Abortion in Sweden was first legislated by the Abortion Act of 1938. [ 3 ] This stated that an abortion could be legally performed in Sweden upon medical , humanitarian , or eugenical grounds. That is, if the pregnancy constituted a serious threat to the woman's life, if she had been impregnated by rape , or if there was a considerable chance that any serious condition might be inherited by her child, she could request an abortion. The law was later augmented in 1946 to include socio-medical grounds and again in 1963 to include the risk of serious fetal damage. A committee investigated whether these conditions were met in each individual case and, as a result of this prolonged process, abortion was often not granted until the middle of the second trimester . As such, a new law was created in 1974