CEDAW Committee Expert Grills Indonesian Delegation about Abortion and Maternal Mortality
Posted on | July 11, 2012 by Elizabeth Charnowski |
One of the CEDAW Committee experts bombarded the Indonesian Delegation about what the country is doing to prevent maternal mortality and about the limited situations in which abortion is legal.
Indonesian laws only allow abortion in cases when there is an emergency situation in the first 6 weeks of pregnancy and the mother’s life and child’s life is threatened. The committee expert asked if a woman is forced to have an unsafe abortion or face the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy if an emergency situation arises after the 6th week of pregnancy. She also asked why the abortion laws do not allow for abortion in the case of incest.
In addition, the committee expert stated that “maternal mortality is because of a lack or low access to family planning services.”
Without directly answering all the expert’s questions on abortion and maternal mortality, the delegate expressed that the country is undertaking a various number of measures to reduce maternal mortality, but did not mention anything about changing abortion laws in those adopted measures. Maybe countries are getting the message that expanding legalized abortions does not reduce maternal mortality.
The committee expert did not seem to like that answer because she jumped on the chance to ask more questions about the limited abortion laws during the time for follow-up questions.
Tags: abortion > CEDAW > Family Planning > maternal mortality