Vol. 75/No. 47      December 26, 2011

“The issue of abortion cannot be excluded from women’s health,” said Martha Dewi in a phone interview with the Militant. Dewi attended the conference representing SAMSARA, a women’s rights organization based in Yogyakarta.

Nearly 5 million women worldwide suffer from temporary or permanent disability caused by unsafe abortions each year. According to the U.N. World Health Organization, about 98 percent of an estimated 21.6 million unsafe abortions occur annually in “developing” countries, half of those in Asia.

An estimated 2 million women have illegal abortions every year in Indonesia, according to a 2000 University of Indonesia Centre for Health Research survey. Women who cannot afford a doctor’s fee are forced to seek the help of unlicensed doctors or traditional healers, who use a variety of unsafe methods. Outside of the main cities up to 84 percent of abortions are carried out in this way, reported a 2007 joint Health Ministry and WHO report. About 30 percent having abortions in Indonesia are teenagers, said a University of Indonesia study.

In 2005 some 30 different women’s rights groups in Indonesia formed a coalition to campaign for changing abortion laws. One of these was Kalyanamitra, which was founded in 1985.

“Every half an hour there is a woman who dies in Indonesia because of complications related to pregnancy,” Kalyanamitra Director Rena Herdiyani told the Militant by phone. Abortion statistics are not reported by the Ministry of Health, she said. But according to research carried out by the Women’s Health Foundation, 21 percent of maternal deaths are due to infection or abortions carried out by unauthorized health workers. The number of deaths in Indonesia from unsafe abortions is the highest in the Southeast Asia region, Herdiyani pointed out.

In 2009 Kalyanamitra held a seminar in Jakarta to campaign for women’s right to safe abortion. A new health law was introduced in September of that year that decriminalized abortion in cases of medical emergency or rape. “The new law doesn’t protect women who want to get an abortion for other reasons,” Herdiyani explained.

In early 2009 police raided abortion clinics in Jakarta, arresting doctors and assistants. In May of this year a doctor and a woman were arrested in eastern Java on abortion charges.

Doctors convicted of carrying out illegal abortions face a maximum prison sentence of 15 years. Women who get the procedure can be imprisoned for four years.

“Abortion is a business in Indonesia,” Dewi told the Militant. “Doctors who carry out backstreet abortions have to bribe the police and then they charge up to 10 million rupiah” (US$1,106), about 10 times the average monthly wage in Indonesia.

Dewi is working to expand an abortion hotline, which was initiated at the beginning of 2011 by Asia Safe Abortion Partnership. It provides a 24-hour service to give information about medical abortions. “We want to get out as much information about safe abortion as possible,” she said. “Many Indonesian women don’t know that abortion can be performed safely. And it is important to emphasize that is a woman’s choice.”
 
 
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