Church-Linked Groups Challenging Abortion Laws in Western Europe

ROME — As the U.S. Supreme Court considers a new ruling on legal abortion, the issue is flaring in Western Europe, with church-backed groups fighting to limit laws that have made the procedure widely available.

The issue has touched off street demonstrations in Italy, threatened the stability of Belgium’s government and prompted a debate in West Germany, where authorities have cracked down on violators of the abortion law.

But in many other parts of the world, it is barely an issue, either because of a consensus that it is wrong or a broad acceptance of abortion as a form of birth control.

High Level in China

In the Soviet Bloc and China, for example, abortion has reached high levels--one for every two live births in China--but it is widely accepted. Even in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Poland, the practice is widespread, although there is a drive under way to ban it.

The Roman Catholic Church has been the principal force behind worldwide campaigning against abortion.

“The protection and defense of the human person--every person and the whole person, especially those who are vulnerable and most helpless--this is a task which the Catholic Church, in the name of Christ, cannot and will not forsake,” Pope John Paul II said last month, reaffirming the church’s total ban on abortion.

In the United States, church-backed groups have played a key role in a vocal campaign against the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion. The Supreme Court in Washington is considering a case that could weaken Roe; it is expected to rule this month.

Abortion became legal in many Western European countries in the 1970s and early 1980s. But, as in the United States, legalization has not tempered the debate.

In Italy, hundreds of thousands of protesters thronged the streets of Rome this spring in the biggest demonstrations for and against abortion since 1981, when Italians voted in a referendum to uphold abortion on demand in the first three months of pregnancy.

Health Minister Carlo Donat Cattin, a member of the Christian Democrat Party, has joined religious groups and conservatives in calling for limits on the law. Pro-choice demonstrators have countered, protesting “loopholes” in the law they blame for a growing number of “back alley” abortions.

In Belgium, a 16-year battle to legalize abortion realized its first victory in May when two Senate committees voted to allow abortion in cases of psychological or economic distress.

But the measure is fiercely opposed by Belgium’s dominant Christian Democrats, a Catholic-inspired party. The issue could bring down the coalition government.

In Western Europe, as in the United States, restrictions on abortion have not prevented women from getting them elsewhere.

Flocking to Netherlands

For example, many Belgians go next door to the Netherlands, where abortion laws are more liberal. Dutch hospitals performed 36,455 abortions in 1986, 21,655 of them for foreigners.

And in Britain, doctors performed 3,673 abortions in 1987 for women from Ireland, where the operation is illegal.

The abortion issue returned to the front pages in West Germany in May, when a Bavarian court convicted Dr. Horst Theissen of performing abortions without proof that the women had been counseled by at least two doctors, as required by law.

The state of Bavaria, which is 70% Catholic, also indicted 156 of Theissen’s patients on charges of getting abortions without the required counseling. Most were fined. The cases prompted rallies by pro-choice groups and criticism from the country’s main opposition party, the Social Democrats.

Abortion is a common means of birth control in the Soviet Bloc. Even in Poland, where more than 90% of the population considers itself Catholic, an estimated one in two pregnancies is terminated by abortion--one of the highest rates in the world.

Effect of Housing Shortage

A severe housing shortage and erratic supplies of contraceptives contribute to the rate.

Poland’s Parliament is considering legislation backed by the Catholic Church to make abortion a crime. Both pro- and anti-abortion groups have held demonstrations.

In the Soviet Union, women average six to nine abortions each during their child-bearing years, according to Western estimates.

The country’s top-ranking woman, candidate Politburo member Alexandra P. Biryukova, has complained about the number and blamed it on a shortage of contraceptives.

Abortion was legalized in many East Bloc countries in the 1950s, but contraceptives were not generally available until the 1970s, said Jeremy Hamand, publications director of the London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation.

“When they did come in, there was a whole generation of women who had controlled their fertility by abortion,” he said.

Several Asian countries outlaw abortion, but it is widely practiced in Japan and China.

‘Like Dentist Appointment’

“It was like making an appointment at the dentist,” said one college student who recently had an abortion in Tokyo.

Japan bans the birth control pill because of possible side effects. The country’s main religions, Buddhism and Shintoism, do not condemn abortion, and it carries no social stigma.

The Health Ministry in Tokyo says Japan had 17.8 registered abortions for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 49 in 1985. However, many abortions go unreported, doctors say. Japan’s rate might exceed that of the United States, which had 24 terminated pregnancies for every 1,000 females of child-bearing age that year.

Abortion is a major form of population control in China, where more than 10 million abortions are performed each year. Although there is some individual resistance to government pressures to abort unplanned babies, there are no anti-abortion groups, and the main criticism of the rate has come from the United States.

High Mortality Rate

In predominantly Catholic Latin America, abortion is widely illegal except for cases in which the woman’s life is in danger or she is a victim of rape. There has been little or no movement to expand those conditions.

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