World IN BRIEF : SOVIET UNION : 106 Abortions for 100 Births Reported
From Times staff and wire reports
For every 100 births in the Soviet Union, there are 106 abortions, a medical newspaper said. Soviet abortions in 1988 totaled nearly 7 million, Meditsinskaya Gazeta reported. “These monstrous statistics are difficult to believe,” it said, adding that illegal abortions performed outside hospitals are not even counted in that total. The weekly Moscow News reported in January that 90% of all first pregnancies in the Soviet Union end in abortion and that hundreds of women die each year as a result.
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