Skip to main content

Turkey's proposed abortion law

The country of Turkey is dealing with its own kind of TRAP law, it seems. In reproductive politics, the term "TRAP" refers to Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers-- regulations that ostensibly improve the safety of abortion as a medical procedure, but in reality serve to raise the expense and difficulty of providing abortions. By adding requirements, such as surgery-center quality facilities, which are nice but medically unnecessary, abortion clinics are driven out of business, limiting access to abortion.

One type of TRAP is to focus on the medical credentials of those providing abortions. In Mississippi, for example, the state is attempting to implement a requirement that all abortion doctors have admitting privileges to a local hospital. The problem is, all of the local hospitals around the sole abortion clinic, in Jackson, refuse to provide admitting privileges, either because they are pro-life or are intimidated by pro-life activists and government officials. As a result, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi may go under.

In Turkey, the proposed legislation focuses on medical credentials and the location of the abortion procedure. The Guardian reports:
Under the draft law, abortions will only be permitted if carried out by obstetricians in hospitals, according to reports in the Turkish media. Currently the procedure is also offered by certified practitioners and local health clinics. The new law also introduces 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.
"This will dramatically limit availability, especially to women in rural areas and women with few economic resources," said Selin Dagistanli of the campaign group Abortion Is a Right.
"While there is no legal ban, these measures will make abortion de facto unavailable. In many towns there might only be one hospital, and maybe one obstetrician. What if this one doctor then refuses to perform a termination? Many women cannot afford to travel to another city or go to a private hospital," she said.
The proposal reflects an ignorance of the basics of abortion, especially early abortion, as a medical procedure, or a conscious attempt to limit abortion access in the guise of helping women. It sounds like the latter.

Links:

 Article in The Guardian (February 1, 2013): Turkish law will make legal abortion impossible, say campaigners
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Medically necessary abortions: The battle of the experts

Apparently, Representative Joe Walsh is not entirely alone! The assertion that an abortion is never medically necessary has been floating around in the pro-life universe for at least a little while. We are now witnessing a battle of the experts. One the one side is Joe Walsh and friends. Walsh himself released a pdf document with quotations from several doctors-- including some historically prominent pro-choice doctors, like Alan Guttmacher-- making the 'never medically necessary' claim seem quite reasonable. Also on Walsh's side are several doctors  who particpated in a recent "International Symposium on Maternal Health" in Dublin. Ireland, despite a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 1992 , has a total ban on abortion. Irish pro-lifers want the country's politicians to resist pressure to implement even a life exception, so the question of medical necessity is directly relevant there. The "Dublin Declaration," released after the S...
3 comments
Read more

Did "tax-funded abortion pills" cause the Newtown tragedy?

Of course not. But this is the kind of nonsense we get when people shamelessly piggyback on a tragedy to score political or culture war points. We also get this kind of analysis when someone is paid to analyze events on cue but has nothing of substance to say regarding something terrible and complex. Watch Mike Huckabee's statement here: I understand Huckabee is trying to make a larger point about the culture, rather than drawing a direct line from the ACA's contraceptive mandate-- which does not mandate taxpayer funding of abortion pills, by the way-- to the Newtown massacre. Still, this is what happens when a tragedy occurs: We extrapolate from an isolated event and determine that it encapsulates, or is the ultimate representation of, something about our society that must be addressed. It is possible, however, that an event is sui generis and cannot then serve as a platform for useful long-term policy reform.  We reduce the cause of a tragedy-- which may ultimat...
Post a Comment
Read more