Croatia Sees Number of Abortions Fall, No Longer Outnumber Births of Children
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 31, 2010
Zagreb, Croatia (LifeNews.com) — The number of abortions in Croatia continues to fall as it has for the last nine years and abortions no longer outnumber births of children as they once did. The Croatian Department of Public Health statistics show there were 10,417 abortions last year, although the figure also includes the number of miscarriages.
The government of the eastern European nation says 4,450 abortions were done at the request of women while the rest are a combination of abortions done supposedly for medical reasons and miscarriages.
The Croatia Times says the abortion rate has fallen to the point that it is now lower than some of its European neighbors.
The newspaper says the rate is now 101.4 abortions for every 1,000 live births in Croatia, lower than the 215.4 in the Czech Republic, 167.7 in Germany, 444.6 in Hungary, and 227.3 in Slovania.
But the lower abortion rates are a new phenomenon as the director of Rijeka’s KBC hospital, which did 944 abortions last year, says the statistics are moving in favor of birth over abortion.
"At one point we had more abortions than births, but today there are almost twice as many children born than there are abortions. We have a similar situation in Pula hospital. Education, and information about contraception, abortion and motherhood have certainly contributed to the drop," Dr. Herman Haller said.
The new statistics show women in Croatia who have abortions do so frequently for birth control reasons, as they either have no children or have two or more.
Last year, as the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) met at the United Nations (UN) to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, Egypt, Croatia was one of the countries attempting to promote birth over abortion.
Croatia and Bulgaria spoke of the measures they were taking to promote birth, such as maternity allowances and paid pregnancy, maternity and paternity leave. Russia, aware of its drastic demographic collapse, also took a pro-natalist position.
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