FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Women’s seminar hears call for legalised abortion

Women’s seminar hears call for legalised abortion

WOMEN’S RIGHTS groups have called for the revocation of the law against abortion, allowing women to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

The issue was highlighted at a public seminar, titled “Women who abort their pregnancies are not criminals and abortion must be legalised”, at Thammasat University on Monday.
The seminar heard that women in Thailand face risks to their reputation, welfare, health and even their lives through illegal and unsafe abortions because the procedure is outlawed under the Thai Criminal Code.

Women’s seminar hears call for legalised abortion
Manushya Foundation executive director Emilie Pradichit said all women should have the freedom to decide what to do with their own bodies and legal, safe abortion was a human right that should be respected.
However, she said law enforcement in Thailand did not pay attention to human-rights principles even though Thailand had an obligation to follow the international Human Rights Declaration.
She added that abortion was still illegal, even though deaths from unsafe abortions was among the most common causes of fatalities in women around the world.
“Some 300,000 to 400,000 women in Thailand risk their lives on illegal and unsafe abortions every year. This problem still exists and there is a tendency that it will continue into the future, because Thailand still has an outdated law that criminalises safe abortion,” she said.
“As long as we keep this law, many women will be kept away from the choice to fix what they have done wrong in an unplanned pregnancy, and restart their path in life with good health.”
She said the Criminal Code should be amended to legalise abortion out of respect for women’s rights over the own bodies, and to offer women who are unprepared to have a child a chance to choose their path in life.
The relevant law is Section 3 of the Criminal Code about foeticide. Article 301 states that women who aborts pregnancies, or anyone who allows another to undergo an abortion, should be punished with no longer than three years in prison, a Bt6,000 fine or both.
Article 302 states that anyone who conducts an abortion for a woman should be punished by five years in prison, Bt10,000 fine or both.
The law only allows for abortion if a doctor concludes the pregnancy is harmful to a woman’s health or the pregnancy is a product of a criminal offence such as rape.
The coordinator of Tamtang, or the “path building” women’s rights group, Kaitlyn Mccoy, told the seminar about a study in the United Kingdom showing that before abortion was legalised in 1967, the country had one of the highest teenage pregnancies rates in Europe, and the death rate among women who had undergone unsafe abortions was 30 out of every 50 undergoing the procedure.
After abortion became legal, there were intense campaigns to educate people about contraception choices and the risks of unsafe abortions, and sex education was taught in school. The campaign resulted in a dramatic drop in the number of unwanted and teenage pregnancies, and the abortion rate was also lowered.
Mccoy added that legal abortion, along with sex education and knowledge about contraception, helped prevent unexpected pregnancies.
Dr Nithiwat Saengruang, from the Referral System for Safe Abortion medical network, said not only had developed Western countries already adopted legal abortion, so had many countries in this region, including Nepal, Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia.
However, legal abortions still seem unlikely in Thailand in the near future. Sunthorn Pliansri, a legal officer with the Council of State, said a committee had been set up to improve the Criminal Code, and the law concerning abortion was one of the areas under discussion.
Sunthorn said possible amendment to the law on foeticide would not be to legalise abortion, but would provide more open conditions for people who needed to undergo abortions under the supervision of doctors.

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