SOVIET UNION LEGALIZES ABORTION
Moscow, USSR (JFK+50) On November 18, 1920, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics became the first nation in the world to make abortion* legal. A government decree was issued in order "to reduce the high mortality rate associated with illegal abortions."
By the decree, abortion was available to a woman who requested it during the first trimester of her pregnancy.
The Catholic church opposes all forms of abortion whose purpose is to destroy the embryo or fetus. JFK, as a practicing Catholic, supported the church's view but he did not support that view being forced on non-Catholics.
On April 22, 1990, a JFK quote appeared in an advertisement taken out in the New York Times by the National Abortion Rights Action League. The ad gave the organization's position on unlimited rights to abortion and attacked the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
JFK said...
"no religious body...would impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general population."
JFK's sister and Executive Vice-President of the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, objected to the use of her brother's statement in the ad. She wrote the Times calling it "a distortion" of JFK's views on abortion.
She wrote...
"President Kennedy believed and practiced the value that America should offer a free marketplace for all views, even those of Catholic bishops. He would have resented his words being distorted to confuse...that value."
SOURCE
"JFK Would Have Defended Bishops' Right to Fight Abortion," May 13, 1990, The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/
