosperous.
What it really sounds like is that among wealthy countries easy acces to abortion and gender equality are corollated with the single exception of Ireland, and there it is not that difficult for a woman to get an abortion in the UK.