13m abortions performed in China each year: Report

London, July 30 (ANI): Nearly 13 million abortions are performed in China every year, mostly among young women who have little knowledge about contraception, according to a new report.

However, the real number of abortions are believed to be even higher since the 13 million accounts for procedures in hospitals.

Many more are known to be carried out in unregistered rural clinics.

According to China Daily, around 10 million abortion pills are sold every year in China.

And almost 62 percent of the women undergoing abortions were single and aged between 20 and 29 years old, reports the Telegraph.

The stringent laws restricting most couples to just one child encourage women to use sterilization and the use of intrauterine devices, or IUDs and subsidised forms of contraception.

However, the policy tends to neglect the contraception needs of unmarried women even as attitudes toward casual sex have dramatically liberalized.

Wu Shangchun, a government official with the National Population and Family Planning Commission, said that reducing the number of abortions was a tough challenge facing the country.

Peking University professor Li Ying suggested that sex education needed to be improved at the university level and that parents also needed to teach their kids more about sex. (ANI)