Abortion trends in Singapore: a 25-year review

Abstract

Study objective: Abortion legislation in Singapore has gone through dramatic changes in the past 25 years. In this paper, we studied the effect of abortion legislation on abortion trends in Singapore.

Setting and participants: The Ministry of Health, Singapore, collects data on all abortions performed in Singapore. These data have been analyzed and are presented in this paper.

Results: The liberalization of abortion legislation resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of abortions performed beginning in 1974. The rate peaked at 23,512 abortions in 1985, and in fact, 35% of all pregnancies were terminated in 1985. The introduction of mandatory abortion counseling in 1986 resulted in a decline in the number of abortions to 16,476 in 1993 with only 24.6% of pregnancies being terminated. The teenage abortion rate was 0.2 per 1000 female teenagers under 20 years of age in 1970. With the liberalization of abortions, the rate reached a peak of 13.7 per 1000 female teenagers in 1985. In 1993, the teenage abortion rate was 9.5%. The proportion of nulliparous women seeking abortion has increased phenomenally from 0.5% in 1976 to 40.6% in 1993. Close to 95% of the women seeking abortions in 1993 did so for social reasons, 3.7% for medical reasons, and 2.0% for failed contraception (Table 3).

Conclusion: Mandatory abortion counseling and a change in the government policy which now encourages Singaporeans to have more children if they can afford it, have resulted in a decrease in the number of abortions being performed. The problems of teenage abortions, nulliparous abortions, and repeated abortions need to be further addressed.