| 0 | abortion not permitted |
| 1 | to save a woman's life |
| 2 | to preserve physical health and to save a woman's life |
| 3 | to preserve mental health and above |
| 4 | in case of rape and incest and most of the above |
| 5 | in case of rape and incest and above |
| 6 | in case of foetal impairment and most of the above |
| 7 | in case of foetal impairment and above |
| 8 | for economic and social reasons and most of the above |
| 9 | for economic and social reasons and the above |
| 10 | on request |
| 1 | more than 40% |
| 2 | 20% to 39% |
| 3 | 10% to 19% |
| 4 | 1% to 9% |
| 5 | None |
| 6 | No Data |
Links
Links
Legal Grounds for Abortion
What does it mean ?
This indicator shows the legal status of abortion in each country by categorising the grounds on which abortion is allowed into the following groups:
- abortion not permitted
- to save a woman's life
- to preserve physical health and to save a woman's life
- to preserve mental health and above
- in case of rape and incest and most of the above
- in case of rape and incest and above
- in case of foetal impairment and most of the above
- in case of foetal impairment and above
- for economic and social reasons and most of the above
- for economic and social reasons and the above
- on request
Why does it matter ?
The legal status of abortion is an important indicator of women's ability to enjoy their reproductive rights. Legal restrictions on abortion often cause high levels of illegal and unsafe abortion, and there is a proven link between unsafe abortion and maternal mortality. There is strong evidence that legal restrictions do not stop women from having abortions, driving them instead to seek unsafe and illegal procedures which risk their lives.
How is it collected ?
The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, Policy Section collects these data every 2 years via their World Population Policies Database.
Findings are disseminated under the website: https://esa.un.org/PopPolicy/about_database.aspx
Download their database from this website for detailed data on grounds for abortion for individual countries.
United Nations, World Population Policies Database. http://esa.un.org/poppolicy/about_database.aspx
Making Women's Voices Heard
What does it mean ?
The proportion of parliamentary seats held by women refers to the number of seats held be women members in single or lower chambers of national parliaments, divided by the total number of all occupied seats.
Why does it matter ?
MDG Goal 3 aimed to promote gender equality and empower women. One critical way of achieving this goal is to ensure women’s voices are heard at the national level when making policy decisions that affect them.
This indicator represents the proportion of parliamentary seats held by women for each country. The aim of this indicator is to show that countries which have greater representation of women by women are on the way to achieving gender equality and female empowerment.
How is it collected ?
National parliaments can be bicameral or unicameral. This indicator covers the single chamber in unicameral parliaments and the lower chamber in bicameral parliaments. It does not cover the upper chamber of bicameral parliaments. Seats are usually won by members in general parliamentary elections. Seats may also be filled by nomination, appointment, indirect election, rotation of members and by-election.
Seats refer to the number of parliamentary mandates, or the number of members of parliament.
The proportion of seats held by women in national parliament is derived by dividing the total number of seats occupied by women by the total number of seats in parliament.
There is no weighting or normalising of statistics.
Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) www.ipu.org. Data represent most recently available year, 2012 – 2015. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=SG.GEN.PARL.ZS&country=
