12 January 2007
The Portuguese Family Planning Association, Associação Para o Planeamento da Família (APF), hailed today’s results of Portugal’s referendum on liberalizing its abortion laws as “a victory for sexual and reproductive health and rights in Portugal.”
As one member of a vital coalition of Civil Society groups, health professionals, Members of Parliament, political parties, journalists, women, men and their families, Associação Para o Planeamento da Família (APF) has campaigned tirelessly to change Portugal’s abortion law, one of the most restrictive in Europe.
Commenting on a remarkable victory for pro-choice advocates against a concerted campaign to derail the referendum by the Catholic Church in Portugal, Duarte Vilar, Executive Director of APF, said, “We sincerely hope that these results can give inspiration to Ireland, Malta and Poland.”
Research carried out in the run up to the referendum highlighted the fact that up to 40,000 Portuguese women underwent illegal, and often unsafe, abortions every year; many Portuguese women are forced to travel to Spain where they can receive treatment legally, but for poor women this is not an option and many are forced to resort to unsafe abortion carried out by unqualified people in unhygienic conditions.
Only 700 women annually are able to access legal abortions in Portugal.
The current law in Portugal allows abortion until the 12th week of pregnancy in case of “mental and physical risk,” until 16 weeks in case of rape, until 24 weeks in case of a malformed fetus and at any time if the woman’s life is in danger.
Abortion remains illegal in all other instances.
A women convicted of illegal abortion can be sentenced to 3 years in prison – with the exceptions of Malta where abortion is banned, and Cyprus, Portugal is the only country in Europe to put women on trial for terminating their unwanted pregnancy – while, if convicted of performing an illegal abortion, health care providers can face up to 8 years in prison.
In Sunday’s referendum the country voted decisively to liberalize its restrictive abortion law, but the result was not considered binding because of low voter turnout.
The vote was 59.25 percent in favour and 40.75 percent opposed, with a turnout of slightly less than 44 percent of the 8.8 million eligible voters. At least 50 percent of eligible voters needed to cast ballots for the results to be legally binding.
However, Prime Minister José Sócrates, a Socialist who supported the liberalization, declared victory and said he would ask Parliament to change the law.
His party hold 121 seats in the 240 seat parliament, and is expected to receive further support for a change to the current highly restrictive law from at least two other political parties.
The Socialists made holding a referendum part of their election platform in 2005.
In remarks made after the result was announced, Mr. Sócrates stated, “The people spoke with a clear voice. The law now will be discussed and approved in Parliament. Our interest is to fight clandestine abortion and we have to produce a law that respects the result of the referendum.”
The referendum was held to decide whether to make abortion legal on the request of the woman in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy in a registered clinic.
The wording of the referendum does not force the woman to justify her decision to terminate her pregnancy, and this is thought to be the basis for any new legislation that the government will introduce.
A guide to Europe’s abortion laws: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6235557.stm