Indonesia will now allow abortions to be committed through the entire first trimester in cases of rape or medical emergency. Previously, these abortions were limited to six weeks gestation.
President Joko Widodo signed the new rule this week, which is part of the country’s push to lower maternal mortality rates. Women pregnant from rape or experiencing medical emergencies can now undergo abortions through 14 weeks of pregnancy, though in the case of medical emergency, both the woman and her husband have to give their consent for the abortion to be committed.
“We welcome the issuance of this regulation, which is a foundation for us to jointly reform and build a health system that reaches the most remote parts of the country,” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said in a statement.
Though preborn children are otherwise protected from abortion in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, abortions are still committed there on a regular basis. A 2018 study, for example, found that an estimated 1.7 million abortions were committed in Java alone. The United Nations Population Fund likewise has claimed Indonesia 189 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, a rate much higher than other countries in the region. The United Nations has previously put pressure on Indonesia to liberalize their abortion laws.
Abortion has frequently been portrayed as a solution to high maternal mortality rates – and, conversely, laws protecting preborn children are blamed. Yet a 10-year study in Mexico published in the BMJ Open, a peer-reviewed medical journal, found that in Mexico, “states with less permissive abortion legislation exhibited lower MMR” than states where abortion was allowed, showing that pro-life laws weren’t increasing women’s deaths. Ethiopia also specifically legalized abortion in the hopes of lowering its maternal mortality rate. Though the maternal mortality rate had already been falling in Ethiopia before abortion was legalized, that trend didn’t continue post-legalization; in fact, the maternal mortality rate increased as the number of abortions increased. The number of women who experienced septic shock more than doubled, with the same result for organ failure; the number of women admitted to intensive care nearly tripled.
Indonesian lawmakers may have changed their abortion law with the intent to help women, but the reality is clear: abortion does not save women’s lives. What women need is not induced abortion, but better access to legitimate health care.
