Abortion in Armenia is legal on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, and in special circumstances between 12 weeks and 22 weeks.[1] Abortion has been legal since 23 November 1955, when Armenia was a republic of the Soviet Union.[2][3] Pregnancies may be ended on request by the pregnant woman until the twelfth week and for medical and social reasons until the twenty-second week with a doctor's approval.[4] Since 2016, when a law banning sex-selective abortion was passed, mandatory counseling is required before abortion along with a three-day waiting period. The law has been criticized as using sex-selective abortion as a pretext to restrict access to abortion, although the government denied this, and claimed that it did not intend to question women's right to access safe abortion.[5]
Abortion was used as a manner of birth control in Armenia[6] and the number of maternal deaths from abortion complications used to be very high (between 10 and 20% in 2000).[2] After massive reforms, the number of deaths declined to 5% in 2005.[2]
In 2014, 21.77% of pregnancies in Armenia ended in abortion, a slight rise from the all-time low recorded in 2010 (21.52%).[7] The United Nations reported an abortion rate (expressed as the number of abortions per 1000 women aged 15–44) of 13.9 in 2004[8] and 16.9 as of 2010[update].[9]