Induced abortion and sexual sterilization are the most common contraceptive methods in the world today. There were an estimated 40 million abortions in 1979, notwithstanding the fact that Islamism, Catholicism, and Buddhism are strongly against the practice. Some international and powerful organizations, notably the IPPF, are trying to expand abortion and sterilization services in the third world, while in the countries of the socialist block abortion as a contraceptive measure is being slowly replaced by oral contraception. On the other hand, in North America, England, and in the Scandinavian countries abortion and sterilization are gradually replacing oral contraception as the most used method of fertility control. The number of abortions in France is now estimated to be 30-40/100 live births, a percentage that very probably underestimates the reality; in France the number of abortions is almost the same in rural and in urban areas. Modern and highly effective methods of contraception are still preferred to abortion and sterilization. It would seem important to warn women against the clinical dangers of repeated abortions, and against the psychological dangers of sterilization and against the banalization of both such radical procedures. The responsibility for such medical acts does not only belong to women or to couples and to physicians, but to politicians and to members of the legal professions.