TIME, get your facts straight

The numbers are equally grim around impoverished Latin America, where the United Nations estimates more than 4 million clandestine abortions are performed each year, resulting in more than 5,000 women's deaths. Underground abortions are one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in Chile. Although Chile has one of South America's strictest anti-abortion codes, it's estimated to have twice as many abortions each year (200,000) as Canada — a country with twice Chile's population. (Abortion is legal in Canada.) As a result, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, a socialist, late last year sanctioned the free distribution of abortion-inducing "morning-after" contraception pills at government-run hospitals. In a nation where three-fourths of the public say they oppose liberalizing the abortion law — which, like Nicaragua's, bars abortion in all circumstances, even in cases of rape or when the mother's life is in danger — women's rights groups concede Bachelet's contraceptive tack was the most legally and politically feasible for now.

Well done, Tim Padgett and TIME. Why not just get J.C. Watts to write your columns on reproductive health?