Report: 15.6 million abortions were performed in India in just one year

As many as 15.6 million abortions were performed in India in 2015, with the majority of women taking pills at home without adequate counseling, according to the latest study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute.

The findings of the study revealed that India has an abortion rate of 47 per 1,000 women aged 15–49, which is similar to the abortion rate in other South Asian countries.

The latest figures reveal that abortions are 22 times more common than the government's estimate of less than 700,000 terminations by focusing on state-run hospitals and clinics.

Seventy-eight percent of the abortions were performed outside of health facilities, suggesting that women are taking the procedure into their own hands.

"Women in India face considerable challenges trying to obtain abortion care, including the limited availability of abortion services in public health facilities," the Guttmacher Institute's investigator Susheela Singh, said in a statement, according to Reuters.

"Our findings suggest that a shortage of trained staff and inadequate supplies and equipment are the primary reasons many public facilities don't provide abortion care," she added.

The researchers said that their study was the first of its kind in India, where abortions had been legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy since 1971. Their estimates were based on data mostly from the 2015 Health Facilities Survey of six Indian states — Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh — as well as data from NGO clinics, and abortion pill sales and distribution.

The report, which was published in The Lancet Global Health, also noted that 14 percent of abortions were performed surgically in health facilities, while five percent were performed outside of health facilities using other, typically unsafe methods.

The public sector, which is the main source of health care for rural an poor women, accounted for only a quarter of abortions, partly because many state-run facilities do not perform abortions.

The findings also showed that half of India's 48 imllion pregnancies were unintended, with a third resulting in abortions. Nearly three in four abortions were performed using drugs from chemists and informal vendors, rather than from health facilities where the women are required to undergo proper counseling and health checks.

"Although abortion has been legal under a broad range of criteria in India since 1971, we have never had a reliable estimate of the number occurring until now," said Chander Shekhar from the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences, which collaborated on the study.

"This new evidence provides policymakers with information that is essential for designing and implementing effective reproductive health care programs," Shekhar added.