20xx考研英語閱讀理解精讀100篇07(已修改)
2025-09-01 18:58 本頁面
【正文】 2020 考研英語閱讀理解精讀 100 篇（ 7） TEXT 7 When Catholic clergy or “prolife” politicians argue that abortion laws should be tightened, they do so in the belief that this will reduce the number of terminations. Yet the largest global study of abortion ever undertaken casts doubt on that simple proposition. Restricting abortions, the study says, has little effect on the number of pregnancies terminated. Rather, it drives women to seek illegal, often unsafe backstreet abortions leading to an estimated 67,000 deaths a year. A further 5m women require hospital treatment as a result of botched procedures. In Africa and Asia, where abortion is generally either illegal or restricted, the abortion rate in 2020 (the latest year for which figures are available) was 29 per 1,000 women aged 1544. This is almost identical to the rate in Europe—28—where legal abortions are widely available. Latin America, which has some of the world39。s most restrictive abortion laws, is the region with the highest abortion rate (31), while western Europe, which has some of the most liberal laws, has the lowest (12). The study, carried out by the Guttmacher Institute in New York in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and published in a British medical journal, the Lancet, found that most abortions occur in developing countries—35m a year, pared with just 7m in rich countries. But this was largely a reflection of population size. A woman39。s likelihood of having an abortion is similar whether she lives in a rich country (26 per 1,000) or a poor or middleine one (29). Lest it be thought that these sweeping continental numbers hide as much as they reveal, the same point can be made by looking at those countries which have changed their laws. Between 1995 and 2020, 17 nations liberalised abortion legislation, while three tightened restrictions. The number of induced abortions nevertheless declined from nearly 46m in 1995 to 42m in 2020, resulting in a fall in the worldwide abortion rate from 35 to 29. The most dramatic drop—from 90 to 44—was in former munist Eastern Europe, where abortion is generally legal, safe and cheap. This coincided with a big increase in contraceptive use in the region which sti
教學(xué)課件相關(guān)推薦
鄂ICP備17016276號-1