Georgia holds campaign against abortion

A forty-day-long action "Against abortion!" organized by the Georgian public organization "For Life" is held in Tbilisi, in front of the Parliament of Georgia.

Similar parallel actions are held in nine other countries around the world - in Europe and the USA, said the organizers.

"Statistics of abortions in Georgia is alarming. Only in 2009, the official number of abortions in the country amounted to more than 23,000; however, the unofficial figure is always much higher, at least five-fold," said Kakhaber Chkhaidze, one of the leaders of the above NGO.

He said that the action began on March 9 and will last for 40 days, since "this figure is biblical." Within the action activists collect citizens' signatures against abortions and for reducing the number of them in Georgia, the "News-Georgia" reports.

The abortion issue was a concern also in other regions of Southern Caucasus. The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Lydia Err, a European MP from Luxembourg and head of the PACE subcommittee on combating trafficking, noted that Azerbaijan has one of the highest rates of infant mortality. She pointed out that abortions are widely used to stop pregnancy, which is a "scandalous method."