Pizaro Gozali Idrus and Arie Firdaus, Jakarta – Indonesia has widened the window to 14 from six weeks after conception for women to have abortions in cases of health emergencies and pregnancies from rape and sexual violence – a divisive change in the Muslim-majority country where termination is mostly illegal.

Gender rights activists in Southeast Asia's most populous country who have been demanding the change welcomed the move that came two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending that nation's right to abortion.

The Indonesian activists had demanded allowing more time for abortion in cases of sexual assault or where the mother's life is at peril, so women would not be thrown in prison for terminations beyond six weeks, and to minimize botched procedures in the country that lacks safe and accessible abortion services.

The change, though, has been slammed by the country's top Muslim clerical body, Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), which says Islam prohibits abortion, except in certain specific cases, because the fetus gains a soul after 40 days of conception.

"Appropriate," was how Johanna Poerba, a researcher at the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, described the change, formalized by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo last week as part of the enactment of a wider health law.

"Sometimes a woman may not realize she is pregnant within 40 days," Johanna told BenarNews.

She hoped, though, that the change would be accompanied by a better response to rape reports by relevant institutions including police.

Johanna referred to her organization's findings in a 2021 case of a 12-year-old girl from Jombang, East Java, who was pregnant after being raped by a 56-year-old man.

The girl was refused an abortion by investigators because they had "no experience" in dealing with such requests.

"There is still no national commitment from the police to issue internal regulations or guidelines to facilitate the issuance of rape allegation reports," she said.

According to Safe Abortion Action Fund, an international NGO, the new provisions "bring Indonesia in line with the World Health Organization standards for gestation."

The head of the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) said she appreciated and supported the implementation of the new provisions for victims of sexual violence and crimes that result in pregnancy.

The changes are a part of the victim's right to recovery, Siti Aminah Tardi, commissioner at Komnas Perempuan, told BenarNews.

"It is necessary to improve health service facilities and infrastructure [to include] doctors and health workers with a gender perspective, and a coordination mechanism between the police, victims' companions and advanced health facilities," she said.

MUI's leaders disagree vehemently. Cholil Nafis, the head of MUI's campaign division, said the organization had in 2005 issued a fatwa, which means edict or ruling, saying abortion could only be performed within 40 days, or a little under six weeks, after conception.

"Scholars unanimously agree that abortion is not permissible after a soul is breathed into the fetus, which occurs at 40 days of pregnancy," he told BenarNews.

"Fundamentally, abortion is prohibited in Islam except in cases of necessity and under specific conditions."

MUI's fatwa specifies that abortion is allowed if the pregnant woman suffers from severe physical illnesses such as advanced-stage cancer, tuberculosis with cavities and other serious physical conditions as determined by a medical team, Cholil said.

Additionally, if the mother's life is endangered or if the fetus has an incurable genetic defect, a termination is allowed.

In the case of a pregnancy that is caused by rape, abortion is allowed within six weeks but if an authorized team determines that rape was indeed the cause.

The so-called authorized team would include religious scholars, the victim's family members and doctors, Cholil said.

In all these cases, he emphasized, abortion must be carried out within 40 days of conception.

"Abortion is strictly prohibited for pregnancies resulting from adultery," he added, unasked.

For the Indonesian Public Health Experts Association, the conditional aspect of the new rule is what makes it acceptable, because it ensures that none of the country's prevailing norms are violated, Chairman Ede Surya Darmawan told BenarNews.

He didn't elaborate on what these prevailing norms might be, merely repeating the conditions set for allowing abortion within 14 weeks.

"There are special provisions and exceptions, that abortion can only be performed on rape victims or those who have a medical emergency," Ede Surya said.

If these conditions do not apply, a woman who has an abortion faces up to four years in prison under Indonesia's new criminal code passed in 2022.

Anyone who assists in the abortion could be jailed for five years and anyone who promotes birth control devices faces six months in jail, according to the code.

The government had said the provisions were necessary to uphold moral values and religious norms – and to protect human life.

An estimated 1.7 million abortions took place in 2018 in Java, Indonesia's most populous island, according to a study published in 2020 by a journal produced by the Guttmacher Institute.

That number of procedures in 2018 in Java translated to a rate of 43 abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 49 on the island, according to the authors of the study in the journal International Perspectives in Sexual and Reproductive Health.

An island in a country where abortion is mostly illegal beat the 2018 global abortion rate of 39 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 49, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

That same year the abortion rate for Southeast Asia was 34 per 1,000 women. As for Muslim-majority nations, the abortion rate among them back then varied widely, ranging from three per 1,000 women in Iran to 50 in Azerbaijan.

What was worrying about Java, the study found, was that most women who had abortions had self-managed – using methods such as traditional herbal medicine.

'Murder'

In May 2023, police arrested a man in Bali who practiced dentistry, but didn't have a valid license to do so, for allegedly performing illegal abortions.

A Bali police spokesman said at the time that the man identified as Ketut Arik Wiantara, allegedly had a list of more than 1,300 patients over two years.

The suspect told police that "there were many requests for abortion and he was concerned about the future of his patients because they were young," the spokesman told reporters.

That same month, "murder" was how a then-representative of two powerful Indonesian medical associations characterized allowing abortion until 14 weeks from conception instead of just six, according to a report published in September 2023 by Project Multatuli, a public journalism initiative.

The associations were the Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) and Indonesian Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology (POGI), and the representative was Ilyas Angsar, who used to head an in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic, Project Multatuli reported.

He was commenting at a forum on the possible change that would allow abortion until 14 weeks in some cases, which Indonesia's House of Representatives was discussing back then in May 2023, the journalism project's report said.

Ilyas maintained that allowing abortion until 14 weeks was tantamount to murder even in the context of the case of the 12-year-old rape victim from East Java who was refused a termination in 2021.

"This is so contradictory," he said, according to Project Multatuli's report. "There are people who have difficulty having children, and yet others are throwing their children away."

[Ami Afriatni in Jakarta contributed to this report.]

Source: https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/indonesian/abortion-window-widened-08012024185515.htm