France: A Survey Reveals Women's Opinions on Abortion
The report from the General Inspection of Social Affairs (IGAS) on “The Evaluation of the Policies for Preventing Unwanted Pregnancies and for Taking Care of Voluntary Interruptions of Pregnancy”, made public in February 2010, notes that 72% of women who have had recourse to abortion were on contraception. This report established the fact that “the French context remains a paradox: the massive diffusion of contraception has not diminished the number of abortions, which is still around 200,000 a year, and the real function of the devices often contradicts the pretended effort to make the preventive approach a priority”.
The Alliance for the Rights of Life (ADV) also wishing to know the opinion of Frenchwomen on abortion, asked the IFOP to create a survey that was conducted upon a representative group of 1,006 women 18 years and older between the 19th and the 23rd of February, 2010. This survey was published in La Croix on March 3.
Tugduald Derville, general delegate of the ADV, underlines the lessons in this detailed survey that reveals first of all that for women abortion is of no little importance. 61% of Frenchwomen consider that “there are too many abortions in our country” where there is one abortion for every four births, 83% affirm that “abortion leaves psychological effects difficult for women to live with” and 60% (against 33%) think that “society should do more to help women avoid having recourse to abortion”.
Frenchwomen, he continues, are in favor of some other policy for preventing abortion that does not simply “provide against unwanted pregnancies” but also helps pregnant women to avoid abortion. 83% of them (against 13%) think that the information pamphlet given at pre-abortion consultations should include “details on help for pregnant women and young mothers”. For 55% declare that “psychological support to protect her against exterior influences” could help a woman, who discovers that she is pregnant without having wanted to be, not to have recourse to abortion, and 54% wish for “information on the material aid to which she has a right”.
This survey brings to light the fact that the adoption of children carried to term would, for 67% of the persons questioned (and 76% of those under 35 years old), be “a good thing to make better known” to young pregnant women who would have heavy personal difficulties in raising their children.
Finally, the IGAS report states that “the number of abortions continues to grow among minors” (girls between 15 and 17), making up 11.5% of abortions in 2006, compared to 8.9% in 2002. It adds, too, that it is those between 20 and 24 who have recourse to abortion the most often. The survey done by the Alliance for the Rights of Life shows that 51% of Frenchwomen believe that the 30% growth in the number of abortions by minors since 2001 is best explained by “sexual relations that are too precocious”. (Sources: adv/LaCroix/gouvfr – DICI n°216, June 5, 2010)
