Abstract

PIP: In this article, WHO reports on certain laws promulgated in different central and eastern European countries in the early 1990s. Russia has passed a law creating a Coordinating Committee on Problems of the Family, Motherhood, and Childhood. It brings together governmental agencies, public organizations, and citizens to identify ways to improve women's status and protection of maternal and child health. Russia has also adopted Legislative Orientations of the Russian Federation concerning the Sanitary Protection of Citizens. For example, this law guarantees pregnant women the right to work under conditions adapted to their physiological and sanitary state. A whole chapter is dedicated to family planning and regulation of human procreation. Only women have the right to decide whether to terminate or continue their pregnancy. A law in Kyrgyzstan states that every woman has the right to make her own decisions concerning motherhood. With their consent, women also have the right to modern contraceptive methods. Sterilization can only be done with the consent of the woman or for medical reasons. The Counsel of Ministers in the Ukraine adopted a program aiming to improve the condition of women and the family and to protect mothers and children. A Hungarian law does not consider abortion to be a family planning method or a means of fertility control. At the same time, it considers family planning to be a right and a duty of parents. It calls for considerable education on the value of health and life, the healthy life, responsibilities accompanying relations between partners, a family life compatible with human dignity, and contraceptive methods. Albania first approved family planning activities in May 1992. Romania approved technical norms relative to hormonal contraceptives and to IUDs. In January 1993, Poland passed a law restricting abortion to cases of medical indications, fetal death, a grave abnormality, and illicit acts.