Abortion Wishes and Abortion Prevention - Women Seeking Legal Termination of Pregnancy During the 1950s and 1960s in Finland

Abstract

This article studies Finnish abortion-seeking women in the 1950s and 1960s by investigating the life situations of the abortion-seeking women and their possibilities to regulate childbearing under the 1950 Abortion Act. During the 1950s and 1960s, abortion was legal in Finland only on medical, ethical or eugenic grounds. The data consists of patient documents of the Finnish Family Federations (Vestliitto) Tampere social counseling service (sosiaalineuvola) from the years 1955 and 1968 and the documents mainly comprise abortion requests. Results show that in 1955 83 percent and in 1968 68 percent of the abortion-seeking women were married. 90 percent of them had two or more children and the mothers often requested abortion because of poor financial or social circumstances. The family conditions of these women were often described as difficult, as they had the main responsibility for taking care of and providing for their families. The majority of the abortion requests were denied. In 1955, only 16 percent of the abortion-seeking women received an affirmative decision from the Family Federation whereas the share of admitted abortions in 1968 was 42 percent. The documents show a severe collision between the womens wishes for abortion and the societys interest to prevent abortions for pronatalist reasons. The data also indicates that women were not treated equally because their own determined and persistant behaviour as well as the doctoral practices influenced the abortion decisions.