leftguy wrote:During the 1930s abortion was reintroduced,
"A matter which has raised considerable doubts in the minds of many protagonists of sex-equality in this country is the law, passed in 1936, making abortion illegal except in cases where it is justified by consideration for a woman's health or the danger of hereditary disease. This change in the law has been treated as an attack on sex-equality.
It is of the greatest importance in this connection, to refer back to the text of the original law which legalised abortion in Soviet Russia in 1921. It is important to note that in this law not a word was said about sex-equality, and the right to have an abortion was never put forward as a fundamental right of the Soviet woman. On the contrary, abortion was treated as a social evil, but an evil which was likely to be less harmful when practised legally than when carried out under conditions of secrecy. Here is part of the text of the original law permitting abortion:
'During the past decades the number of women resorting to artificial discontinuation of pregnancy has grown both in the West and in this country. The legislation of all countries combats this evil by punishing the woman who chooses to have an abortion and the doctor who performs it. Without leading to favourable results, this method of combating abortion has driven the operation underground and made the woman a victim of mercenary and often ignorant quacks who make a profession of secret operations. As a result, up to 50 per cent of such women are infected in the course of the operation, and up to 4 per cent of them die.
'The Workers' and Peasants' Government is conscious of this serious evil to the community. It combats this evil by propaganda against abortions among working women. By working for Socialism, and by introducing the protection of maternity and infancy on an extensive scale, it feels assured of achieving the gradual disappearance of this evil. But as moral survivals of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present still compel many women to resort to this operation. . .' it is allowed in State hospitals.
The essential feature of this law is that it was based on 'difficult economic conditions,' and was of a temporary nature. The right to abortion was never introduced as one of the rights of Soviet women, to be enjoyed in all circumstances. It was considered an 'evil,' and was introduced as a makeshift to combat the serious mortality rate from illegal abortions carried out under unsatisfactory conditions. There is evidence that, at the present time, owing to the increased knowledge of contraceptives on the one hand and the growing sense of economic security on the other, women will not now practise abortion in this way, and that therefore the permissive law is no longer necessary in the interests of health. Abortion in Soviet legislation has always been regarded primarily as a question of health, not of equality. Since thousands of women have been neglecting the use of contraceptives because they could obtain an abortion, the legality of the less satisfactory method of discontinuing pregnancy has actually to some extent prevented more satisfactory methods from being used of avoiding pregnancy altogether."
(Sloan, Pat.
Soviet Democracy. London: Victor Gollancz. 1937. pp. 125-126.)
At any rate, the Soviet revisionists re-legalized abortion.