Portugal: Banning abortion leads to mass arrests of women

Posted on April 7, 2004 by Ampersand

There are good reasons for feminists to dislike Nickolas Kristof. Nonetheless, today’s Kristof column is another reason he’s become a must-read for me.

Kristof is discussing Portigul, where arrests of women who have had abortions (and anyone who helped them, including a taxi driver who dropped a women off at a clinic) have led to strong public support for legalizing abortion.

Like most Americans, I find abortion a difficult issue, because a fetus seems much more than a lump of tissue but considerably less than a human being. [I wish he had said “person” instead of “human being” there – Amp] Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with abortion, especially in the third trimester, but we still don’t equate it with murder.

That’s why it makes sense to try to reduce abortions by encouraging sex education and contraception. The conservative impulse to teach abstinence only, without promoting contraception, is probably one reason the U.S. has so many more abortions per capita than Canada or Britain.

Portugal’s experience suggests that while many people are offended by abortion on demand, they might be even more troubled by criminalization of abortion.

“Forbidding abortion doesn’t save anyone or anything,” said Sonia Fertuzinhos, a member of the Portuguese Parliament. “It just gets women arrested and humiliated in the public arena.”

The upshot is that many Portuguese seem to be both anti-abortion and pro-choice. They are morally uncomfortable with abortion, especially late in pregnancies, but they don’t think the solution is to arrest young women for making agonizing personal choices to end their pregnancies.

Again, it’s worth pointing out that most of the countries in the world with the lowest rate of abortion are pro-choice. The pro-lifers are dedicated to outlawing abortion, but real-world experience suggests that outlawing abortion is not a particularly effective method of reducing abortion.

I can agree with the pro-life goal of reducing abortions. But the pro-life method – passing laws to restrict women’s freedom – doesn’t really reduce abortions, and exacts a terrible cost on equality and on women. There are better ways..

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2 Responses to Portugal: Banning abortion leads to mass arrests of women

  1. Peter says:
    April 7, 2004 at 11:45 pm

    good post. am i supposed to be shocked to hear someone say I’m in the middle, on abortion? hmmm…

  2. Dan S. says:
    April 8, 2004 at 6:14 am

    On the plus side, Kristof has stopped saying that feminists ignore third world women in their rush to have abortions. Now he’s blaming maternal mortality and child prostitution on . . . college activists! Sigh . . .

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