East-West Divide in Abortion Behaviour in the EU Countries Since 1990: Ongoing or Vanished Differentiation?

Abstract

In the late 1980s, the East-West divide by birth control was identified in Europe as both parts differed by contraceptive practices and abortion rates. The aim of this chapter is to investigate changes in abortion behaviour and ‘whether the East-West divide in abortion behaviour remained relevant by 2009’. As the large variation in terms of abortion rates and contraceptive patterns is still identified in Europe, we want to investigate ‘to what extent it has reflected in the birth control patterns’. The main results could be summed up as follows: (1) the East-West divide in abortion behaviour was distorted, but not fully eliminated. Besides the former Eastern and Western abortion patterns, the new ‘low abortion’ pattern has emerged. (2) Within the EU countries, convergent trends towards lower abortion level were identified since 1990. However, as regards the structure of abortions, a pattern of divergence has been apparent due to differences in transition to modern contraception use. (3) The use of modern methods of contraception rather depends on structural macro-level factors and contextual incentives and barriers as the impact of individual characteristics on the use of contraception does not differ much between countries under study.