In this day-to-day diary, read what happened during the Women on Waves campaign in Portugal.

The ship and its crew leave for Portugal on august 23 on the invitation of the Portuguese organization Não te Prives, Youth Action for Peace, UMAR and Club Safe. Before departure, the ship is inspected by the Dutch authorities and gets permission to leave. The medicines on board are sealed by a Dutch notary.

The purpose of the ships visit is to call attention to the consequences of illegal abortion, to give information and sexual health education and to catalyze change of the restrictive abortion law.
Many Portuguese women suffer because of the restrictive abortion laws. An estimated 20.000 to 40.0000 illegal and unsafe abortions take place in Portugal each year. At least 20.000 illegal abortions are performed in Portugal each year. As a result of the restrictive Portuguese abortion laws a Portuguese woman has a 150 times higher risk of dying from an abortion then a woman in the Netherlands. Each year approximately 5000 women are hospitalized with complications and about 2 or 3 women die from unsafe illegal abortion practices in Portugal.

Portugal is the only country within the EU that actively prosecutes women and doctors for illegal abortion. This, despite the adoption of the Lancker report (A5-00223/2002) the European Parliament created in June 2002, which advises to make abortion legal, safe and accessible and calls upon all member states not to prosecute women who have had an illegal abortion. At least 25 women have been prosecuted for having illegal abortions in the past couple of years.

The ship can show another European reality; that women are be treated with dignity and are entitled to receive proper abortion care. The medical staff of Women on Waves has permission from the Dutch government to provide the abortion pill to women with unwanted pregnancy in international waters under Dutch law.

This visit of the Women on Waves ship to Portugal coincides with the Dutch presidency for the European Union. Women on Waves h...

The best way to get an impression of the discussion in Portuguese society is to look at the overwhealming press coverage. From august 23 on, we have collected more than 700 newspaper articles. Next to the continuous TV coverage on all channels public and commercial. It shows how our trip has helped to put legal abortion on the agenda again in Portugal.

On 10th of April Portugal's president ratified a law allowing women to obtain abortions until the 10th week of pregnancy.
The abortion law will come into force when the government publishes it in official records, probably next month.

Finally two and half year after the women on waves ship visited Portugal, the national referendum on abortion took place sunday 11-2-2007.
Finally abortion will be legal in Portugal.
Finaly Portuguese women will not need to suffer anymore as a result of the restictive abortion laws.

Approximately 60% of the Portuguese want to give women the right to an abortion up to the 10th week of pregnancy.
Turnout of the referendum was about 40% but the Socialist government has said it will act on the result.

more information in portuguese please visit
www.medicospelaescolha.pt/

Most countries that legalized abortion did so through legislation or court cases. However anti abortion groups started calling for referenda on the abortion issue. Historically referenda have been a popular way to solve tricky political issues and to attempt to affirm the right of the majority already in power.
Even the question of whether to extend the right of suffrage to women has been decided by referenda. In Canada (1916) and the US (1919), an all-male referendum was conducted to determine voting rights for women. This however was only possible after a long and highly visible campaign of the women’s movement and now it would be considered immoral to decide such an issue by a referendum. Arguments against women’s right to vote was that women were emotional an weak and therefore not able to come to an objective judgment. Women were said to be intellectually inferior and in need of a man to handle their affairs. Some of the same ways of negatively characterizing women are now used to deny women’s decision about abortion.
In the past few year abortion referenda have been held in Portugal, Ireland and Switzerland. Interestingly enough it is usually the anti abortion groups that have the political power to set the agenda for these referenda. In 2001 after the Swiss government finally agreed to liberalize the abortion law, anti-abortion groups succeeded to force a referendum to prevent the law from taking effect. Because the Swiss government strongly supported and campaigned for the legalization of abortion, the referendum was won with a comfortable majority. In 1998 the Portuguese Parliament approved a proposal for legal abortion on request up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, but later a national referendum was proposed to solve the matter This was the first referendum in the history of Portugal and the Government did not fully support the referendum, but the Catholic Church mobilized all its forces for No Vote. At the referendum only 32 per cent voted ...

20-2-2005: Today in Portugal the Socialist Party has won the elections! Now abortion can finaly be legalized and the suffering of Portuguese women end.
The former government, a coalition between PP and PSD, refused to revieuw the very strick abortion law and even allowed for the prosecution of women who had abortions. When the Women on Waves ship sailed Portugal in September 2004 to give information and to help women with safe and legal abortioncare, Paulo Portas, the leader of PP, even send war ships to stop the Women on Waves ship from entering Portuguese national waters. Opinion polls after the ship left showed that 63% of the Portuguese population wants abortion to be legalized. The PP and the PSD have both lost almost half of their seats in parliament.

The citizens who have signed below hereby present their total disagreement and perplexity with the government’s decision to prohibit the entrance of the Women on Waves boat to Portugal, which intended to go to the port of Figueira da Foz as part of a project aiming to defend the sexual and reproductive health of women, their right to responsible choice and to defend decriminalization of abortion in Portugal.

