More than 66 000 women around the world die each year because of botched abortions, an international conference on safe abortion heard this week.

The conference in London, organised by the family planning body Marie Stopes International to mark the 40th anniversary of the UK's Abortion Act, called on all governments to recognise safe abortion as a basic human right.

Elizabeth Maguire, president of the reproductive rights organisation Ipas, said new data showed that the number of deaths from unsafe abortions had remained virtually unchanged over the last decade—and that in Africa it had even …