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PORTUGAL: Graphic Leaflets Backfire on Anti-Abortionists

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Feb 8 2007 (IPS) - Just when those in favour of legalising abortion in Portugal were faltering in the polls, a hair-raising campaign against voluntary termination of pregnancy could backfire against the anti-abortion cause, instead of winning over more supporters.

“One day, when I was happily curled up in the womb, I noticed something very strange that I couldn’t explain, something that made me shudder. I felt my life was being taken away from me. A knife took me by surprise as I was playing happily, when all I wanted to do was to be born so that I could love you. Mummy, how could you possibly kill me?”

This paragraph is part of a leaflet found in the backpacks of toddlers at the “O Aquário e a Nuvem” preschool centre in the port city of Setúbal, 40 kilometres south of Lisbon.

Other pamphlets, written using Brazilian grammar and spelling and signed by a church in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, have been distributed all over the country. The leaflets quote psalms from the Bible and depict foetal remains left on garbage dumps. They appeal to the Portuguese people not to follow the same road as the United States, where abortion has been legal since 1973.

The leaflets distributed in the preschool and the pamphlets from a U.S. church both demonstrate that the campaign against decriminalising abortion in Portugal is being waged as a war of emotions, rather than an ideological debate.

On Feb. 11, 8.9 million voters in this European Union country of 10.6 million people must answer “Yes” or “No” to the question: “Do you agree with the decriminalisation of abortion, if that is the woman’s choice, and if it is carried out in the first 10 weeks, in a legally authorised health establishment?”

In October 2006, by a simple majority of votes from the left and centre-right sectors, the Portuguese parliament adopted a resolution to propose a referendum on abortion to conservative President Aníbal Cavaco Silva, and he accepted.

In 1998, pro-choice movements pushed for a referendum to change the present law, but they were defeated by the massive “No” vote in the country’s rural areas, the cities in the conservative north and the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira.

Of Europe’s big 20th century dictators, like Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, Francisco Franco in Spain, Miklós Horthy in Hungary and Antonio de Oliveira e Salazar in Portugal, only Salazar was characterised by a strong rural mentality which is typical of Portugal to this day, sociologist Miguel Vale de Almeida said on a television programme on Feb. 4.

Now pro-choice activists are trying again, this time backed by popular socialist Prime Minister José Sócrates.

Portugal is one of the EU countries with the strictest laws against abortion. In Ireland, abortion is illegal except when there is a “real and substantial risk” to the life of the mother, while in Poland it is illegal unless the health of the mother or unborn child is in danger.

In Portugal, abortion is legal when the mother’s life is at risk. It is also legal – although only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy – if the foetus is deformed, or in case of rape.

However, Portugal is the only EU country where women who undergo an abortion face prison sentences, of up to three years, with the additional humiliation that the sentence is read out in a trial open to the public.

According to the latest survey results released by the Marktest company on Jan. 29, had the referendum taken place that day, the “Yes” vote would have won by a clear margin, although it is losing ground, especially as more people intend to abstain.

In November the “Yes” voters made up 67 percent of the total, compared with 22 percent of “No” votes and an abstention rate of 11 percent.

In the latest poll, 53.4 percent said they would vote “Yes”, 33.6 percent said they would vote “No”, 13 percent were undecided, and 16.2 percent said they would not vote.

However, the “Yes” vote could be boosted by the backlash against the letters which used toddlers as their messengers, and the Wisconsin church pamphlets. Nearly all analysts, including some of the less radical supporters of the “No” vote, condemned these actions.

The incident at the Setúbal preschool, run by the Catholic parish of Nossa Senhora da Anunciada, angered parents who considered it “unacceptable” that their children should have been “recruited as ‘volunteers’ in such an ugly campaign.”

The families, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, quoted very crude passages from the letter titled “Mummy, I have a present for you”, written by a fictional foetus to its mother, who decided to end her pregnancy.

“Tell me, Mummy, who could enter into you cruelly and reach me where I was so safe, in order to kill me? (…) How could I imagine that a mother would be capable of killing her child, when at home she wouldn’t even mistreat the cat?” the letter went on.

It ends with a threatening reference to the Final Judgement: “You will have to answer to God for what you’ve done! Mummy, before I say goodbye, please do me one favour. Show this letter from me to your friends and to future mothers so that they won’t commit the monstrous crime that you committed.”

Dr. Antonio Pinheiro, leader of “Juntos pela Vida” (Together for Life), the leading group opposing a more flexible abortion law, told IPS that the main movements against abortion were not responsible for either of the recent actions, but he declined to condemn them.

“In the case of the text from the United States, that was a product of their own initiative: the ‘No’ campaign never asked them to get involved. We live in complete freedom, but I can vouch that this action is not in accordance with our campaign, and it does not reflect our line of behaviour,” Pinheiro said.

As for the “O Aquário e a Nuvem” preschool, he said that “every committed person does what they think is right, and if these people felt that way, then that’s ok, but it doesn’t mean they were following any directive from the ‘No’ campaign.”

These events happen, according to Pinheiro, because “unfortunately, the reality of abortion isn’t pretty.”

In contrast Dr. Vasco Freire, one of the heads of “Médicos pela Escolha” (Doctors for Choice), told IPS that this civil society movement considered that the actions of the church from Wisconsin and in the Setúbal preschool were beneath contempt. The “Yes” campaign endeavours “to inform Portuguese people on what abortion actually is, because there is a serious lack of information, and we want to contribute to the debate the experience of doctors who have carried out abortions,” said the 26-year-old physician, who declined to make a verbal attack on opponents.

More outspoken was film-maker and theatre director José Fonseca e Costa, who said that both the controversial actions in support of the “No” campaign were “mediaeval, a typical product of Portugal, where there are many sectors who admire whatever comes out of the United States, and others that continue to live under the sheltering wing of the Church.”

Although he has no official leadership role in the “Yes” campaign, the fact that he is a Portuguese cultural celebrity lends considerable weight to Fonseca e Costa’s voice.

In a telephone interview with IPS, he condemned what he called the “militant fundamentalism” of supporters of the “No” vote, in wanting to send women to prison for having abortions, even though the referendum question limits legal abortion “to up to 10 weeks, when the foetus is still an embryo, not a human being.”

Fonseca e Costa added humorously: “Any day now these reactionaries could well come up with a proposal to ban masturbation! After all, it kills millions of spermatozoa that might have become human beings, doesn’t it?”