WUNRN
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/04/istanbul-hospitals-refuse-abortions-government-attitude
Turkey - Istanbul Hospitals Refuse Abortions as
Government’s Attitude Hardens
Activists say few state hospitals agreed to perform
non-emergency terminations, while president Erdođan repeatedly compares
abortion to murder.
Turkish women at a protest against Recep Tayyip
Erdođan, after he said he considered abortion to be murder. Photograph: Bulent
Kilic/AFP/Getty Images
By Constanze Letsch in Istanbul – 4 February 2015
Most Istanbul hospitals are violating the law by
refusing to carry out abortions, women’s rights groups in Turkey
have established.
Activists from the Purple
Roof women’s shelter in Istanbul found that only three out of 37
state hospitals agreed to provide non-emergency terminations, of which only one
offered abortions between the eighth and 10th week of gestation, when surgery
becomes necessary. Under Turkish law, hospitals are authorised to terminate
pregnancies up until the 10th week.
At 17 of the hospitals an abortion was only offered
for cases of a medical emergency, while the 12 remaining hospitals refused to
provide a termination altogether.
Abortion in Turkey was legalised in 1983 to
reduce the high number of women dying from unsafe, self-induced terminations.
According to the Turkish Doctors Union Women’s Health Branch, only 2% of
pregnancy-related deaths are the result of unsafe abortion methods today, while
the number stood at 50% in the 1950s.
“The existing abortion law was not changed at all,”
said Esen Özdemir, an activist at Purple Roof. “They did not sign the bill into
law. But the government’s stance and rhetoric led to a dramatic change, and
what we now have is a de facto abortion ban.”
In 2012, the Justice and Development party (AKP)
government proposed a draft law that, among other restrictions aimed to
introduce the right for doctors to refuse performing an abortion on the grounds
of their conscience, and a mandatory “consideration time” for women requesting
a termination. The bill was dropped, but, according to women’s rights
activists, the attitude of doctors and other health professionals changed
nevertheless.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdođan, has
repeatedly compared abortion to murder and for years urged Turkish couples to
have at least three children. Speaking at a wedding in December of last year,
he said that birth control was treason that threatened the Turkish bloodline.
“After 2012, women started be treated badly in
hospitals because they requested a termination,” Özdemir said. “Women were
increasingly made to feel guilty, and horrific reports of abortions being
performed without anaesthetic started to appear in the media.”
Furthermore, hospitals introduced a messaging system
that informed fathers about the pregnancies of their daughters, adding further
pressure on women in a country where sex outside of marriage is considered
largely unacceptable.
“Even without a new abortion law, accessibility has
decreased dramatically,” Özdemir said. “Abortions in private clinics are
available for those who can pay. But if it is this hard for women to find a
state hospital in Istanbul that will help them, and where the procedure is free
of charge, we expect the situation in other cities and the countryside to be
even worse.”
She added that an increasing number of desperate women
called the shelter to ask for advice, with many women wondering if abortions
were still legal in Turkey.
“The government should know that the ban of
terminations does not put an end to the practice,” Özdemir said. “But women
will start damaging their own bodies and put themselves in danger to achieve an
abortion. This might spell the return of feathers and metal hangers.”