AP Explains: Reproductive rights in Mexico and Latin America

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican women are marching Saturday for greater reproductive rights, including access to abortions, in one of the world's most restrictive regions for reproductive choice. Argentine women took to the streets with the same intention on Friday.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, 97% of women in Latin America and the Caribbean live in countries with restrictive abortion laws. Six countries - the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Suriname - do not allow abortion under any circumstances.

Efforts to ease restrictions on abortions have emerged across the region in recent years as societies become more liberal and the Roman Catholic Church loses sway amid a wave of clerical sex abuse cases. Only two countries permit abortions for all pregnancies under 12 weeks. Some countries permit abortions in cases of serious fetal anomalies or rape, while others jail women who have experienced miscarriages, accusing them of deliberating terminating their pregnancies.

During 2010-2014, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that 6.5 million induced abortions occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean. That translates to a rate of 44 per 1,000 women of reproductive age. About 760,000 women in the region are treated each year for complications from unsafe abortions.

Here are some key facts and figures for specific countries:

CARIBBEAN

Cuba decriminalized abortion in 1965, offering the procedure for free in government hospitals. These days, amid widespread shortages of contraception, an estimated two out of five pregnancies in Cuba are terminated. Young Cubans are reluctant to start families on meager salaries, and birth rates how been on the decline on the island for decades.

Elsewhere in the...