Abortion around the World

Outside the U.S., the highest rates of abortion are found under politically repressive regimes.

Among the first acts of the Romanian leaders who dethroned and executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was to legalize abortion. Ceausescu had outlawed abortion for reasons that had nothing to do with morality—it remained legal for women who had borne at least four children—and everything to do with increasing the population.

Women of child-bearing age in Ceausescu’s Romania were closely watched, examined monthly in many cases, to ensure compliance with the antiabortion policy. This draconian approach to law enforcement has led some proponents of legalized abortion to compare the mentality of abortion opponents with that of the late dictator.

Yet any effort to link political freedom with a prochoice position on abortion appears doomed from the start. The indisputable pattern in recent years is that the countries with the highest incidence of abortion are also among the most politically repressive.

In a 1988 article in the Soviet publication Ogonyok, for example, Soviet physician Andrei Popov wrote that each year one in five Soviet women has an abortion. Popov wrote that there are 8 million abortions performed annually in Soviet hospitals and medical clinics (compared to under 1.8 million in the U.S.). Adding the number of abortions performed outside these facilities would, according to Popov, raise the number to between 12 and 16 million.

In the Soviet Union and in most of Eastern Europe, abortion is the major form of birth control. Contraceptives, by and large, are unavailable. A Soviet woman can get an abortion for five roubles (under $10).

“The Soviets are increasingly talking about the consequences of abortion in their society,” said Soviet specialist Jerry Pankhurst, who teaches sociology of religion at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Among the concerns, Pankhurst said, is declining population resulting not only from abortion but from abortion-related infertility.

One-Child Policy

Population concerns are also at the heart of China’s abortion policies, though in China the fear is overpopulation. Couples are legally prohibited from bringing more than one child into the world. Those who bear more than one child risk losing privileges in such areas as housing and employment.

According to Isaac Tam, director of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Wheaton College, the policy is more rigidly enforced in urban areas, home to only about 20 percent of the country’s population. It is more difficult to enforce, Tam said, in the countryside due, in part, to a lack of manpower and to closer relationships between party officials and the general populace.

Tam said the one-child policy goes against the grain not only of Chinese Christians, but of China’s predominantly Buddhist culture. “I don’t know of any explicit Buddhist teaching on life in the womb,” Tam said. “But in general, Buddhism teaches that we should be careful not to treat life lightly.” The government’s approach, he added, “is a policy of pure pragmatism.”

Prolife Movement Worldwide

Bill Sherwin, executive secretary of the International Right to Life Federation (IRLF), credits the strong prolife movement in Ireland for legal prohibitions on abortion in that country. In contrast, Sherwin blames the lack of a viable prolife movement in Belgium for the likely prospect that abortion will soon be legalized there. The IRLF represents over 40 countries. Following is a brief overview of prolife activity in other areas of the world:

• England. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) was started in 1967, the same year abortion was legalized. It is closely associated with the Catholic church, as is the prolife organization LIFE. The evangelical offshoot of LIFE, Evangelicals for Life, was started in 1982. Much of the current prolife activity on the legislative front in England centers on reducing the age at which a fetus is deemed viable from its current 28 weeks.

• Europe. There is a strong evangelical prolife movement in Holland, which, according to IRLF president Jack Willke, is home to more than 100 crisis pregnancy centers. Willke also cited Norway, France, West Germany, Austria, and Spain as examples of countries with strong movements. Particularly in Spain and Austria, he said, youth are at the center of prolife activity.

• Latin America. The reality of abortion and the prospect of its legalization has raised awareness of abortion as an agenda among believers in Latin America in recent years. Yet, according to Sherwin and Willke, prolife activity throughout the region is minimal, limited to urban centers, including Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Bogotá, and the large cities of Brazil. Prolife efforts, Willke said, are aimed not only at keeping abortion illegal but at providing material aid for women in need.

• Africa. Willke said he is encouraged at the rapid rate of conversion to Christianity in Africa and its implications for the prolife cause on that continent.

