Societas et Iurisprudentia (Mar 2015)
Legislation of Abortion and Neonaticide in Socialist Criminal Law
Abstract
The socialist law brought into the abortion law in the Czechoslovakia undoubtedly a revolutionary change. Under the influence of the socialist legal system, almost invariable conservative approach of the criminal law in relation to the abortion operating on the Slovak territory from the earliest ages, has been gradually transforming and reached a status in which Slovakia became one of the countries with the most liberal regulation of the abortion law in the world. Given the fact that the development of the abortion legislation in the R.S.F.S.R., since the decriminalization of abortion by decree in 1920, has not been developing continuously, this study partially focuses also on the development of the socialist legal position on the abortion. Since the adoption of the Law No. 86/1950 Coll. (the Penal Code, sections 227 – 229), the approach to the crimes of abortion and neonaticide (killing of newborn by its mother), as typologically female crimes, has gradually been moderated and punishment for such crimes became less severe. At the same time, abortion terminology has been modified and there were changes in the approach to offenders. Moreover, more indications for legal abortion have been allowed. All of the above was supposed to adapt the criminal law on abortions to a new liberal legal regulation.
