In practice, women have long been struggling to access safe abortions, even when they have the right to terminate the pregnancy.
Map of Indonesia (in yellow)
The government has just enacted a new rule that according to this news report should make it easier for women to get safe abortions in cases of rape or medical emergency, as part of a larger health reform that was introduced last year to improve women’s reproductive health and reduce maternal deaths.
The regulation requires certain large clinics and hospitals to provide medical assistance before and after abortion for rape survivors up to a gestational age of 14 weeks, and women with life-threatening medical conditions or if the fetus has lethal anomalies. This part of the regulation has been welcomed by women’s and human rights groups, but they have also criticised a requirement that rape survivors must obtain a statement from the police attesting that their pregnancy resulted from rape or sexual violence if they seek an abortion.
The article asks whether the police will actually implement the policy and whether there are enough hospitals in the country that can provide safe abortion services up to 14 weeks in cases of rape. Previously, the cutoff gestational age in cases of rape was six weeks of pregnancy. So surely the prior questions are: did women get police permission for an abortion following rape up to 6 weeks of pregnancy? If not, why would women go to the police expecting permission for up to 14 weeks — and what would they have to provide to get that permission? This article provides only one case report of a 12-year-old girl who went to the police and did not get permission, even though the abortion itself would have been legal in her case.
According to the article, the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) recorded only 103 cases of rape-related pregnancy in adolescents in Indonesia between 2018 and 2023, and in almost all cases the girls were unable to access safe abortions. In six years, only 103 cases, in the fourth most populous country in the world? The population of Indonesia in 2022 was 275.5 million (Wikipedia) To put this in a global context, there are 1.3 billion adolescents in the world today, making up 16% of the world’s population.
“Data from the Health Ministry shows that the maternal mortality rate hit 183 per 100,000 births in 2022. Of that number, an estimated 11% resulted from unsafe abortions. Actually, there is very little research on abortion in Indonesia, let alone on abortion-related deaths.”
The article closes by saying: “It is crucial to make safe abortion services available to reduce one of Southeast Asia’s highest rates of maternal deaths. Indonesia has a much higher maternal mortality ratio than other countries in the region. Safe abortion has saved many lives. At the very least, it protects the rights of women who are victims of sexual violence.”
SOURCE: Jakarta Post, by the Editorial Board, 10 August 2024