Even in countries that have registered a marked decrease, such as the Czech Republic and Croatia, the abortion rate as a percentage of live births remains well above the West European average. The fact that contraceptives have not caught on in many of these societies reflects the trauma of social and economic transition, social workers say. In today's prevailing free-market order, many women cannot find or afford modern contraceptives, recent studies show. Nearly every public health system in the region has chiseled away at once-free state benefits, and many will not cover the cost of contraceptives. Romania must import all its modern contraceptives, inflating their cost.
Some women even have to pay in foreign currency.
The old political system spawned a lingering distrust of contraception, according to International Family Planning Perspectives, an academic journal. Statistics on abortion vary from agency to agency, and their accuracy suffers from underreporting in some systems, lax registration and an indeterminate number of clandestine abortions. Even so, the available data indicate that Russia and Central-Eastern Europe, with roughly 10 percent of the global population, account for up to a third of the 30 million to 40 million abortions registered annually around the world. One World Health Organization study found that women in Russia on average have 2.5 to 4 abortions, compared to an average of 1.5 in the rest of Eastern Europe and 0.63 percent in Western Europe. Eastern Europe followed during the 1950s, often making abortion available for free.