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Contraceptives save the lives of more than a quarter of a million women each year
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The use of contraceptives saves the lives of more than a quarter of a million women each year, protecting them from either death in childbirth or unsafe abortions.
For example, in 2008 alone, 355,000 women died in childbirth and from illegal or unsafe abortions. At the same time, thanks to contraception, which reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies, more than 250,000 deaths were prevented.
The study's authors, experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK), note that if all women in developing countries who wanted to avoid pregnancy used an effective method of contraception, the number of maternal deaths would fall by another 30%.
Over the past two decades, increased contraceptive use in developing countries has reduced maternal mortality by 40%. There are benefits for children, too: in poor countries, the risk of premature birth and low birth weight doubles if a woman conceives within six months of a previous birth. And children born within two years of an older sibling are 60% more likely to die in infancy.
Last year, the world's population reached 7 billion people; by 2050, according to UN forecasts, it will be 9.3 billion, and by 2100 it will exceed 10 billion. Population growth will be concentrated mainly in the world's poorest countries, especially in Africa.
Let us recall that every year about 15 million babies are born prematurely, that is, every tenth newborn. More than a million of them die almost immediately, the rest are physically or neurologically disabled or uneducable throughout their lives, which is costly for both their families and society.
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