Myths a danger to mothers’ health

Dr. Nighat Shah in her presen­tation “Myths, Contraception and Women Rights” observed with deep concern the non-existent prevalence of contraceptives in the country consequently leading to a situation where rate of abortion was extremely high.

Referring to available statis­tics, she mentioned that abortion induced deaths among Pakistani women comes to one out of every 150 abortions while in developed countries like Sweden it was one of every 150,00,000.

The very situation in Pakistan was said to be under the circum­stances when abortion is not allowed under law, with the excep­tion of serious threat to the moth­er’s life.
According to the doctor the law has emerged as a factor where the women resort to approach unqualified professionals to abort their unwanted pregnancies and often land in extremely serious conditions at different govern­ment hospitals.

The consultant gynecologist strongly opined the need to empower women helping them to make major decisions regard­ingtheir personal selves and the size of family they would like to prefer.

She also explicitly discussed varied modes of contra­ception mentioning that there were not only misconception about their impact on a womari’s health but very often it were their spouses who pre­vailed upon them and their doc­tors not to avail the same

Dr. Shershah referring to high incidence of maternal mortality and morbidity in the country ­coming to 30,000 and 40 million respectively mentioned that one fourth of all maternal deaths in Pakistan was due to terminated pregnancy.

Source: Daily Times

Date:8/17/2004