An estimated 36 million procedures take place in the developing world and 10 million in the developed world. Twenty million of these abortions are carried out under illegal and often unsafe conditions. The Reproductive Risk Index rates countries on their official abortion policies, placed in five categories. Only 13 of these nations are in developing regions and include Bangladesh, India, China, Tunisia, Turkey, South Africa, and Cuba. In the remaining 44 countries, abortion is illegal or available only in cases of rape and incest or to save a woman's life.
Abortion is with few exceptions an outcome of unwanted pregnancy.
Women who want to terminate a pregnancy tend to ignore the legal status of abortion and are often willing to risk unsafe abortions. In the poorest countries, however, women face a much higher risk of death from unsafe abortion. In Africa, one in every 150 abortions leads to death compared to one in every 85,000 procedures in the developed world. Hundreds of thousands more end up with chronic health problems. Over the last two decades the world has seen some liberalization of abortion laws, motivated primarily by health concerns.