Vol. 78/No. 4      February 3, 2014

Some 3,000 women from all over Malaysia come to the clinic every year to get their pregnancies terminated. An increasing number are migrant workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Burma and other South and Southeast Asian countries. “We treat them, whether they have papers or not,” Tan told us.

Dr. Choong Sim-Poey started providing abortion services at the clinic 35 years ago. There are now two other doctors and 15 staff working there. The doctors rotate between Klinik Rakyat and the maternity hospital downtown where they perform the abortion procedure up to the 15th week of pregnancy.

The clinic is challenging new government regulations stipulating that abortions can only be performed at licensed hospitals that are wheelchair accessible, forcing the clinic to stop performing abortions in their upstairs facilities, Choong said in a Jan. 9 phone interview.

Choong is co-chair of the Reproductive Rights Advocacy Alliance Malaysia, formed in February 2007 to defend women’s right to contraceptives and abortion. The group has organized workshops around the country, state by state, to explain the legal status of abortion.

In 1989 the penal code was amended to permit abortions if a doctor deems the pregnancy injurious to a woman’s physical or mental health. It is estimated that more than 90,000 abortions are performed in Malaysia every year. But most people, including many doctors, do not know that abortion is legal.

A survey by the Advocacy Alliance of 120 doctors and nurses found that 43 percent responded wrongly about the legalities of abortion.

The “stigma attached to abortion is very strong,” Tan said. Many believe that Islam does not permit abortion, but 65 percent of the women who come to Klinik Rakyat for the procedure are Muslim.

In Malaysia interpretation of sharia law, which Muslims in the country are obliged to follow, permits abortion under certain conditions during the first four months of pregnancy.

During the 1980s women in Malaysia entered the workforce in growing numbers, particularly as manufacturing developed. Today about 44 percent of women are employed. “This right to reproductive choice is as critical to women’s equality as fair access to education and employment and their personal choice in marriage,” Choong said.

There are about 240 clinics nationally that offer some abortion services, but they are costly, secretive and unregulated. It is estimated that 27 out of 100,000 women die every year as a result of infection from unsafe abortions.

According to the alliance, the cost of an abortion runs between 800 and 1,500 ringgit (US$240 – $450), which is prohibitive for many working-class women. The minimum monthly wage in Malaysia is 900 ringgit. Klinik Rakyat provides inexpensive terminations.

Cheaper medication abortion is not available in Malaysia. In 2011 Choong was prosecuted and fined for providing it at his clinic.

Over the last 20 years, the rate of contraceptive use has remained at the same low level.

Women under 18 years old are required to have parental (or a close relative’s) consent to have an abortion, Tan said. Unwanted teenage pregnancies are a factor in suicides and the abandonment of babies.

In February 2011 the New Straits Times reported one baby is abandoned every 10 days in the Klang Valley region around the capital Kuala Lumpur. Since 2005, more than 500 babies have been found abandoned nationwide, about half of them dead.

“Abortion is still not openly discussed,” Choong told the Militant, “but attitudes are changing among the younger generation.”  
 
 
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