Analysis of the legal status of a major social issue

Do you know that almost 50% of the countries have not legalized abortion?


I was surprised to know that. Considering the fact that if countries like India, which stand very low on human rights, have legalized abortion...it was almost a shocker to know that so many countries have not legalized abortion.


I wanted to just understand how do various countries fare in their legal framework on abortion. 


So, here is some analysis using the trusted Excel.


The analysis done by verifying the abortion's legal status in various countries in 7 instances.

Just to give an example, of how to read the above table, amongst the 54 countries in Africa, 1 country considers abortion illegal even when the woman's life is in danger. And amongst those 54 countries, there are 21 countries which consider abortion illegal when the physical health of the woman is in danger.

Now, to understand some hard realities from these numbers....

From the above table, it can be seen that of the 199 countries, there are 13 countries which consider abortion illegal even when the woman's life is in danger!!

And the worst part is that almost 95 countries i.e. 50% of the nations consider abortion illegal even when raped!! So, a poor woman who is a victim of being raped has to go through the torture of raising the kid from a person whom she hates in most likelihood!! And we still boast of living in 21st century.

Let's do some further analysis. Let us understand the number of instances in which various countries consider abortion illegal.

The above image can be read as: 7 in the legend means, the % of countries which consider abortion illegal in all the 7 instances. 5 in the legend means, the % of countries which consider abortion illegal in 5 of the 7 instances. So, for each continent if it has more % colored in green shades, it indicates that that continent has abortion illegal in less no. of instances indicating a progressive thought process.


So, from the above graph it can be seen that North America seems to be the most progressive country with more green i.e. % of countries in that continent which consider rape illegal in all instances are very minimal.


The analysis may sound quite complicated but the numbers actually provide a detailed insights.


a) Even the most developed countries consider rape illegal in few instances which indicates that Development needn't be indicative of progressive thought process.
b) But the contrary seems to be true that, with few exceptions... countries which have made great strides in making abortion illegal are certainly developing 
c) Though I am yet to do an analysis on countries based on their religion, and also with due respect to each religion, it seems to appear that the countries with most instances of illegalizing abortion have Islam as the dominant religion.


I am leaving the blog with no further conclusion...because this topic is just not about numbers but lot of emotional distress which cannot be quantified!