SUNS4372 Thursday 11 February 1999

Hungary: 'Market Reforms' puts parenthood on hold



Budapest (PANOS/Veronika Sarkany) -- Increasing unemployment is apparently leading many couples in post-liberalisation Hungary to postpone having babies. But falling birth rates are also fuelling a fierce abortion debate, masking what some fear is a racial agenda.

Despite repeated surveys this decade indicating that newly-wed couples want to have at least two or more children, figures show that the average Hungarian family has just 1.5 children.
Hungary's population of little more than 10 million has been decreasing since 1981.Plummeting family sizes, combined with high mortality rates among men aged between 40 and 60 years, has meant that between 30,000
and 40,000 more people die every year than the number of babies born.

The situation has reached a point where population experts predict that by the year 2000, there will be some 600,000 fewer Hungarians than there were 20 years ago.

The reasons for the decline are fiercely debated. The fall in family sizes (fertility rate) began 40 years ago as part of a Europe-wide trend. But some experts say this has been exacerbated since 1990, when Hungary adopted Western-style market reforms.

Before liberalisation unemployment was unknown in Hungary, child care was free and women could opt for a three-year paid maternity leave with a guaranteed right to return to work - a unique system that was much
admired in Europe. Today unemployment hovers at 9.5 percent - it is double that in the poorer Eastern regions of the country - and only remnants of the maternity safety net remain.

A nursery school place now costs as much as three-quarters of most working mothers' salaries.

"The decline in fertility can be attributed to the great shock caused by the change in the political and economic system," says demographer Marietta Pongracz. The changes have led many women and couples to
conclude that they cannot afford another child or survive on a single income, she adds.

Economist Tamas Bacskai agrees that "impoverishment has a role to play in the number of children couples want." But he adds that Hungary, paradoxically, is also following a trend seen in advanced Western European countries, where rises in income have also led to a decline in the number of children.

But for Conservative political parties and groups close to the Catholic Church, the reason must lie elsewhere: in Hungary's liberal abortion law. They are worried that over 70,000 Hungarians a year choose abortion.

Alarmingly, there may be a hidden racial agenda behind the debate, fuelled by the fact that while the majority white Hungarian population is dwindling, birth rates among the country's 800,000 gypsies are higher than the national average. Most gypsy families have four or more children.

Right wing parties such as the Hungarian Truth and Justice Party and some politicians - both inside and outside Parliament - believe the present abortion law puts white Hungarians at a disadvantage. Adopting
nationalist tones, some have even warned against a 'Biological Trianon' - referring to the Trianon Peace Treaty after World War I which parcelled off two-thirds of Hungarian territory, containing nearly a third of its population, to neighbouring countries.

For Gypsy spokesperson Blanka Kozma, who leads a nongovernmental organisation called Roma Women in Public Life, such concern over preserving 'the nation' conceals attempts to contain non-white populations. "Any tightening of the abortion regulations can b e seen as an endeavour to boost the childbirth of Hungarian mothers and, thus, to close the gap between the birth rates of Europeans and Gypsies," she says.

Hungary's Constitutional Court ruled the current abortion law unconstitutional in November 1998, after being moved by the head of an anti-abortion group called Pacem In Utero, who wanted the scope of the law to be narrowed.

The decision by the court, which also mandates Parliament to change the law within 18 months, has been strongly criticised by women's groups. "The Court's decision is a threat to women's self-determination and
right to decide," says Judit Fridli, president of The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union. While there may have been no overt pressure from the Church, there may be a clique at work, Fridli says noting that half the court's judges are either lecturers or professors at a Catholic university - the Pazmany Peter Catholic university.

Despite the right-wing clamour, ordinary Hungarians strongly favour women's right to choose safe and legal abortion. Opinion polls last year confirmed that both men and women want to keep the present law intact.

However, other recent surveys suggest that the number of legislators supporting women's choice is decreasing, and no one is predicting Parliament's decision.

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