Demographic aspects of abortion in Eastern Europe : a study with special reference to the Czech Republic and Slovakia

During the post-World War II period, widespread resort to induced abortion became a well-known peculiarity of the demographic situation in Eastern European countries. The generally high East European abortion levels resulted from the interplay of several determinants. This study focuses first on population policies and the broader socio-economic and demographic conditions that characterized Eastern Europe during the period 1950-90. It is demonstrated that the emergence of the high-abortion regime coincided demographically with the final stage of secular fertility decline in the region, and politically with the establishment of Soviet-style socialism — a system typified by egalitarian social policies, low material standards of living, limited availability of contraceptives, and policies suppressing personal autonomy and perpetuating inequality between the sexes. Despite the many similarities of the countries under consideration, however, abortion levels differed regionally as well as temporally, reflecting local mores and the effects of country-specific policies related to family and birth control. With this in mind, using data from official registration sources, the study goes onto examine levels, trends, and selected demographic aspects of abortion in the Czech and Slovak populations, applying both period- and cohort-specific modes of analysis. The findings show that the dominant force behind the resort to abortion was the desire to prevent second and higher-order births in families, whereas its use to space childbearing or avoid it altogether was much less typical. Changes in abortion legislation generated some transitory behavioural responses, but had only limited effect on abortion patterns in the long term. There were substantial differences in the resort to abortion between Czech and Slovak women; this indicates that factors such as socio-economic status, religion, respect for certain social norms, and attitudes to contraception were powerful determinants of reproductive and birth-preventing behaviour. Overall fertility levels were not unaffected by changes in abortion legislation, but the net effects were less dramatic than a simple trend analysis would suggest because the observed fertility declines were partly produced by differences in childbearing patterns between cohorts. The study concludes by speculating about the broader institutional and sociopsychological correlates of abortion in the formerly communist-ruled countries of Eastern Europe, and by suggesting an agenda for future research