The Re-Legalization of Abortion in Soviet Russia

Abstract

ON November 23, 1955, the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. passed a decree repealing the prohibition on abortion that had been in force for almost two decades. This marked the third time that the Soviet Union changed its stand on the question of permitting or prohibiting abortion on other than "therapeutic" grounds in the thirty-nine years of its existence. In the light of this, it appears worth while briefly to review the policies of the Soviet government on this very important social and medical problem.Soviet legislation on abortion falls into four distinct periods: 1917–1920, in which . . .