The Puzzling Decline in Abortions

Researchers Debate: Is Contraception the Cause?
by STEVE WEATHERBE
REGISTER CORRESPONDENT
10/05/2010

MOSCOW — Abortion is declining in some countries around the world, and the statistics are startling in some places.

In Russia, whose population is apparently in a death spiral, for example, the abortion rate has fallen from 126.6 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 1988 to 38 in 2008 (1.2 million abortions).

With United Nations demographers predicting the nation’s population will shrink by 23 million in the next 40 years, after falling 11 million over the past 16 years, the government of Vladimir Putin has offered $11,000 grants to families who have two children. Some regions of the vast country made Sept. 12 “Family Contact Day,” urging couples to stay home and do their best to make children. the rest