the criminal punishments for abortion. Abortion remains a hotly debated topic. As of 2008 in Canada only 1-2% of abortions were pharmaceutically induced. After much controversy, starting in 2017 abortion pills could be used legally in Canada. Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the first government to legalize abortion and make it available on request, often for no cost.Alexandre Avdeev, Alain Blum, and Irina Troitskaya. "The History of Abortion Statistics in Russia and the USSR from 1900 to 1991". Population (English Edition) 7, (1995), 42. The Soviet government hoped to provide access to abortion in a safe environment performed by a trained doctor instead of babki. While this campaign was extremely effective in the urban areas (as much as 75% of abortions in Moscow were performed in hospitals by 1925), it had much less effect on rural regions where there was neither access to doctors, transportation, or both and where women relied on traditional medicine. In the countryside in particular, women continued to see babki, midwives, hairdressers, nurses, and others for the procedure after abortion was legalized in the Soviet Union. From 1936 until 1955 the Soviet Union made abortion illegal (except for medically recommended cases) again, stemming largely from Joseph Stalin's worries about population growth. Stalin wanted to encourage population growth, as well as place a stronger emphasis on the importance of the family unit to communism. Spain During the Spanish Civil War, on 25 December 1936, in Catalonia, free abortion was legalized during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy with a decree signed by Josep Tarradellas, First Minister of the Government of Catalonia, and published on 9 January 1937 (Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya, núm.9).Cataluña tuvo durante la República la ley del aborto más progresista de Europa, El País, 13/2/1983 Great Britain In Britain, the Abortion Law Reform Association continued its campaigning after the War, and this, combined with broad social changes brought the issue of abortion back into the political arena in the 1960s. President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists John Peel chaired the committee advising the British Government on what became the 1967 Abortion Act. On the grounds of reducing the amount of disease and death associated with illegal abortion, the Abortion Act allowed for legal abortion on a number of grounds, including to prevent grave permanent injury to the woman's physical or mental health, to avoid injury to