6 Stories Of How Hard It Can Be To Get An Abortion

Here in the United States, abortion access has been under attack for years, but it's far from the only place where an abortion can be difficult to obtain. A new video shows women seeking abortion in six different countries, and the challenges they faced in obtaining the procedure. Because even in places where abortion is legal, it can be unbelievably difficult to have the procedure done, and done safely.

As the video points out, women in every country in the world experience unwanted pregnancy. In the United States, for instance, over 40 percent of all pregnancies each year are unwanted, which works out to over 2 million pregnancies a year. This, in turn, means that by the age of 45, roughly half of all women will have experienced an unintended pregnancy. And while studies show that providing easy and affordable access to birth control can reduce those numbers, there is nothing that will ever ensure no one ever has an unintended pregnancy. It's something that happens to women everywhere, and always has. But should women decide to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, their options vary widely depending where they live.

Around 25 percent of women in the world live in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws, including some countries where abortion is illegal even if necessary to save the life of the mother. Unsurprisingly (though still horrifying), over 20 million women each year have an unsafe abortion, and those numbers aren't just in countries that lack adequate health care infrastructure — or even just in countries where abortion is illegal.

But of course, numbers can't really give you the full sense of what it's like for women around the world to try to get an abortion. For that, you need to listen to women themselves. So ANRISH, a research group focused on reproductive health, put together a video where six women from six countries, the United States, Tunisia, Nepal, Colombia, South Africa and Bangladesh, tell their stories.

It shows everything in a whole different light.