After passing the religiously motivated Pornography Law last year, the lawmakers are once again tainting a health bill with religious overtones, and in the process discriminating against unmarried women by precluding them from reproductive health treatments, activists say.
In the health bill, legislators are also demanding - as a requirement for approving abortions in life-threatening pregnancies or for rape victims - a recommendation from a religious panel, imposing religious values on public healthcare access, coordinator of the Network of Pro-Women's National Legislation Program (JKP3), Ratna Batara Munti, said recently.
The bill, scheduled to be passed into law this year after being deliberated for more than four years - will replace the 1992 Health Law, which does not specifically regulate reproductive health.
"There is no chapter on reproductive health in the 1992 Health Law. In this one health bill there is a chapter on reproductive health. However, it seems like a legislator's halfhearted effort," she said. "The bill is a step backwards from the current Health Law."
The bill, posted on the House of Representative's website dpr.go.id, states that "everyone has a right to a healthy reproductive and sexual life, safe and free from force and/or violence, with their lawful partners" and that implementation of reproductive health services "does not violate religious values and existing laws".
Ratna pointed out the phrase "lawful partners" would only include legally married couples, thus excluding women whose marriages were unregistered as well sexually active women that were not married. She added this violated human rights, the Constitution, the laws ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Economy, Social and Cultural (ECOSOC) Rights.
"It is very discriminative. Reproductive healthcare should be accessible to all, irrespective of people's marital status," she said.
In Jakarta, many sexually active unmarried women have found it difficult to get professional advice about reproductive health without having to face judgmental medical workers. In 2008, director Lucky Kuswandi produced a segment in a documentary called Pertaruhan (At Stake), to criticize the common moral judgment medical practitioners impose on unmarried women seeking reproductive health treatments.
He was appalled the state was moving toward legalizing this discriminative practice. "I don't understand why religion should always be brought into legal stuff here. Religion and values are always brought up when talking about reproductive health, which should be treated just as that: healthcare. It should not be any different than going to the dentist or a cardiologist," Lucky said.
He said he was worried there would be more bureaucratic procedures in hospitals to access reproductive health. "That will be devastating. It doesn't make sense," he said.
Ratna said the article in the bill requiring a religious panel's opinion on whether an abortion should be granted - aside from a recommendation from medical practitioners - was unnecessary.
"The additional requirement for a recommendation or decision from a religious panel will add to the bureaucracy and limit access to health services where patients need to be treated quickly. Besides, it will increase the psychological trauma rape victims suffer. Especially as the provided period only allows for abortions in the first six weeks of pregnancy, which is basically unrealistic because in this period, women are often not aware of their pregnancy," she said.
Ratna said women advocacy groups in Jakarta had met with various rape victims who had become suicidal and would use dubious traditional concoctions to put an end to their pregnancies, which jeopardized their health and sometimes their lives.
"The intervention of religious institutions also shows the problem of life-threatening pregnancies and trauma in rape victims is not seen as a health issue, where the patient's consent is given priority over the consent of any outside party (a religious panel) that has nothing to do with the patient's health." she said.
Umar Wahid Hasyim, deputy head of House of Representative Commission IX overseeing the bill, said they were still debating articles in the bill. The bill is now already in the hands of the formulating team, which under parliamentary protocols, means deliberations are already closed to the public.
Head of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) Amidhan said a recommendation from a religious institution was needed for the good of the mother. "I don't think it's contradictory. It is a more comprehensive decision-making process," he said.
A number of religious authorities, however, have outright objected to abortion, thus making it clear that a case submitted for consideration to the planned religious panel would likely result in a 'no' answer.
Secretary-general of the Buddhist organization Sangha Mahayana Indonesia Mitra Mahasthavira said whether abortion was allowed in Indonesia depended on Indonesian law. He said in Mahayana teachings, abortion was considered murder.
The Indonesia Bishop Conference (KWI) secretary-general of the commission for family, Agung Prihartana, said the Church would not recommend an abortion for women who were rape victims or suffered psychological trauma.
"The Catholic Church knows and realizes the unwanted pregnancies will cause problems for the mother. However, abortion should not be carried out to solve the problem," he said.
For working mother Siti Maesaroh, 27, the input of religious institutions in the abortion decision-making process for rape victims is irrelevant. She said it did not make sense to involve religious institutions in the decision making, as the latter tended to work in a normative realm. "Right or wrong, sin or good deed, heaven and hell. We have to realize the religious tendency is to think in those terms, and abortion has long been connected to sin, haram, and hell for anyone who does it," she wrote in an email.
She said that as a young mother, especially a working one, she was exhausted from child rearing. "We're talking about physical endurance - women undergoing their reproductive function, being pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding. These are not easy tasks," she said.
"Having the choice to have a safe abortion for women with families is as important as giving women who are victims of rape or pregnant teens the choice of being able to have an abortion for unwanted pregnancies," she said.
"For me, giving birth to a human without being able to be fully responsible for them is also a sin."
Source: The Jakarta Post, 25 July 2009