LavenderRed_Cubabook

Álvarez Lajonchere added, “Medical services from the very beginning have been free.”
And the new medical teachers received a higher salary than the president. (Fee)
“The habit of using contraceptives,” Álvarez Lajonchere explained, “is a habit that takes
time to build. For a population that was accustomed to having abortions, it was easier for
them to go to the hospital and have an abortion.”
After the revolution, underground abortions in unsanitary conditions increased until
1965. “When we started to do all of them in hospitals, obviously deaths as a result of
abortion disappeared.”
He added that the number of abortions began to decrease in 1974 as a result of mass
education about sex and contraception.
Álvarez Lajonchere concluded: “Our current policy on population is the same policy
that we’ve had from the first day of the revolution. It’s a policy of principle. A woman has
the right to have the number of children she wants, and to have them when she wants.
The government is obligated to assure that her right becomes a reality. So we educate
people about all of the contraceptive methods. We include abortion, even though we
don’t view it as a contraceptive method, so that people will know about it. We have never
said that having a small family is good; we have never pressured people to reduce the
birth rate.”
48 Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba