Regional Outlook : An Abortion Debate Divorced From Morality : E. Europe’s demographics, not public passion, are at the core of the issue. Abortion still carries a social stigma in many countries.

As East Europeans examine the social scars left by Communist population policies, abortion is emerging as more of a demographic than a moral issue.

While emotional arguments rage in the United States over when life begins and who should control a woman’s body, the controversy within the aspiring democracies struggling to establish themselves in this part of the world hinges more on numbers and nationalism.

Under communism, abortion was granted or withheld according to the dictates of politics and economics. But although the forces of repression have been largely curbed, the distortion of human values and the systematic destruction of church influence over the last 40 years have left battered societies sometimes unequipped to ponder whether their actions might be morally wrong.

That situation may also help account for the issue’s failure to stir up the same level of public passion in Eastern Europe as it does in Washington, Los Angeles or Baton Rouge.

Although abortion is a frequent answer to unwanted pregnancy in the region, it still carries a social stigma and is seldom admitted to anyone but lovers or close friends.

“It’s like saying ‘I’m too poor to raise a child,’ ” explained Szilvyi, a 29-year-old, single professional who recently underwent her second abortion. “It’s a kind of shame felt over the conditions we live in,” said Szilvyi, who requested that her last name not be used.

The risk of a restricted lifestyle is the reason that women most often cite for having an abortion. Even women who describe themselves as Roman Catholic feel that they are entitled to give priority to protecting the quality of their own lives.

Political leaders seeking to reduce the number of abortions talk of the practice as though it were a privilege that should be afforded only those who have already contributed to the perpetuation of society.

Because abortion policy varied widely among the states now seeking to shed socialism’s lingering influences, public attitudes are markedly different from nation to nation.

In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, abortion has become as commonplace for many women as a trip to the dentist’s office. The number of terminated pregnancies is twice that of even the most liberal states of Western Europe, contributing to the steady decline of the two nations’ small and aging populations.

In the Balkan nations, long subjected to despotic quests for a “greater Romania” and for more Bulgarians to ensure ethnic domination, recently legalized abortion is viewed as a trophy of freedom that only a new dictator would seek to take away.

Abortion and birth control were banned for three decades in Romania, and similarly severe measures were imposed in Bulgaria until this year.

Croatia and Slovenia, the two most developed republics of Yugoslavia and still predominantly Catholic from their years in the Austro-Hungarian empire, are mixing politics and family planning in their campaigns to assert greater nationalist autonomy. Nationalists in northern Yugoslavia are waging war on abortion under the slogan: “Fetuses are Croats, too.”

East Germans have for decades been afforded abortion on demand as a tenet of orthodox socialism. There, the issue has become volatile because of the impending reunification with West Germany, which imposes some of the most restrictive conditions for terminating pregnancy in Western Europe.

Only in Poland, where the Roman Catholic Church successfully struggled to defeat Marxist atheism, is abortion anathema on religious grounds and its incidence comparatively low.

Hungarians maintain the region’s highest rate of abortion, with 42 terminations per 1,000 women, compared to 19 per 1,000 in Sweden and 18 for the Netherlands--two of the Continent’s most liberal societies.

National media have engaged in a spirited debate on the issue in recent weeks, disclosing that 4.5 million abortions have been performed in Hungary since 1950 and lamenting the nation’s dwindling population. In 1989, there were 90,000 legal abortions despite ready availability of contraceptives.

Now a nation of 10.6 million, Hungary has had the lowest population increase of any Eastern European country since World War II. And with the advent of a new center-right government this spring, concern has burst forth into public debate about the future of the Hungarian nation.

That has worried the liberal opposition.

“While the decreasing number of Hungarians and their aging trend are very sad facts, they do not give anyone the right to restrict family planning,” said Gaspar Miklos Tamas, a parliamentarian from the Alliance of Free Democrats.

Hungary’s new health and welfare minister, Laszlo Surjan, advocates a gradual change to eventually require women to bear two or three children before being eligible for an abortion on the grounds of social hardship.

“Several groups have become interested in the demographic catastrophe in Hungary,” said Surjan, a conservative Christian Democrat and a member of Hungary’s Large Families Assn. “The population has been decreasing since 1981, and some suppose that abortion is the cause of this.”

In contrast with those Western politicians who feel compelled to legislate according to conscience, Surjan and other opponents of abortion say deteriorating living standards have to be considered in any effort to restrict abortion.

