Turkish women rally to protest abortion ban

PanARMENIAN.Net - Thousands of women joined a pro-choice rally in Istanbul on Sunday June 3 amid growing fears that Turkey's Islamist government intends, in effect, to ban abortion, The Guardian reported.

Terminations are legal in Turkey until the 10th week of gestation but the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) is reportedly working on a bill to ban them after four weeks, except in emergencies.

The bill has not been published, but fears that it could substantially curtail a woman's right to choose have been stoked by comments from senior government officials. Speaking last month at a conference on population and development, the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said: "There is no difference between killing a baby in its mother's stomach and killing a baby after birth." He said abortion and elective caesareans were "secret plots" to slow Turkey's growth.

The health minister, Recep Akdag, said that the government would present its abortion bill by the end of June, adding that women pregnant as a result of rape should let the government take care of the baby.

The remarks have pushed abortion to the top of the political agenda – and spread a chill among activists. At the demonstration on Sunday, marchers carried banners reading "We are women, not reproduction machines", "AKP – take your hands off my body" and "We don't discuss our right to abortion."

Dr Mustafa Ziya Günenc, a gynaecologist in the German hospital in Istanbul, said the government's proposal to cut the legal limit for abortions to four weeks would in practice be a ban: "Abortions simply cannot be performed at that stage, both for technical and health reasons."

"Before abortion became legal in 1983, 250 out of 10,000 pregnancies ended with the mother's deaths, and 225 of these deaths occurred because the women they tried to abort using wire, chemical substances or bird feathers," said Günenc. "Abortion was legalised for that exact reason."

Activists fear that these concerns might not deter Erdogan, a devout Muslim who has campaigned for population growth, urging Turkish couples to have at least three children. More than 25% of Turkey's 75 million population is under 14 and many activists argue that the country urgently needs to improve sex education.

Specialists say they have not been consulted about the abortion bill. The Turkish Gynaecologist and Obstetrics Association, the country's largest umbrella organisation, has not been invited to participate in a commission preparing a report on the planned legislation, according to Professor Ismail Mete Itil, the association's president.