RIGHTS-SLOVAKIA: Move to Cut Short Row over Abortion

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ed Holt

BRATISLAVA, Jul 5 2003 (IPS) - The Slovak parliament has amended a controversial law to approve abortions but controversy arose immediately after a ruling coalition party asked for another vote.

The parliament passed an amendment that would make it legal to have abortions up to the 24th month of pregnancy if a serious health risk was found to mother or child. The law so far allows abortions up to the 12th week of pregnancy. Termination of pregnancy until the 24th week can be carried out under special guidelines approved by the earlier communist government.

The dispute over the amendment has split the partners of the ruling coalition. The coalition party New Citizens Alliance (ANO) asked for the guideline to be turned into law after its partner in government, the Christian Democrats (KDH) asked the constitutional court to consider whether the guideline was unconstitutional.

The ANO had said that unless the Health Ministry guideline was made a law, there was a chance that a constitutional court could stop the right to abortion between the 12th and 24th week of pregnancy.

They argued that this would lead to an increase in “abortion tourism” where women leave a country to have abortions.

The KDH which had strongly opposed the ANO amendment, has asked the President not to ratify the new law. Women’s groups have appealed to the President to ratify the new legislation promptly.

President Rudolph Schuster has 15 days in which to decide on ratification of the law. If he does not approve the law, it will be returned to MPs, and can only be approved again by a majority of the total of 150 MPs. Only 70 backed the legislation in the July 3 vote. But the vote was carried because several members abstained.

The KDH says that if the law is approved, it will ask for the ANO to be stripped of cabinet posts held by its representatives under an agreement made by the four members of the coalition government at the start of their term last October.

Several women’s rights groups have condemned the KDH demands and say the party hijacked the legislation to promote its Catholic and political ideology.

“We will be very sorry if the President does not sign the law, given his political past,” Olga Pietruchova from Moznost Volby (The Right to Choice) told IPS. “He came to his post after leading the Party of Civil Reconciliation, which to this date believes women have a right to choose.”

Several organisations have joined forces in support of the right to abortion. “The KDH has held a view which radically rejects abortions,” the women’s movement Urobme to (Let’s Do It) said in a statement sent to IPS. “Banning abortions is not a solution. The only way to minimise the number of abortions is through education, the spread of information and good access to quality contraception.”

In the run-up to the parliament vote, KDH leaders had said that the legislation would encourage “sexual predators”, and compared it to Nazi plans to produce genetically superior races.

But Pietruchova says that “forcing people to give birth to genetically damaged children is like something out of the Middle Ages.”

Abortions were made legal in Slovakia, a predominantly Catholic country, in 1956. Since the fall of communism in then Czechoslovakia in 1989, abortion rates have fallen steadily.

The State Health Institute reports that nearly 50,000 abortions were carried out in 1988, but the number fell to 18,000 in 2001.

The Church has condemned the approval by parliament, and said that every MP who backed the legislation stands de facto excommunicated.

“In my opinion, they have all been excommunicated,” Frantisek Tondra, head of the Slovak Conference of Bishops (KBS) told the state-run TASR news agency.

The government is looking to patch up what the KDH calls a “crisis” over the vote. The KDH accuses ANO of breaking a coalition agreement by pushing through sensitive legislation without the approval of ruling partners, and joining opposition MPs to approve the bill.

Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda says the four-party coalition made up of ANO, the KDH, the Hungarian Coalition Party and the SDKU, can ride the crisis.

ANO leader Pavol Rusko defended his party’s stand. “Approving the law is a clear signal to the country that in parliament there are enough MPs able to stand up against attempts to make the society clerical, and to keep up the principle of freedom for individuals.” (END/IPS/EU/HD/EH/SS/03)