Dr. Gilda Sedgh:

I thank the Chairman for that complimentary mistake.

With respect to this general correlation whereby where abortion law is restrictive abortions tend to be unsafe, Ireland appears to be an anomaly because of its proximity to Great Britain and to some extent the Netherlands where some women also seem to go for abortions. We do not know all of the women who are having abortions and we do not know all of the conditions in which they are having abortions but it appears to be anomalous.

Senator Ned O'Sullivan's next question was on the marital status of women having abortions. There is variation across these countries. Across developed countries, it may not be that in all of them the majority of women having an abortion are married but on average it definitely pans out that way. One should bear in mind that married women includes cohabiting women.

It is interesting to me also that the unmarried women are the ones who get so much of the attention.

As they get the attention, it gives the impression that they account for the majority of abortions. It makes some sense because it could be argued that the consequences of an unintended pregnancy are greater for a young, unmarried woman who has not yet finished her education and for whom the opportunity costs of having a child might be higher. It could be argued that the stigma of having both an unintended pregnancy and an abortion - having had sex before that - are all compounded. It is useful to be reminded of that statistic because it is surprising.

In Russia and eastern European countries, although I hope life has got better in Russia, abortion rates have decreased because access to family planning services has increased dramatically with the ending of the Cold War and because of increases in trade, exposure to the West and the presence of non-governmental organisations providing services. The number of women using a contraceptive method has increased substantially from 1990 to the present. The prevalence is still not as high as in western and northern Europe and women are not as likely to be using effective methods as women in northern Europe or using them well because of the variability in the quality of service. We still see higher abortion rates in eastern Europe than in the rest of Europe and these are some of the reasons from the evidence we have seen. It comes back again to contraceptive use; it is why rates decline or remain high.