AN estimated 40 million pregnancies ended in abortions last year, according to global projections made by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in the 2012 State of the World Population.

The figure took into account married, or otherwise settled women who didn’t consciously plan on conceiving, but the bulk of it referred to those who have no access to family planning methods. According to the report, there are 222 million such women in developing countries.

“A lot of women do not have access to modern methods of family-planning,” director of UNFPA’s sub-regional office for the Caribbean Geeta Sethi said.

Sub-Sahara Africa features prominently among that 222 million, with Sethi pointing out that “the poorest, least educated wom en who live in rural areas have the lowest rates of contraceptive use in Sub-Sahara Africa”.

Extending access to them, she admitted, would be expensive, but not impossible.

“Giving all 222 million women who lack access to family planning would cost an estimated $8.1 billion a year… It’s possible to achieve with the right political commitment,” she said.

The 2012 report put the number of pregnancies worldwide for the year at over 208 million. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the projected number was 17.1 million, 58 per cent or 9.9 million of which were classified as unintended. Of those, 22 per cent or 2.18 million were aborted.

There were no figures specific to Jamaica, but the National Family Planning Board said 47 per cent of all births here are unplanned.

There are also no figures to capture abortions performed in Jamaica, but the Board counts among its successes a fertility rate that continues to decline. The Registrar General’s Department registered 41,956 births in 2009, and 42,346 the previous year.

“Jamaica’s fertility rates have been declining since the 1970s. The total fertility rate of 2.4 children per woman in Jamaica for 2006-2008 is the lowest ever documented in the country. The median age at first birth was 21.2 years, slightly older than 20.7 years documented in 2002,” said executive director of the Board Dr Sharlene Jarrett.

“Looking back beyond the two most recent surveys, however, the changes in fertility have been substantial and driven almost exclusively by fertility declines among young women. Between 1983 and 2008, for example, the adolescent fertility rate had dropped by 41 per cent, and fertility of women aged 20-24 and 25-29 declined by 35 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively.

“From these point estimates, it can reasonably be concluded that most of the young women’s fertility rates declined in the 1980s, plateaued in the early and mid-1990s, after which they started to drop again at a much slower pace into the early and mid-2000s,” she said.

The decline has not been specific to Jamaica, as global fertility figures have also been falling. Worldwide, the rate is 2.5 children per woman, in more developed countries it is 1.7, and in less developed countries it is 2.8. Least developed countries and Sub-Sahara Africa however, remain high, coming in at 4.5 and 5.1, respectively.

Comparatively, fertility rates in Jamaica are highest among rural-dwelling women.

“Fertility among women living in the Kingston Metropolitan Area (1.9 births per woman) and other urban areas (2.3 births per woman) was substantially lower than among rural-dwelling women (2.7 births per woman) in the two-year period preceding the interview,” said Jarrett.