
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 27, 1993                   TAG: 9303270045
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: GENEVA                                LENGTH: Short

EAST EUROPEAN POPULATION FALLS NUMBER OF ABORTIONS RISES

Eastern Europe's population has fallen because of emigration and plunging birth rates in the post-Communist era, according to new studies. Citizens of the troubled region, determined to limit family size, have turned to abortion in dramatic numbers.

In Romania, three pregnancies are aborted for each live birth, according to a report by a French population expert.

In 1991, according to a separate study released at a U.N. population conference this week, there were more deaths than births in Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia and former East Germany.

Italy and Spain, meanwhile, showed the slowest birth rates in Western Europe, with fewer than 1.3 children per woman age 15-49. Both countries' fertility rates were more than double that in 1965.

The study, released by the Council of Europe, attributed growth rates in northern Europe to increased immigration and higher birth rates among immigrants, but also to the fact that the large "baby boom" generation is reproducing.

It also found that the countries with the biggest increase in birth rates in the 1980s "are the ones in which new family forms and lifestyles are most widespread," the report said.

About 56 percent of the first-time mothers in Iceland in 1991 were unmarried, and 48 percent were unmarried in Sweden, it said.

by CNB