Unsafe abortions in Tanzania take toll

The feminist blogosphere has done a good job at covering the murder of Dr. George Tiller in his church in Wichita, Kansas this past Sunday. This news has been deeply felt by many of us who identify as pro-choice, and other bloggers have done a much better job talking about this event than I feel I can.

However, I found this piece on the New York Times website the other day that I felt tied in with the news of Dr. Tiller's murder in an interesting way.

I will warn that it's a rather brutal reading about the large problem of unprofessional and unsafe abortions in Tanzania where the procedure is illegal, except to save the mother's life, and ignorance about safe sex practices is widespread (only about a quarter of Tanzanians use any form of contraception).

Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die. In the United States, the figure is 11, and it is even lower in other developed countries. But Tanzania’s record is neither the best nor the worst in Africa. Many other countries have similar statistics; quite a few do better and a handful do markedly worse.

People who provide safe abortions are very important asset to the women who seek them. We need to support these people and make sure they have what they need, be it supplies or protection, to do their job.