“DISQUIETING” EXPERIMENT

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29189, 27 April 1960, Page 8

“DISQUIETING” EXPERIMENT

Legal Abortion In Czechoslovakia

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, April 25

Czechoslovakia has now had more than a year’s experience of the new abortion law and the result is plainly disquieting, says the Vienna correspondent of “The Times.”

Records show that, in larger towns, legal abortions have increased to the level of 50 to every 100 births and that the birthrate, in consequence, is beginning to decrease.

The aim of the law. which came into force on January 1. 1958, was to eliminate illegal abortion with all its dangers to public health by making it possible to procure legal abortions for reasons of social hardship as well as of health. This aim apparently has been achieved.

I The Communist Party periodical “Predvoj,” commenting on this situation, deplored the fact that some 90 per cent, of all applications for legal abortions were being granted. It said the medical commissions which considered applications were largely responsible for this. Many of them took too formal a view of their responsibilities. They did not fully carry out their duty of trying to persuade an applicant to change her mind. A large number of women aged between 20 and 22 who did not wish to have their first child, mostly for selfish reasons, as for instance because they would prej fer to have a car, appeared before the commissions. This was quite inadmissible. Others gave as their reasons difficulties with their living quarters, although many of them had come into the world under far more difficult conditions. Still others would, if necessary, go to one commission after another until they found one which would grant them the necessary permission. This would have to stop, it said.