Abortion and Pronatalist Policies in the Socialist Balkan Countries
Abortion and Pronatalist Policies in the Socialist Balkan Countries

Summary/Abstract: Legalization of abortion as an instrument of family planning was one of the greatest changes affecting family life in the 20th century. The Soviet Union was the first country which allowed abortion (1920); after WWII most of the other socialist countries followed: in 1956 Bulgaria and Hungary, in 1957 Romania. In Western Europe, it was legalized in 1967 in England; many of the European countries followed within about the next 15 years. The consequences of this legal change were enormous: in 1995, in all of Europe, there were 7.7 million legally induced abortions, compared to 8.3 million births. In the period 1960-90, the officially reported levels of legally induced abortions in Central Eastern Europe were among the highest in the developed world. Only countries such as Japan in the early 1950s and Cuba since the mid-1960s have experienced similarly high abortion rates. However, after a decade of liberal abortion policy countries such as Romania and Bulgaria changed this policy drastically. To ensure an expanding labour reserve, an increase in the birth rate was considered essential. Romania was the first socialist country that prohibited abortion except on medical grounds in 1966, followed by Bulgaria one year later. What followed was a period of harsh pronatalist policy. My paper will investigate the success of this policy as well as its consequences for mothers as well as for institutions being in charge for the upbringing of a drastically increasing number of children.

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