Czech Republic Residents More Supportive of Abortion, Euthanasia Poll Shows
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 11, 2008
Prague, Czech Republic (LifeNews.com) — A new poll of residents of the Czech Republic finds more people are inclined to favor keeping abortions legal and making euthanasia allowable. The CVVM polling institute released the results of the new poll on Tuesday and it finds pro-life advocates have an uphill battle.
The poll found about 75 percent of Czech citizens want abortions to stay legal, an increase of about three percent from the 2007 poll.
Some 15 percent said abortions should be limited to only legitimate health reasons, another 6 percent said abortions should only be allowed if the mother’s life is threatened and one percent want all abortions made illegal.
The CVVM survey found non-Christians (82 percent) and women (80 percent) were most likely to favor abortion while 64 percent of church-going Czechs supported legal abortions.
Meanwhile, the poll found two-thirds of Czech people want euthanasia legalized there.
About 20 percent of those polled said it should be legal now, 43 percent said they leaned in favor of that position and 10 percent absolutely opposed legalizing the practice. The rest were undecided.
The poll found residents over 60 and church-goers were more likely to oppose euthanasia.
The most recent numbers form the government about abortions in the Czech Republic are on the decline compared with 2005 numbers.
There were 26,450 abortions in 2005 and 20 percent of them were performed for so-called "health reasons" according to the European nation’s government.
The number of abortions is at its lowest level since abortion was legalized in 1958 and the figure is five times lower than their peak during the 1980s. Some 27,574 abortions were performed in 2004.
The Health Information and Statistics Institute reported that women who already have children were more likely to get an abortion. Some 35 percent of those obtaining abortions already have two children, for example.
That trend is consistent with abortion figures from other eastern European nations, which have a culture where abortion is widely regarded as a method of birth control.
