Post v.14

This type of talk will not win you any friends:

Cases of mothers killing their children occur almost monthly in Germany, and people are starting to ask why. A state governor has caused outrage by suggesting it may be the legacy of East Germany's communist rule, which has given women there what he describes as "a more casual approach to new life."

Wolfgang Böhmer, governor of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, faces opposition calls to resign after he said women in the east had "a more casual approach to new life" than in the west.

...

"Some came to us in the hospital and just said with a grin 'get rid of it' because they had booked a vacation on the Black Sea coast. That attitude to life has influenced today's attitude. I have the impression that child killings -- and there always been -- are a means of family planning."

Böhmer said "widespread fixation on the state during GDR times had led to the abandonment of individual responsibility."

Regardless of one's stand on the issue itself, you have to admire any governmental official for bemoaning the abandonment of personal responsibility. Usually government officials are the ones providing the encouragement to do so.