) - Nearly 70,000 women, almost half of them in Asia, die from unsafe abortions each year despite government pledges made a decade ago to improve human rights and reproductive health, researchers said Wednesday. AFP Slideshow: Abortion Issues Yahoo! Health Have questions about your health? Find answers here. A report presented at a three-day meeting to gauge progress made since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo showed only small gains have been made to prevent maternal deaths from abortions. "Unsafe abortion poses a serious threat to the health and lives of women all around the world, not just in Asia," Elizabeth Maguire, president of the Ipas group which works to protect women from unsafe abortions, told Reuters. Unsafe abortion was recognized as a major public health concern at the ICPD when 179 members of the United Nations (news - web sites) set goals to improve women'...