It is quite impossible to assess the incidence with complete accuracy, for the reason that a very considerable number of these cases do not come under medical or hospital observation, but some definite indication of the frequency is given by the statistics obtained from various hospitals and practices.
In one urban district, for instance, in which the total live births for a two-year period were 4,000, the number of cases of abortion treated in the public hospital alone was 400.
When to this number were added the cases treated in the various private hospitals, those attended by doctors in the patients' homes, and those not medically attended at all, it was computed that a total of 1,000 abortions was a conservative figure. In other words, roughly twenty pregnancies in every 100 terminated in abortion.
Looked at from a somewhat different angle, figures were presented from one hospital showing that in a group of 568 unselected women of child-bearing age, there were 549 abortions in 2,301 pregnancies, or 23 per hundred.
How do these Cases originate?
It must be explained that a certain number of cases of abortion occur perfectly innocently as the result of some condition of ill health, or, occasionally, as the result of accident. These spontaneous cases constitute an entirely medical problem.
All other cases are artificially produced or induced.
A very small number of these are honourably performed by medical practitioners when the mother's life is seriously endangered.
This procedure is termed "Therapeutic induction of abortion."
Certain important questions in relation to therapeutic abortion will be discussed at a later stage in this report.