Friday, February 09, 2007

RC Church Fighting For No Vote - Portugal

The waiting room at Los Arcos, an abortion clinic in the Spanish border city of Badajoz, was overflowing with women, their faces grim as they awaited their turn to see a difficult decision through to its end.

Although this is Spain, the language spoken in hushed tones here, and by the handful of nervous young men usually hanging about outside, is Portuguese.

For this is Portugal's biggest abortion clinic, handling some 4,000 women a year fleeing from a conservative country where their only chance of terminating a pregnancy is in illegal clinics and under the threat of a three-year jail sentence.

"It is a long way to come and this is not an easy thing to do, but I know I am not ready to have a baby," said Rita, a dancer from Lisbon and one of more than 30 women due to have an abortion at the clinic one morning earlier this week. Rita, 29, hopes she will be one of the last Portuguese women needing an abortion who are forced to seek help abroad, hiding not just from the law but from a society that has long been in the grip of the Roman Catholic church.

This Sunday, Portuguese voters have a chance to strike down one of Europe's harshest abortion laws at a referendum on a proposal for abortion on demand during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The outcome is difficult to predict in a country where more than 90% of people still declare themselves to be Catholic but only a third are regular churchgoers.

Polls show a majority in favour of changing the law, but the younger people who want change are the least likely to vote. A vote in favour of abortion would mark a seismic change in Portuguese society, showing that the church has lost its centuries-old hold on the nation's soul. It would also see Portugal abandon the club of European nations, which includes Ireland, Poland and Malta, for whom abortion is not just a sin but usually a punishable crime.

Nine years ago, at a similar referendum, Portugal voted to maintain a law that campaigners blame for forcing up to 40,000 women a year to seek abortions abroad or in back-street clinics run by parteiras or "capable women".

Rita could pay the €375 to €625 (£250 to £415) charged at Los Arcos. Many others in western Europe's poorest country have no hope of reaching the relative security of a Spanish clinic. "I see at least one woman a week here who wants to end her pregnancy," said social worker Jose Antonio Pinto at his office in the run-down Campanha district of Porto. Most, he said, would give birth if they could. "But they have no job or their partner is in jail or they have nowhere to live," he said. "And they certainly don't have money to get to Spain."

Poverty, ignorance, illiteracy and an absence of family planning clinics make the women of Campanha easy pickings for the parteiras . "They charge around €150, payable in instalments," he said.

The women who go to parteiras do not just risk jail terms but also put their health and future fertility in danger.

Maria, a doctor from Porto, recalled a visit with a friend to a back-street clinic when they were students. "We were like two criminals," she said. "She didn't even see the face of the person who did it. It was all over in 15 minutes and when we left she could hardly walk. It was a terrible experience."

Older women recounted being held down on tables and of crochet needles being used to provoke abortions.

"I have even heard stories of abortions in a cowshed," said Los Arcos's director, Yolanda Hernández, a former communist politician and abortion campaigner in Spain. Her clinic, which advertises in the Lisbon newspapers, now performs more than 4,000 abortions a year on Portuguese women.

Mr Pinto, who stood trial five years ago accused of helping women to break the abortion law, said many of the 5,600 Portuguese women who end up in hospital each year after "spontaneously" aborting at home have passed through the hands of the parteiras.

A court was set up at a sports stadium in the town of Maia five years ago to try Mr Pinto and 40 others accused of breaking the abortion law, including 17 women from Campanha and other poor areas. The trial, which drew international condemnation, saw the nurse who performed the abortions given an eight-year prison term. She received a partial pardon in 2003. Sandra Cardoso, the only woman to admit being a client, was given a suspended sentence, while Mr Pinto was cleared on appeal.

The campaign to change the current law, which permits abortion only in cases of rape, foetal malformation or if a mother's health is at serious risk, is being led by the Socialist prime minister, Jose Socrates. "We have to end this blight of backstreet abortions," he said when announcing the referendum. "It makes Portugal a backward place."

At the last referendum, the then Socialist prime minister, Antonio Guterres, a practising Catholic, voted Polls show a majority of voters in favour of changing the law on terminations against changing the law.

"Even the left is conservative here," said Marina Costa Lobo, a political scientist at Lisbon University. "Socially Portugal leans to the right, and that has a lot to do with the church."

When a centre-right government came to power after the last referendum, it sent warships to keep a floating clinic belonging to the Women on Waves organisation out of the country's waters.
Church radio stations were this week broadcasting anti-abortion propaganda, telling listeners they were "still in time to save lives" and reminding them that the unborn were "children of God". Cardinal Jose Policarpo, the patriarch of Lisbon, declared abortion to be "an attack on civili sation" while a bishop said it was an "abominable crime".

But the church's influence is waning. The abortion referendum provides a crucial test of how far people have drifted from it over the past nine years as the country has reaped the economic benefi ts of EU membership.

This Sunday, Portuguese bishops are expected to gather at the shrine in Fatima where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to three shepherd children in 1917. In this, the holiest place in Portugal, the information desk was this week handing out campaign leaflets asking people to vote against the new law.

Opinion polls, while giving a lead to the yes vote, show that many voters remain undecided. The final result will depend on how many of Portugal's 8.7 million voters go to the polls, with a low turnout favouring the no vote. If fewer than 50% vote, then the result is not binding on Mr Socrates' government.

As Portugal prepared for the huge change in social values that a yes vote would represent, even those visiting the shrine were divided. "I have never forgotten, many years ago, going to visit a woman who had been jailed for aborting and who was all skin and bone," said an elderly woman, Palmira Luis. "My conscience tells me I must vote yes."

Four Voices

I am a little bit sad right now but I think that is natural. I don't know how people can say that with legalisation people will do abortions more often. In my opinion getting pregnant and deciding not to have the baby is such a strong, horrible, confusing thing that I hope I will never have to go through this again. The whole process beforehand is very hard. It really transforms you inside. It is never an easy question to answer: to do an abortion or not. It will continue to be a difficult question for women, even if it is legalized.

Rita, 29, had an abortion on Monday

[I went to a Lisbon] dentist's with a discreet side office where a gynaecologist examined me. Then I met an abortion clinic representative and she booked me for the procedure in Spain. I paid her in cash. There were maybe 20 or 30 of us there. When the nurse called out our names only one or two were Spanish. I wish I didn't have to run across the border and feel like I've broken the law, but I did.

Maria, 28

I went to a clinic in Vigo, Spain. I found the address on the internet. I was all alone and I cried so hard. I was very tense, which made it even more difficult for them. I didn't have enough money for the full anaesthetic. The people at the clinic were very nice, but I was distraught. I don't know how I found my way to the coach station and home. I couldn't tell anyone. I didn't have any close friends then in Porto. My boyfriend did not want to know. I locked myself in my room at the students' residence afterwards. I couldn't go back for a check-up. I went to see a doctor here, but I didn't dare say I had had an abortion. It is only now that I have met other people who have been through the same thing.

'Maria', 23, had an abortion last summer

I was held down by force and told not to scream because it would attract the neighbours' attention. It still hurts to think about it.

Rosario, 52, back-street abortion in 1980


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