Abortion complications in New Zealand

By type, 2021, number of abortions

The following information applies to all values in the table. Year: 2021, Unit: Number
Complication type	Number of abortions
Cervical tear	2
Failed abortion	5
Haemorrhage	29
Haemorrhage & retained products	9
Infection	2
Other	19
Pain	9
Perforation of uterus	4
Retained placenta / products	79
Retained placenta / products and infection	1
Retained placenta / products and other	1
Vaginal laceration	1

Notes

There were 34 instances of the person being lost to follow up so the outcome of these cases are unknown.

Definitions

General abortion rate: Total abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years based on Stats NZ’s population estimates, mean year ended 31 December 2021, Census 2018 base.
Abortion population: All abortions notified to the Ministry of Health by abortion providers in New Zealand.
Abortion ratio: The proportion of pregnancies terminated by abortions. The standard for abortion ratios used was the number of induced abortions per 1,000 known pregnancies (live births, stillbirths and abortions combined). Tatauranga Aotearoa Statistics New Zealand uses this same standard.

Inclusions

While the data is collected for 'women' it is important to note that it actually includes all people who had an abortion, and that the data may include some transgender people.

Changes to data collection/processing

Before the passing of the Abortion Legislation Act 2020 in March 2020, the Abortion Supervisory Committee (ASC) had oversight of abortion services, set standards of care and was responsible for annual reporting on abortion-related information. As part of the legislative changes, the ASC was disestablished on 24 March 2020 (ASC 2020).

Data provided by

Ministry of Health

Dataset name

Abortion Services Aotearoa New Zealand Annual Report 2022

Webpage:

https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/abortion-services-aotearoa-new-zealand-annual-report-2022

How to find the data

Ministry of Health provided us with the Excel spreadsheet containing tables as seen in the Abortion Annual Report.

Import & extraction details

File as imported: Abortion Services Aotearoa New Zealand Annual Report 2022

From the dataset Abortion Services Aotearoa New Zealand Annual Report 2022, this data was extracted:

Sheet: Table 7.1
Range: B4:C17
Provided: 28 data points

This data forms the table Abortion - Abortions by complication type 2021.

Dataset originally released on:

October 28, 2022

About this dataset

Abortion statistics measure the number of induced abortions that occur in New Zealand hospitals or licensed abortion clinics.

Purpose of collection

The data provides an overview of abortion numbers, rates and ratios, as well as further breakdown and analysis to gain a more detailed understanding of trends in relation to factors such as age, ethnicity, region, duration of pregnancy, procedures, complications, and contraception. This supports analysis of national abortion service provision. The Ministry uses insights from the data to inform the Ministry Abortion Services work programme and will use the data in the future to evaluate the success of initiatives such as the National Abortion Telehealth Service.

Method of collection/Data provider

Abortions performed before 24 March 2020 were reported to the ASC and collated by Tatauranga Aotearoa Statistics New Zealand.
Abortions performed after 24 March 2020 were reported to and collated by the Data and Digital team at the Ministry of Health.
The Ministry Data and Digital team combined the Statistics New Zealand and Ministry data for 2020 to enable reporting on the complete year.

Abortion complications in New Zealand

By type, 2021, number of abortions

About this data

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