The argument is stated clearly elsewhere in this pamphlet: capitalism causes workers to blame themselves for their oppression, and holds out the “solution” of abortion to those families who feel unable to meet the expenses involved in adding to their numbers. The size of population, be it “too small” or “too large” is held to be an important factor in the misery and suffering of workers. As capitalism reestablished hegemony in the Soviet Union and China, there as elsewhere it became increasingly dependent on the lie of overpopulation.
We have reprinted the Soviet abortion laws in the pamphlet. The 1920 law legalizes abortion, but the text of the regulations and the discussion which surrounded their imposition show that the Bolsheviks’ intention was the removal of abortion. Temporarily the Russian reality saw millions of women using “backstreet” abortionists. The Soviet law was designed to run these vultures out of business, and at the same time fight the bourgeois lie that abortion would improve workers’ conditions in any way.
In 1926 the law was tightened UP by the addition of Section 140 of the Penal Code of Laws: abortions past the third month of pregnancy were outlawed. And in 1936 after much discussion (It was Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya, who led the debate, and we have reprinted some of her writings on the subject), abortion for non-therapeutic reasons was outlawed. The proscription of abortion was one way in which the proletarian dictatorship used its muscle to revolutionize society. Great strides had been made in building socialism since the October revolution, and the time had come to fight the evil of abortion with firm legislation.
But in future years there were setbacks for socialism in the USSR, and the growth of nationalism am revisionism. In the brief period following Stalin’s death in 1954, capitalism underwent a full-blown restoration consolidated by Khrushchov at the 20th Congress in 1956. Accompanying was a dramatic change in abortion law. The new capitalists needed lies again to oppress workers, and in 1955 they legalized abortion. But this time there was no political justification, as in the case of previous laws of 1919 and 1936. There was talk of “overpopulation” as well as the bourgeois individualist line of woman’s right to control her own body. The change was “interpreted as part of a general easing of restrictions on Soviet citizens.”[1]
The Soviet law of 1955 was followed quickly by similar changes in the People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe, with the notable exception of Albania.[2] China also followed the Soviet example in 1957, but in China the new policy met with sharp criticism. Since 1954 the Ministry of Health had been encouraging birth control to deal with the “population explosion”. Late in 1957 there was widespread protest at the encouragement of abortion as a method of birth control, and more generally against the promotion of birth control itself. The Ministry of Health retreated: abortion and birth control dropped out of sight. This struggle was part of the fight against capitalist restoration known as the Great Leap Forward of 1958 that included the temporary communization of agriculture, other revolutionary changes, and the first visible signs of the split with Soviet revisionism.
Birth control campaigns were renewed in 1962.[3] In the ensuing years class struggle sharpened in China, and culminated in another battle against capitalism, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. At its height in 1966 and 1967, birth control again disappeared. But with capitalist consolidation in 1969 and 1970, over-population again became a “problem” for Chinese workers. The famous “barefoot doctors” were its foremost promoters.
In 1972, Janine Zipper wrote, “Abortion, which has been legal in China since 1957, has become popular in the last three or four years – abortion offers special advantages in that women have the right to fifteen days of paid vacation afterwards.”[4]
If anything demonstrated the extent of capitalist power in Eastern Europe and Russia it was the tremendous growth of abortion as a “solution” to workers’ problems in feeding and housing their families. The birth rate dropped tremendously. In 1962 and 1965 Hungary held the world record for the lowest rate of population increase. In 1968 East Germany reached “zero population growth”. By 1965 Russia had 80% more abortions than live births.[5]
Recently Eastern Europe and Russia have reversed their laws on abortion. Romania in 1966 outlawed the practice, and there has been recent discussion of a similar measure in the USSR.[6] But this time the reasons are not those given by Stalin and Krupskaya in 1936. This tine the threat of “under-population” is a mere euphemism: Asians are reproducing faster than Europeans in the Soviet Union. “Proposals for a differential policy designed to increase the birthrate in the RSFSR, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, and the Baltic Republics, while restraining the birthrate in Central Asia and the Caucasus are not voiced frequently, but it is clear that racial considerations do come into play in Soviet demographic policy decisions. If Soviet commentators truly considered all peoples in the USSR equal, they would not make repeated references to ’unspecified cultural differences’ (Ye M. Vorozheikin, “Population dynamics and law”, Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo (Moscow) , Sept. 1969, p. 28) to account for the large size of families in the central regions of the country.[7] The major Public argument against changing Soviet abortion law is a cynical recognition that abortion’s cause is exploitation and oppression, and that “legal barriers have no effect”.[8] The expense of abortion, compared to other methods, is also cited.[9]
It is clear that abortion law and population policy in general are valuable guides to the progress of socialist construction or its temporary defeat by capitalist forces. Study of these features is important not only in explaining the growth of revisionism and capitalism in the Soviet Union and China, but also in pointing the way for genuine communists to a correct proletarian policy.
[1] New York Times, Dec. 1, 1955.
[2] Berent, Jerzy, “Causes of Fertility Decline in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union” Population Studies, XXIV, 35-58m 247-280. Heer, D.M., “Abortion, Contraception, and Population Policy in the Soviet Union” Soviet Studies, 17 , 76-77.
[3] New York Times, Jan. 25, 1970. Pi-Chao Chen, “China’s Birth Control Action Programme, 1956-64” Population Studies, XXIV, 141-158.
[4] Zipper, J., “China”, NYT, April 30, 1972.
[5] Berent, Ibid.
[6] NYT, Nov. 13, 1967; Aug. 1, 1968, March 23, 1971.
[7] Cohn, H.D. “Population Policy in the USSR”, Problems of Communism, XXII, July-August 1973 , 41-2.
[8] NYT, March 23, 1971.
[9] Heer, Ibid.