Two anti-abortion movements have formed in Hungary in recent months, the Society for Protection of Embryos and a group calling itself the Movement for Peace in the Womb. They have challenged the Constitutional Court to strike down the liberal abortion regulations so that the new government will be encouraged to enact more restrictive measures.

Surjan said he expects tougher conditions to be applied over the next two years but that the changes will not be radical.

“The previous government can be criticized for liberalizing abortion in the place of offering family and social support,” Surjan said of the Communists. “We are not interested in going to the other extreme. It’s not nice to kill unborn babies--that is the only ground for a total ban. But we saw what happened in Romania.”

The ghost of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is probably the most influential force guarding against a conservative backlash in population policy in Eastern Europe.

Ceausescu sought to create a nation of 30 million by the end of the decade, decreeing that each woman should bear at least five children. Those found to have violated the bans on abortion and birth control faced imprisonment, forcing them to hide infections and mutilations suffered in botched back-alley procedures that were their only resort. Zealous Communist managers subjected women employees to monthly pregnancy tests, allowing the state to track the fate of each conception.

The legacy of Ceausescu’s policy is visible today in the human warehouses storing thousands of unwanted children, many deformed by their mothers’ failed attempts at abortion. Romania suffers the highest mortality rates for woman and infants in Europe, consequences of the late tyrant’s campaign.

Rather than seeking an outright ban on abortion, the most ardent opponents in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia are lobbying for changes in what are deemed “social reasons” permitting the practice.

Czechoslovak law technically limits abortion to women who have already given birth twice. But 53 abortions are performed for every 100 live births--a rate second in the region only to Hungary, with 69.

Acceptable social reasons for abortion in the two nations include lack of adequate housing, being single or having a husband who is jailed or in the army.

“It will not be possible to change this harsh law immediately,” Prague anti-abortion activist Ludmila Mestekova said, pointing to prevailing public opinion that abortion is a necessary means of birth control. “But we shall work at removing all social reasons (that permit abortion for non-medical considerations).”

Both Hungary and Czechoslovakia are predominantly Catholic, but the church lost most of its influence during the Communist period when clergymen were forced into silence or into collusion with the state.

“It could be that Catholicism doesn’t mean the same thing in Hungary any more as it does in the rest of the world,” said Istvan Kovacs, a Catholic priest active in Hungary’s anti-abortion movement.

“Many people are convinced Hungary is heading toward a welfare society, and a lot of people fear raising children under these conditions,” Kovacs said.

Although the church officially opposes abortion, Hungarian priests are reluctant to press for legal restrictions because of the economic uncertainties that lie ahead.

“It’s very hard to change the regulations because Hungarian law has always been in accordance with the social circumstances of women, and conditions now are not very favorable,” said Miklos Gresz, president of the Society for Protection of Embryos.

He blamed communism for killing religion “while no morality was offered to take its place.”

Rather than ban abortion, the societies opposed to it are seeking to educate people to be more responsible in preventing unwanted pregnancies.

Eastern Europe’s new conservative governments also have to create a more supportive network for unwed mothers if they hope to give them an alternative to abortion.

There are currently no facilities caring for women willing to bear unwanted children for adoption, a process that is lengthy and commits the newborn to an institution until the legal procedures are completed.

Surjan, the welfare minister, contends that the best means for reducing the incidence of abortion is to thoroughly inform women of the risks of infertility or complications in future pregnancies.

Zoltan Papp, head of the obstetrics and gynecology department of Budapest’s Semmelweis University Medical School, disagrees.

“Twenty years ago, that was true--that abortion was risky. But not today,” said Papp, whose university clinic preforms about 1,500 abortions annually.

A pioneer in the field of prenatal analysis in Europe, Papp said part of the problem in Hungary is that abortion has become little more than a mild inconvenience.

“Hungarian obstetricians carry out terminations very well. Women come in the morning, they are anesthetized and a few hours later their husbands pick them up. There is no damage to the mother, no injury to the cervical canal, no trauma,” Papp said.

Like many medical professionals in the field, Papp condemns the frequency of abortion and couples’ failure to make use of contraceptives. But he opposes any official interference in private decisions about when and if to bear a child.

“It is much better to carry out terminations in a controlled environment with medical supervision than to forbid them and face the consequences of black-market procedures,” Papp said. “One has only to look at Romania to see the risks.”