Women chant slogans and hold placards during a protest demanding for equal rights, along a road in Kabul on December 16, 2021. AFP
PARIS — Nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended, the UN reproductive health agency said Wednesday, warning that the war in Ukraine could further exacerbate what it called a “human rights crisis”.
Out of 121 million unintended pregnancies every year — 331,000 a day — more than 60 percent end in abortion, almost half of them unsafe, the United Nations Population Fund said in a new report.
The UNFPA said the report was not about “unwanted babies or happy accidents”, but how a combination of gender inequality, poverty, sexual violence, and lack of access to contraception and abortion robbed women of “the most life-altering reproductive choice — whether or not to become pregnant”.
The war in Ukraine and other conflicts are expected to drive the “staggering” number of unintended pregnancies even higher as sexual violence increases and contraception access is disrupted, the report said.
“We have heard stories from pregnant women who knew that nutritionally they weren’t going to be able to support their pregnancy” in Ukraine, UNFPA executive director Natalia Kanem said.
“There are also predators and traffickers and examples of people who are seeing the tragedy of war as an opportunity to target women and girls,” she told AFP.
She said studies estimated that more than 20 percent of displaced women…
