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Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Greece Suffers Significant Decrease in Births due to Crisis

A decline in birth rates and an aging population have emerged as further side effects of Greece’s ongoing economic crisis. For the past six years, Greece has also suffered a significant increase in abortions. According to the daily newspaper “Efimerida ton Syntakton,” 4 out of 10 women in Greece will give birth to one less child than they were planning. Some will never have children. According to Aikaterini Stypsanelli, a doctor at Alexandra Hospital, the crisis has reduced births by 30%. “There are women that, even though they desire to have children, are forced to undergo an abortion because they simply can not afford to have a baby. Growing up children looks like a mountain in their eyes,” he said. Even an abortion’s cost is unbearable for many of them; as a result, women turn to risky medicines in order to disrupt the pregnancy. As a result of their unavailability to create their own families, many Greek women experience depression and a growing sense of guilt. Katerina, 35, was working in the public sector but now, she says, she faces the daily risk of unemployment. “Since I was a little kid I wanted to have many children. Even without a husband I believe I could make it, if only the situation was different. Now I cannot even cover my own basic needs. Every month I leave a bill unpaid and I have completely limited my entertainment. I only spend money on the necessary,” she says, adding that she lives a lonely life. “There are nights when I remember what my life used to be like before the crisis in order to fall asleep. When I am tired of crying, I am dreaming of the day that all these will be gone. Yet, in 5 years I will be 40. Am I going to make it?” she wonders. Giannis Mouzalas, a gynecologist working for Doctors of the World (Médecins du Monde), explains the new reality in Greece: “Currently we have 3 million uninsured people and 10 million insecure, meaning that none of them knows if he next month will find them unemployed or at least unpaid.”


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com