The arguments presented by the Portuguese government are not justified by national, European or international law or by democratic and civic norms that imply the participation of citizens and autonomous associations in the free expression of opinions and the constructive debate, in this case, concerning real problems.

Both Women on Waves and the Portuguese organizations have confirmed multiple times that Portuguese law would never be infringed and there are no motives to believe that the anything else would happen. Also, the Portuguese government had and has all the means and instruments necessary to verify if this was true.
Women on Waves have already done the same kind of action in two other member countries of the EU and none forbade its entrance, although abortion is also considered a crime in those countries as well. (Ireland and Poland).

Portugal is the only EU member that takes women to the court for the practice of abortion; it will be as well the only country that hinders the free action of civic organizations.

We totally refute the arguments presented by government – that this initiative would put the public health in danger – and we reaffirm their hypocrite character. The situation that exists today and the existing networks of clandestine abortion are the real threats to public health.

We reaffirm our will to continue all the initiatives that can take us to the change of an unfair and hypocrite law, that penalizes women and which is a national shame.

We appeal to all the citizens to, in sp...

Prior to 1984, the law forbade abortion without exception. At the same time, however, abortion up till ten or eleven weeks of pregnancy was generally accepted and doctors, nurses and midwives who performed illegal, but medically safe abortion could do so without fear of prosecution.
In 1984, the Portuguese Parliament legalized abortion in certain, strictly specified cases. First trimester abortion, up till the tenth or eleventh week of pregnancy, was legal if there are physical or mental health reasons (restrictively interpreted as foetal malformation or danger to the life or health of the woman) to terminate the pregnancy, or in the case of rape. In all other cases abortion wass against the law under articles 140-142 of the Criminal Code. Since 2007 abortion is legal till the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

On the 4th February 1998 the Portuguese Parliament by a vote of 116-107 and 13 abstentions passed a bill to legalize abortion on request up till ten weeks of pregnancy. This bill, however, has not yet been turned into law because the Portuguese Prime Minister of that time decided to call a referendum about the penalization of abortion. Without the referendum the law would have taken effect in 90 days from its passage in Parliament.

The referendum took place 26th June 1998. Only 31,94 percent of the persons entitled to vote appeared in the voting box. This means that the referendum had no binding force as Article 115, 11 of the Portuguese Constitutional Court states:
“A referendum shall only have binding force where the number of voters is greater than one half of the voters registered in the census.�
The results of the referendum would only have had legal effect if more than 50 per cent of the electors had voted, but the negative result was enough to stop the political process even though opinion polls before the referendum had shown that the majority of the population was for legalizing abortion. We underline tha...

Next, some phrases of these commentators in important politic newspapers from the Portuguese center and right liberal wing.

Definitely, Women on Waves/Portuguese Waves iniciative has shaken the Government Coalition.

(Santana Lopes opens up and closes down, showing how fragile the coalision is)

Santana Lopes‚ initial position on November 2nd, after the reunion with the President of the Republic, seemed to open up the way towards a more open, less dogmatic posture from Santana Lopes. Political commentators connected to the liberal factions congratulated this posture.

However, Santana Lopes‚ turning point less than 24 hours later, at the end of the National Council of PSD, puts the more liberal sectors in a bad situation among the social democrats.

Also the fact that this week Santana Lopes has been accepting as valid a revision of the abortion law, even without the necessity of a referendum, can indicate preparations for an entry as of now into the electoral program.

-SEMANÁRIO, 3rd of Sept, 2004, p. 11

Santana Lopes: has no fear of taking a sharp stand and doesn't feel limited by taboos or questions of form and legality. The politicians don't have to be slave of a law they made, is what Santana seems to be saying. If the times are new, if the opinions are new, if the application of the actual abortion law has a negative impact, all that means that it's time to change it. Without fear or prejudices.

-SEMANÁRIO, 3rd of Sept, 2004, p. 6, article by Paulo Gavião...

Portas has lost in the confrontation with the abortion boat

Santana Lopes has rapidly noticed that Portas and PP have lost every battle, and that all they had left was to defend tolerance and an opening in the social habits and traditions, to safeguard any possible thing related to the State authority. (∑) Here, Santana Lopes has felt that he had and even could break away. And, for a day, the TV news gave us the image of a Prime Minister that unauthorized the coalition and government compromises, announcing a new time, liberty and le]]> http://www.womenonwaves.org/article-318-en.html Mon, 19 May 2008 15:39:00 +0200 2004-09-05T03:41:04+02:00 8295e19e-ed8b-102a-90c0-0050da447162 c756f296-ed8b-102a-90c0-0050da447162 http://www.womenonwaves.org/attachment-701-en.html ]]> http://www.womenonwaves.org/attachment-701-en.html Sat, 28 Aug 2004 20:02:38 +0200 2004-08-18T17:20:48+02:00 c756f296-ed8b-102a-90c0-0050da447162