• Japan. Abortion has been legal in Japan since the 1940s. And according to Willke, there is a segment of the Japanese medical community that specializes in abortion, considered safer in Japan than the birth-control pill, which is illegal. There is a growing concern over abortion in Japan, however, as symbolized by the erection of monuments at which women mourn the death of unborn children.

• China. “Generally the Christians in China are prolife, because they are people of simple faith,” said Isaac Tam, director of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Wheaton College. “They stick to the Bible, respect human life, human dignity, and the creation of God.” But Tam noted that believers sometimes give in to persecution, including in the area of abortion, and abide by the government’s one-child-per-family law. Abortion is easier to avoid in China, however, than in the Soviet Union because of the ready availability of contraceptives.

• Eastern Europe. Until recently in Eastern Europe, the concept of “prolife,” as it is known in the West, was little known. Don Wilkinson, of the mission organization International Teams, observed that to many in Eastern Europe, “prolife” has meant “pro trying to stay alive.”

Nevertheless, there is some organized prolife activity in Poland and in certain areas of Yugoslavia, said Willke, explaining that by “organized” he means merely that there are networks, not offices or paid personnel. In addition, he said, there are individuals in Hungary and Czechoslovakia with prolife concerns who are plugged in to IRLF activities.

Sherwin is pessimistic about Eastern Europe: “So far I’ve seen no evidence that the new regimes are any more prolife than the ones they replaced.”

Jerry Pankhurst, sociology of religion professor at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, said that the fact that abortion is widespread in the Soviet Union is “fertile ground for a prolife movement.” But he added, “It might also be fertile ground for the continued acceptance of abortion. As the church becomes a greater voice in Soviet society, this might become a major issue.”

Willke observed that the U.S. is “the center of the prolife movement internationally.” “We have far and away the strongest, most unified prolife movement,” he said, adding, “and in this country, we have the rare privilege of voting up or down on a candidate on this issue. What we do, then, is an example to the rest of the world, and to a very significant extent leads the rest of the world.”

Legal Realities

All told, nearly 40 percent of the world’s people live in countries where abortion is available on request, according to the figures of the Alan Guttmacher Institute. An additional 24 percent live in countries where they can get abortions for a wide array of medical, economic, or social conditions. Among the countries in these categories are most Western European nations, the U.S., New Zealand, Japan, Australia, and Israel. (A notable exception is the Republic of Ireland, where abortion is strictly prohibited based on a 1983 popular referendum.)

Generally in these countries, abortion is easily available in early pregnancy, but it is regulated by law after the first trimester with varying degrees of strictness. The United States is an exception: “The abortion law in the U.S. is the worst anywhere in the world because it allows abortion right up to birth,” said Bill Sherwin, executive secretary of the International Right to Life Federation (IRLF).

In some countries, regulation is so lenient that for all practical purposes abortion is available throughout pregnancy. In England, for example, the law requires that two medical doctors confirm a woman’s need for a later-term abortion. But because “need” can be interpreted broadly to include the woman’s mental health or ecomonic condition, virtually no one who wants an abortion is denied one.

In principle, the U.S. is unique, according to Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon, in that it does not require (though it permits) regulation of abortion after the first trimester. (Based on last year’s Supreme Court decision in Webster v. Missouri, regulation is legally required in Missouri and Pennsylvania.)

Glendon scrutinized U.S. abortion law in her 1987 book, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (Harvard University Press). And in the winter 1989 issue of Church magazine, she called for “legal condemnation of abortion (even if it must be accompanied with exemptions from punishment in limited circumstances)” as an “essential first step toward repairing the damage the [Supreme] Court has done to our social fabric by lending its prestige to the position that abortion is ‘private,’ that it involves only a woman and her body, and that morality has no place in public discourse about life.”

Source: Induced Abortion: A World Review 1986, The Alan Guttmacher Institute.

