Abortion Laws Under Attack
February 17, 2007
While Portugal is currently liberalizing its laws to allow abortion up to the 10th week of pregnancy, French women have already had the right since 1975. The law, named after then-Health Minister Simone Veil, leaves it to the woman alone to decide whether to have an abortion. It also requires every larger hospital to have a special service for abortions. The Veil Law was amended in 2001 to allow abortions up to the 12th week of pregnancy. Since then even minors may in some cases have abortions without parental consent.
But, in practice, not every woman is able to take advantage of those guaranteed rights, according to Francoise Laurant, head of the family planning organization Mouvement francais pour le planning familiale (MFPF).
Many hospitals don't have enough personal, so that, during vacation times, women wanting abortions end up on ever longer waiting lists, she said. Some women discover then that they legal time limit has passed for them to have an abortion in France.
"Sometimes, the woman is then told, 'You can still get an abortion in Holland or Spain,'" Laurent said. "But often the personnel tell the woman, 'that's your problem!' And there are hospitals where it's made difficult for a woman who wants to have a second abortion."
When abortion clinics do work well, it's usually due to a doctor's personal commitment -- often because he or she remembers that so many women used to die or fall ill from botched illegal abortions, Laurent added.
New generation unaware
Laurant said many of the doctors currently working in French abortion clinics were part of the 1970s women's movement as medical students. That means they have now nearly reached retirement age.
MFPF surveyed several regions in France to get an idea of how the situation would be in a few years, she said. The results were alarming: there won't be any more doctors prepared to carry out abortions within two or three years.
A recently completed doctor's thesis about the amount of time and extent to which French medical students learn about abortion and contraception also determined that information on the subjects was desperately lacking. Furthermore, new doctors find it hard to imagine what life was like for women before abortion was made legal.
Doctors' arrogance
Working in abortion clinics is poorly paid and held in low esteem, and is thus unappealing to young doctors. In addition, there's an arrogance within the medical establishment, according to gynecologist Marie-Laure Brival.
For centuries, the male body was considered the measure of all things in the medical world. Doctors only turned their attention to the singularities of the female body when they decided they wanted to do more to improve the health of unborn children, Brival said.
"Even today, doctors' volition to control a woman's body is still very strong," she said. "They dictate contraceptives to women. They make contraception the norm. It's really up to a woman to make decisions about her own body. A woman's fertility gives her the choice. It's sometimes very painful to decide whether one wants a child or not. But this freedom of choice is actually women's exclusive right."
Doctors aren't alone in viewing women's bodies in this controlling manner. In the late 1990s, commando actions against French abortion clinics modeled on the pro-life movement in the United States increased in number: Militant so-called "protectors of life" insulted women on their way to having abortions, chained themselves to operating rooms, berated personnel.
France made such actions illegal in 1993.
Always an issue
These days, the "protectors of life" focus on lobbying and appeal to politicians to give the unborn a legal status and right to life.
The women's movement continues to fight a woman's right to choose across Europe. Poland has become an example in this respect: For 40 years, abortion was allowed there. Now it's only permitted in exceptional cases and the government has said it will introduce a total ban.
Despite the planned changes to Portugal's law, Laurant said she didn't think it was time yet to relax on the abortion front. She recounted a recent inquiry from a journalist on the legal status of abortion across Europe, asking when the right would be irreversible.
"I told her: 'there will never become an irreversible right,'" Laurant said. "It's enough for a country to go through a political change or a religious group to put the government under pressure demanding abortion is banned during important talks. And then it's all over for women."