For the intents and purposes of analysis, the incidence of abortion in Europe can be divided geographically along east/west lines. The highest proportion of pregnancies ending in abortion are recorded in Eastern Europe, while the figures are significantly lower in the West. In this latter context, Spain's numbers are moderate, although it is one of the countries where abortion rates rost most steeply in the nineteen nineties, principally among women under the age of twenty five. Taking all the countries as a whole - or even the Western nations separately - no clear trends can be discerned, outside a few age-related patterns, that would support the conclusion that, given a certain level of contraception, fertility or abortion rates exhibit a given behaviour. Another significant finding, the fact that certain countries with high contraception levels also have high abortion rates, gives cause for reflection on the use of contraceptives.
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