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TALLINN, Estonia, March 10, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While Estonia’s government admits the country is facing a critical shortage of children, the health ministry is seeking to lower the age limit for elective surgical sterilizations. Ingrid Ots-Vaik of the Health Department of the Ministry of Social Affairs said the ministry is considering draft amendments to the law to lower the age limit from 35 to 26.

“Preparations have been going on a long time, since the corresponding changes in the draft is to be carried out in a number of other Acts, and to take into account many factors,” she said.

Currently the 1998 Termination of Pregnancy and Sterilization Act allows elective sterilization only for those over the age of 35 and who have at least three children. It is also allowed when “a pregnancy threatens a woman's health,” or other contraceptives are medically contraindicated, a person’s mental or physical health is “at risk” or the person's illness or health problem would hinder their raising a child.

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The Estonian language newspaper Postimees quoted the head of the women’s clinic at the Tartu University Hospital, Helle Karro, who said the restrictions needed to be eased, based on the principle of the absolute right of “competent adults” to “choose” contraceptive sterilization.

“The World Association of Gynecologists code of ethics says that people who are legally competent adults should be able to choose, without limitation, sterilization to prevent pregnancy. Of course, it must be preceded by counseling, and time for reflection. By law at least a month must have passed since the writing of the decision [and the surgery] and the consent may be withdrawn at any time. This is not a procedure that can be forced by a single thought,” said Karro.

Karro added that she had seen cases in which young women had changed their minds about sterilization after the fact. “But they are very few cases,” she said.

“The reasons are varied, [but] it is often related to the fact that a relationship is ending and another new one beginning, which generated the desire to have kids again.”

Recently, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves mocked the notion of large families in a speech on the 96th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Estonia.

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“Europe as a whole faces an aging, shrinking population problem. Our experience of it is sharper than the larger nations,” Ilves said.

“What can you do? Even if more children were born in Estonia, which is not going to happen, we would not see the results until the early 2040s. In the meantime, the number of people whose work and taxes help support the growing number of people who do not work is declining.”

“But into every Estonian family, there are not going to be born four or five children. Estonian women, as their sisters in the rest of Europe, do not want to turn back to the 19th century model of ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’.”

Varro Vooglaid, head of the Foundation for the Defense of Tradition and Family responded, saying that it is the heart of the 21st century Estonian problem, that the culture that “got us here will not get us any further.” 

The president’s speech, he said, highlighted the fact that “Estonia is facing a demographic crisis.” But in his speech, “Ilves waived all call to moral healing and national growth – to marry, have a husband and wife, faithful to each other, and [prepared] to keep each other through both good and bad, to have more children and create big, strong families.”

“On the contrary, Ilves invited [Estonians] to consider changes in family patterns, and noted with a chuckle that our already small population shrinkage is inevitable. We have to just accept it because Estonian women will never return to the 19th century model of ‘children, kitchen and church’.”

Vooglaid asked, “Why could we not reach a point of Estonian families with an average of three or more children? Is it really impossible? Why could the political debate not focus on the question of how to create conditions that would encourage young families to enable them to deal with large families, in order to grow and prosper?” 

While Estonia’s abortion rate has fallen dramatically since independence from the Soviet Union, it remains one of the highest in the western world at about 40 percent of all pregnancies. Starting in 1990, the year Estonia, together with most of the former Soviet Bloc nations, gained independence, the number of deaths outstripped the number of live births.

Until 1990, the country had a total fertility rate of just over 2 children born per woman, exactly the number demographers consider the minimum to maintain a stable population. From then until 1998, the the rate dropped to a low of 1.28 children per woman. The number has increased slightly in the last fifteen years, with the government now estimating about 1.45 children born per woman and a median age for women of 44 years.