The Legalizing of Contraceptives and Abortions

Att's in law towards birth-control techniques vary widely from country to country & depend on the current nat'l policy on pop growth. In general, however, the world-wide trend is to liberalize laws on both contraception & abortion. Focus is on the legal aspects, first of contraception & then of termination of pregnancy, mainly in the European countries, & more particularly in those of the central & eastern Europe, with examples from Hungary. It is pointed out that, rather paradoxically, regulations forbidding the termination of pregnancy often promote the practice of birth control. The rise in the proportion of premature births shows that termination of pregnancy cannot be regarded as a causal problem-free operation, for it has been demonstrated that the more abortions a woman has undergone, the more likely she is to give birth prematurely. Thus the widespread & routine use of abortion as a means of birth control has also been accompanied by a great fall in the birth rate, which led the legislators in Rumania to amend their abortion law radically in 1966. Personal & fam law problems raised by induced abortion are also discussed. In conclusion, the lesson to be drawn is that the broad legalization of abortion should be accompanied by the simultaneous propagation of modern methods of contraception. The public should come to regard contraception as the main method of birth control, with induced abortion only as the last resort. E. Weiman.