Everyone can agree that abortion is a touchy subject.

Opinions on abortion differ from person to person, but everyone can see it as a social controversy. Its political leverage has shifted public interest on the topic to either side of an argument.

A lot of important things are left out in such heated debate. A couple summers ago, I was given the opportunity to participate in Emory’s Pre-College Program. I studied alongside bright students from around the world in a course called “Global Health Leadership in the 21^st Century.”

One of the topics discussed was unsafe abortion. The things that come to mind when I hear the word “abortion” were changed from that point on.

In the United States, we only think of abortion politically; unsafe abortion just isn’t a problem here. In the class, I was exposed to the horrific realities that women all over the world face.

I learned that in a lot of countries, women should have her husband’s permission to get an abortion. If denied, women take drastic measures to end their unwanted pregnancies. I will spare you the gory details, but the important fact is that the rates of morbidity and mortality are terrifyingly high.

Women damage their own bodies and are left with infection, infertility, and sometimes death. Additionally, in these countries, cases of violence between men and women are typically man-favored, so convictions to a man for violence against a woman are seldom. Where is the link between these items?

Physicians that perform abortions in these male-dominated countries are sure to encounter problems in deciding whether or not they will give a woman an abortion. My thought is that a male physician wouldn’t give an abortion second thought if they knew a woman didn’t have permission from their husband.

However, I think those female physicians must be different. A woman can relate to another woman who is desperately seeking to end a pregnancy.

In cases of marital rape or any inability to care for a child, a female physician might be more likely to overlook the preference of a woman’s husband.

In another scenario, would the threat of the pregnant woman’s husband retaliating and jeopardizing the female doctor’s safety be a stronger deciding factor?

To summarize, I would like to know if there is a significant difference between the numbers of abortions performed by male physicians versus female physicians in countries where male dominance poses a threat to female safety.

A found difference could be taken a step further to actually link the law and justice systems in these male-empowered countries to unsafe abortion- and that would be huge.

I wanted to answer this question for my senior research project, but as I stated earlier, abortion is a touchy subject. I can’t go to one of these countries and personally ask physicians what they have done in these situations.There are many variables to be accounted for, and it is very hard to test. But isn’t that what makes a courageous inquiry?