By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Dec 18 2003 (IPS)

The image of a young Portuguese woman wearing a cut-off T-shirt and snug trousers, writing in bold letters across her belly "This is my business", is becoming a recognised symbol of protest against laws banning abortion, laws that are being challenged even by some of Portugal’s Roman Catholic bishops.

Although democracy has reigned in Portugal for the past 29 years – the result of a leftist military coup that deposed the ultra-Catholic dictatorship installed in 1926 by Antonio de Oliveira e Salazar – laws that women’s rights activists consider "medieval" remain on the books.

In 1998, a referendum quashed hopes for more flexible legislation on abortion, with 50.9 percent of the voters rejecting a bill that would have allowed elective abortion during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Although the results of the electoral consultation were not binding because a true majority was not achieved, the bill was withdrawn.

But protests against restrictions on abortion intensified this week in this European Union member nation as the court trial began for 17 people – seven women, their spouses, a doctor and two nurses – who are accused of being party to the illegal medical procedure.

The judicial process is underway in a court in Aveiro, a conservative city 200 km north of Lisbon where the right-leaning parties win absolute majorities in legislative and municipal elections.

The opening of the trial Tuesday was heavily covered by the local and European news media, which showed images of the low-income women, who stood ashamed and humiliated before the judge and the cameras, without a single moment of privacy.

The media hype created a rift in the governing Social Democratic Party (PSD, of conservative tendencies) and within the Roman Catholic Church, where dissident voices are beginning to question the penalisation of the voluntary interruption of a pregnancy.

The controversy has reached the point that the bishop of Oporto, monsignor Armindo Lopes Coelho, spoke out against the criminalisation of abortion, saying legal punishment is not the solution, but rather that "the social conditions must be created so that families can raise their children" in a decent manner.

The Portuguese Bishops Conference reacted immediately to Lopes Coelho’s statement, issuing a communiqué stressing that "it is the jurisdiction of the courts" and not the Catholic Church to take a position on these cases. The Church "cannot interfere in the juridical-civic order."

At the same time, and in defence of the rebel prelate, emerged the voice of monsignor Manuel Martins, known in Portugal and in the Portuguese-speaking African countries as "the bishop of the poor", who despite being retired continues to be the most popular dignitary of the Portuguese Church.

"Monsignor Armindo is a tremendously intelligent person, an excellent theologian. People should be very attentive to what he thinks," said Martins.

Meanwhile, several contradictory statements from the hierarchy of the PSD bode for a deep internal crisis about the abortion law that is currently in effect in Portugal.

Prime Minister José Manuel Durão Barroso maintains a cautious silence, apparently due to the fact that key party leaders, like parliamentary vice-president and former health minister Leanor Beleza and deputy Ana Manso announced this week that they are already working on a bill for legalising abortion.

But hours later the head of the PSD parliamentary bloc, Guilherme Silva, undercut both Beleza and Manso, as well as Duarte, asserting, "Legislation on abortion must not be altered."

Silva’s stance came under fire publicly from the head of the PSD youth, Jorge Nuno de Sá, and from the party’s parliamentary vice-president Gonçalo Capitão.

Nuno de Sá called an urgent meeting of the PSD legislative deputies to discuss Silva’s "overly conservative" position, while Capitão said it was "a shame" that the PSD is hiding, "not allowing the presentation of a proposal to discuss existing legislation on abortion."

The loudest criticism of the governing party’s inflexibility on the abortion issue has come from the leftist opposition, made up of the Socialist (PS), Communist (PCP) and Leftist Bloc (BI) parties.

The three accuse the PSD of being a "hostage" to its ally, the Social Democratic Centre/Popular Party (CDS/PP), a coalition that has not been accepted by the European Union’s family of conservative and Christian democratic parties due to its nationalist and ultra-conservative orientation.

Paulo Portas, CDS/PP leader and minister of defence, recently reaffirmed his pride in Portugal’s colonial past, saying reports of massacres by the Portuguese army during the liberation struggles of former colonies Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau (in the 1961-1974 period) were "communist lies".

In the view of the PS leader in parliament, Antonio Costa, the contradictions within the PSD prove it is hostage to its allies, because "the one really in charge in the coalition is the CDS/PP." Without Portas’s support Durão Barroso would be voted out in parliament by an alliance of leftist parties, he says.

What the PS is not mentioning in the current debate is that in the referendum on legalising abortion "no" votes came from then-prime minister Antonio Guterres (1995-2002), a socialist, and from a much of the party.

Guterres, a practicing Catholic and head of the "conservative" wing of the PS, put his heart and soul into the effort against legalising abortion, which is seen as contributing to the 1998 referendum’s results of 50.9 percent voting "no".

That year Portugal reaffirmed its place next to Ireland as the two countries in the EU – and all of Europe – that do not give women the legal right to voluntarily terminate an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.

In Ireland, the most restrictive in the EU in this sense, a woman may only abort if her life is endangered by the pregnancy. In Portugal, abortion is legal in that case and if he foetus is severely deformed or if the pregnancy is the result of rape – but in all cases it is only allowed within the first 12 weeks of gestation.

Amongst the European countries, the most liberal on abortion are Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden, which allow the procedure to be performed any time during "early pregnancy", which includes the period from 12 to 24 weeks after conception.

In Finland and Luxembourg, the time limits are the similar, but women must cite rape, or socio-economic or socio-medical reasons for seeking an abortion.

Spain’s abortion law is unique, as it offers an "escape" clause, which many women invoke. They are permitted to undergo the procedure if there is "a serious mental or physical health risk" to the mother – up to the 22nd week of pregnancy.

With Spain so close, a Portuguese woman who seeks an abortion only has to travel a few kilometres to the nearest city on the other side of the Spanish border.

This situation, says Leftist Bloc parliamentarian Francisco Louçã, "means that women with the economic means can resolve their problem without difficulty and it doesn’t matter for them that medieval laws continue to reign in Portugal."

Louçã said in comments to IPS: "These poor women, who don’t have the means to pay for an abortion in Spain, are forced to endure terrible humiliation, to be treated like criminals and to see their pictures televised across the country and even around the world."

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