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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (17227)	4/21/2000 12:48:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

Hmmm.... that specific article doesn't seem to be popping up on my search - I must have changed the parameters - but lots of other stuff is. First, if you want to confirm the Netherlands statistics, look at: cdc.gov sparky.agi-usa.org You can also confirm there that the Dutch experience is not unique. After The Netherlands, the lowest abortion rates are found in Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland, all of which emphasize sex education and easy access to contraceptives. Rates are much lower in Western Europe than in the US. It is also interesting to compare some different approaches. One from Finland, where a strong social consensus supports sex education and contraceptive access: monash.edu.au In the 1970s, the municipalities reported every year about the provision of the contraception services to the national health authorities. In 1976, already around 90% of the municipal health centres were providing family planning services. The combination of new contraception technologies (OCs and IUDs) and a municipal family planning clinics quickly diminished the incidence of unwanted pregnancies, and, consequently, the demand for abortions. The declining trend in the official number of abortions continued after 1973, when the move from illegal terminations to legal services was over. During the period 1976 to 1994 the abortion rate per 1000 women decreased from 16.4 to 7.9. The abortion rate for teenage girls rose during 1973 - 1975, when the rate for women aged 20 to 49 already decreased. After 1975 the teenage pregnancy and abortion rates turned to decline.... A numeric goal for reducing teenage abortions was set up for the first time in 1983: the numbers were to come down by at least 7% per year. The proposals by the Advisory Committee for Health Education were combined with the momentum created by the appearance of HIV/AIDS. A joint initiative by the national health authorities, youth researchers and the Family Federation of Finland gradually led to adoption of a wide range of activities tailored to the needs of teenagers.... Although prevention of unwanted pregnancies was the major goal, trends in teenage pregnancies were not studied more carefully until in the 1990s (Rimpel„ et al., 1992; Kosunen, 1996). They showed even a sharper decrease than the abortion rates. While 49 out of 1000 girls aged 15-19 got pregnant in 1975 (counted as a sum of induced abortions and live births), the figure for 1990 was down 26/1000 and 1994 to 19/1000. Simultaneously the abortion rate has dropped from 21/1000 to 14/1000 and to 9/1000. The most obvious explanation for success in prevention of teenage pregnancies is more effective contraception. All studies since the early 1980s suggest increasing use of effective contraceptive methods. Use of oral contraceptives (OC) more than doubled from 1981 to 1989. In the 1989 approximately 40% of the 18 year-old girls and nearly 20% of 16 year-olds used OCs. Since then the proportions of OC users have remained more or less unchanged.(Rimpel„ et al., 1992). Compare this to what has happened in Poland, where a strong religious influence has eliminated legal abortion and restricted access to contraceptives: informatics.sunysb.edu Multimillion-Dollar Underground Industry Meets Demand as Efforts to Change Law Continue By Christine Spolar Washington Post Foreign Service WARSAW -- Three years after Poland adopted one of the toughest antiabortion laws in Europe, a multimillion-dollar industry of thinly veiled deception prospers here and beyond the borders of this largely Catholic nation. Newspapers in this capital city routinely advertise low-cost zabieg, a word that translates as "treatment" but is the unmistakable code for abortion. Physicians here and in Katowice, Krakow and Lodz take abortion appointments over the telephone, planning off-the-books work around regular office hours. More cautious practitioners limit their work to women they know -- in what one doctor called a "chain of goodwill" -- and, in some cases, charge no fee. Travel agencies whose main purpose is to ferry women seeking abortions to the Czech Republic, Belarus and Ukraine operate freely in border towns. One agency operator boasted he has had as many as 1,200 clients a year, each paying no less than $300. Some physicians in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, where abortion is legal, cater to a Polish trade that comes by train and plane.