Abortion is illegal, with limited exceptions, in Portugal and has been for 100 years. A referendum in 1998 re-inforced that but by a narrow margin. Pro-abortion activists submitted a petition to parliament last month, calling for a referendum to decriminalize abortion for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Illegal abortions killed five women and hospitalised 11,000 last year according to the Health Ministry.
Seven women were charged with having an abortion, one doctor with performing them and boyfriends and others with being accomplices. The doctor could have been sentenced to eight years in prison and the women three. However, all have been acquitted because the judge ruled out recordings of telephone conversations. Everyone gets off scott free, except the doctor. He loses his car, medical equipment and an unknown amount of money for doing the abortions that he didn’t do and no-one has had done.
More at Portuguese Women Acquitted in Illegal Abortion Trial; Doctor Penalized
It sounds like the judge was playing to the crowd and political correctness rather than being a judge.
I have to say that it is difficult to deny the idea of abortion when you hear of women suffering and dying and I am sure the feminists are pushing and will eventually get their way. Like so many of these laws it will be brought in for good sounding reasons, but I think it will be a sad day. The feminist agenda is not for desperate women to have abortions but for all women to have abortions unthinkingly, just like another form of contraception, to treat it as, say, going to the dentist. This must have a knock-effect on women’s attitude to babies. There are even feminists who talk of “post-natal abortions” and rationalise infanticide as pragmatic decision of mothers wanting to have a baby later in better conditions. I’m sure the feminists will get their way, the loss will be women’s.
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