Definition of Abortion Is Found to Vary Abroad
Peter T. Kilborn
The New York Times
Officially, Bangladesh prohibits abortion except to save a mother’s life.
But the government of Bangladesh, an emphatic proponent of birth control, and the nongovernment Family Planning Association of Bangladesh, an affiliate of International Planned Parenthood Federation in London, do condone a practice that amounts to the same thing in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.
In the procedure, which the government and the federation call “menstrual regulation,” a woman who complains of having a missed period, rather than being given a pregnancy test, can be treated by a health care worker who suctions away the lining of the uterine wall, including any fertilized egg [sic].
The government defines this as “an interim method of establishing nonpregnancy,” according to a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a women’s research organization in New York. It does not consider the procedure an abortion, because the woman does not take a pregnancy test and therefore is never officially deemed to be pregnant.