Women on Waves is a non-profit organization concerned with women's human rights. Its mission is to prevent unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortions throughout the world.

Women on Waves was founded in 1999 by Rebecca Gomperts. After her training as an abortion doctor, Rebecca Gomperts worked as a doctor on board Greenpeace ships. In South America she met many women who greatly suffer both physically and psychologically due to unwanted pregnancies and lack of access to safe, legal abortion. Their stories were all heart wrenching. There were women who were raped. There were women who had no means of support. And there were women who were ostracized from their communities. These women and their stories are the inspiration for Women on Waves.

Women on Waves has developed a mobile clinic. It can easily be loaded onto a ship, which enables it to travel to wherever it is needed worldwide.

With a ship Women on Waves can provide contraceptives, information, training, workshops, and safe and legal abortion services outside territorial waters in countries where abortion is illegal. In international waters (12 miles off the coast) local laws don’t apply.

Working in close cooperation with local organizations, Women on Waves wants to respond to an urgent medical need, empower women to exercise their human right to reproductive health and legal, safe abortion and draw public attention to the consequences of unwanted pregnancy and illegal abortion. Women on Waves supports the efforts of local organizations to change the laws in their country.

Women on Waves is registered in the Netherlands as a charitable organization under Article 24, lid 4 of the Successiewet 1956. As a result, donations to its Postbank account 3316 are fully tax deductible to the extent allowable by Dutch law. The activities of Women on Waves are supported by private and philanthropic funding. We depend on your contributions (which you can make on-line via a secure server) to continue our activities.

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...