Abortion as a contraceptive? The ugly truth of abortion in Vietnam

A report from Vietnam's Hanoi Central Obstetrics Hospital has revealed that 40% of all pregnancies in Vietnam end in abortion, a figure that is twice as high as official government figures.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Behind China and Russia, Vietnam has the highest total number of abortions, and with a little over 83 abortions per thousand women, it has the highest abortion rate in the world.

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This problem is due in large part to the remnants of childbearing quotas-a legacy of the communist takeover-poor family planning advice to the young, as well as conflicting and confusing messages about sex.

In many cases, abortion is actually used as a form of contraception.

Nguyen Van Thao, a Catholic farmer, has lead a team of Catholic volunteers to collect aborted fetuses and bury them for years.

"On our busiest ever day, we received 30 fetuses," Thao said.

"It's hard to count how many we've buried," said on volunteer, 62-year-old Nguyen Thi Quy.

The team shrouds the fetuses before they are given a proper burial at a cemetery in Hanoi's Soc Son district.

Communist controlled Vietnam enforced a two-child policy for decades. They used administrative penalties and subsidized family planning to limit population growth, and while the policy has been scrapped, its ongoing damage has stuck around.

Official estimates say that about one in five pregnancies-500,000 of 2.4 million-ends in abortion. But these figures only take into account procedures conducted in state-run clinics.

"There is no system of checking on private clinics. There could be another half million (officially unaccounted abortions," said Arthur Erken, a representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

"Sexually active young people have a problem... the public health system is not catering to (them)."

Vietnam has also undergone a sort of sexual revolution more common in developed nations.

Young Vietnamese are having sex earlier and marrying later, but outdated family planning advice is causing a lack of effective advice or contraception to be distributed to those in need.

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