Editor’s note: The figures presented have varying degrees of reliability, in part because reporting methods vary from country to country. This graph should be interpreted as providing a general portrayal of the incidence of abortion around the world.

Where Abortion Is Outlawed

In contrast, 24 percent of the world’s people live in nations where abortion is either totally prohibited or permitted only to save the mother’s life, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute figures. Another 13 percent live in countries where abortion is legal for additional reasons: to preserve the mother’s health, and in cases of rape, incest, or fetal deformity.

Abortion is prohibited by law in Muslim nations of northern Africa and the Middle East, and it is practiced only rarely there. Said an official of a missions organization active in the Muslim world, “Abortion is against the teaching of the Qur’an. And the general feeling among the people is that abortion will result in punishment from God.”

Said Jack Willke, president of the IRLF, “It’s not that people in these countries are any more moral, but there are tighter social strictures.” The IRLF’s Sherwin, however, said that advocates of legalized abortion lately have produced Muslim theologians who argue that the Qur’an permits abortion, at least in early pregnancy. Sherwin said the chances for these efforts to succeed in changing abortion laws vary from nation to nation.

As in the Muslim world, abortion is illegal in most countries of Latin America. One exception is the South American nation of Uruguay. Unlike most of Latin America, which has strong cultural roots in the Catholic church, Uruguay declared itself an officially secularist state early this century.

Abortion is also illegal in most of sub-Saharan Africa, an exception being Zambia, which legalized abortion in the early 1970s. Prolife forces in this country recently teamed with the IRLF to host a conference in Zambia, some of whose political leaders are taking a closer look at the concept of natural family planning. Said Sherwin, “They are worried about their continued existence as a nation because the population has been so depleted by abortion and by AIDS.”

Law And Practice

Compared to Muslim countries, abortion is far more common in Latin America and in Africa. In poverty-stricken and rural areas of Africa, women continue to bear children in hopes of increasing the odds that some will live beyond infancy. But according to Willke, abortion is increasingly common in African cities, despite its illegality.

As for Latin America, Sherwin said the antiabortion sentiment has been based by and large on the weak foundation of tradition. “People aren’t really aware of the facts surrounding abortion. They just know the church says it’s wrong. If the practice of abortion continues, and people look the other way, eventually it will be legalized.” Sherwin said it already appears that a side effect of democracy in Argentina will be the legalization of abortion.

Harvard’s Glendon observed that in some cases there are major discrepancies between a country’s laws and its abortion rate. She noted that in the Netherlands and in Northern Ireland, the abortion rate is strikingly lower than in England, though the laws are similar in all three countries.

“What we learn from these discrepancies,” she said, “is that law is not the most important factor in determining whether a country has a high or low abortion rate. It appears that cultural factors are decisive.”

Thus, in parts of Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, Glendon noted, abortions are difficult to obtain, despite their legality. Similarly, in the United States, the medical profession by and large frowns on doctors who perform abortions, a reality documented recently in the New York Times.

Glendon added that religion is but one of several cultural factors. She observed: “Abortion is much more socially disapproved in both Northern and southern [Republic of] Ireland—by Protestants and Catholics alike—than in Catholic Belgium or Protestant England.” (Though abortion is illegal in Belgium, it is commonly practiced, and most observers believe a current effort toward legalization will succeed.)

Glendon thus maintains that, though abortion laws around the world may come and go, the actual practice of abortion will change only as the fundamental values of individual societies change. She believes changing those values is largely the work of the church.

In the meantime, Glendon favors systems of rewards and sanctions that “make abortion less attractive and motherhood less risky.” Such systems would include provision of services such as medical care and adequate housing to women who otherwise feel they have no choice but to end their pregnancies.

In noting that the U.S. is lax in its emphasis on personal responsibility for child support, Glendon noted that some Nordic countries initiate a mandatory paternity suit on behalf of each child born out of wedlock. “If we don’t try vigorously to establish paternity and responsibility on the part of the fathers,” she said, “we are letting individuals get away with something at the expense of the community.”

By Randy Frame.

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