Abortion Issue in Turkey: The Evolution of Pro- and Anti-Abortion

Introduction

The abortion issue essay will delve into the development of pro- and anti-abortion views within the legalization process of abortion in the Turkish Republic, focusing on the legalization of abortion, the Islamist and secularist perspectives, and the Kemalist regime's priorities of increasing the birth rates within the country.

Abortion is worldwide a trending topic. According to the World health organization (WHO) each year, around 42 million pregnancies are being aborted voluntarily. The reasons for abortions are varying between economic, political, medical, or most important: religious reasons. Abortion is known for being an ethical dilemma within medicine, law, and religion. Studies about abortion frequently and up as being part of political discussions with a lot of media attention. The reason I am choosing for this subject is that abortion is related to more way more branches than we would expect. The theme of abortion is related to national as well as international law, international organizations, religious institutions, human rights organizations, national healthcare, and not to forget: women’s rights. 

My research question will be: ‘’How did the pro- and anti-abortion views develop within the legalization process of abortion in the Turkish Republic?’’ To be able to answer this research question completely, I firstly will be making a summarisation of the developments in abortion law in Turkey. Besides this, I will also be focussing on the Islamist and secularist points of view on the legalization of abortion in Turkey. While doing this, I will be paying attention to the fact that during the Kemalist regime (1923-1946), one of the regime's priorities was to increase the birth rates within the country. I will also be pointing out whether or not during this time period, the regime tried to use the Islamist anti-abortion perspectives to denigrate the Islamists and to conciliate the citizens to their sides.

The developments of the abortion law

Turkey is one of the first (merely 90%) Islamic countries where abortion is being legalized. This process took quite some time and resistance. Abortion has been an issue before the founding of the Turkish Republic, in the Ottoman Empire. The problems kept growing in the Turkish Republic and have led to many discussions.

The issue of abortion in Turkey has gone through several stages, starting with a prohibition period in 1923, followed by a transition period to legalizing abortion, and finally, a period where abortion was being legalized under strict conditions, with the most recent amendment in 2012 reducing the legal abortion period to only four weeks.

The first period started with the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The underlying thought was that the abortion ban could be useful for preventing the population to reduce. The reduction of the population was merely caused by the large amounts of civilian casualties in the independence war. To be able to recover the loss, the abortion ban was being maintained from the year 1960 on.

In the year 1963, there were many debates about which correct medical methods should be allowed with abortions. After these debates followed in the year 1965 the law where abortion was being legalized. This law did only engage to situations where there was a medical need. The medical need was only applicable when the life of the mother was endangered by the pregnancy. The woman was not yet completely free to voluntarily choose for an abortion, but there was a beginning in the process. This period (started in 1965) is being seen as the transition period.

Because the woman was not able to choose for abortion in other cases, the woman desperately tried to find an alternative method to end their pregnancy. These unsafe methods eventually caused many woman's deaths. Which caused a very small decrease of the population on the short term, but on the long term could have caused fewer babies to be born. The period where abortion was being legalized followed after the birth rates began to rise. Eventually, in the year 1983, voluntary abortion for pregnancies under ten weeks was being legalized.

After this period, the national discussion about the content of this new law started to rise. These discussions have been started by Turkish feminists. Their reason for doing so was that there wouldn’t have been public debates about the content and the motives of the new law. The Turkish feminist groups claim that the law is not being created as a reaction to the women seeking for more reproductive freedom and control over their bodies but for the maintaining of the current inhabitant’s grades. Lawmakers were being criticized for accepting the new law without first educating medical staff to perform the abortions and without founding the clinics where the abortions would take place. There is also a lot of tendency about the rights for abortion for underage girls.

We can successfully claim that Turkey has been changed from a period where abortion and anti-conception were considered as illegal, to a period were abortion was only allowed when there was a medical need and following a period where abortion was allowed under certain strict conditions. A recent development in the field of abortion has been in the year 2012. This year the Turkish prime minister has accepted a new amendment of the law where the new legal abortion period would be reduced to only four weeks instead of 10. The announcement of this new amendment of law has caused that the discussions about abortion has been re-opened.

The developments after 1990

The current abortion law is under criticism of many conservatives who don’t feel comfortable with abortion being recorded in a legal basis. Besides this, the liberals and the feminists were happy with the legalization of abortion but are not fully satisfied with the conditions for legal abortion. The concerns of the disintegration of the household led to the establishment of the Ministry of family research in the year 1989. This Ministry had its main goal to offer service and assistance to Turkish families. In 1990 the Ministry organized the First family council. The commission has done in total 27 proposals, one of them was trying to limit the legal availability of abortion further. The proposed article stated that abortion should not be a prevention method because it’s harmful for the mother's health. Besides this, it stated that abortion should not be unconditionally and freely available on application. The practice should be limited to a specific set of social and health conditions.

The adopted amendment of the law has caused many objections and discussions. A commission member of the feminist magazine ‘’Kadinca’’ claimed that such limitation of abortion meant that the government was trying to have control over the female body, forcing them to have more children. She pointed out the practice barriers for single women with research that has been executed with the help of a few fellow journalists. They went to hospitals where they claimed to be single pregnant women, looking for abortions. The medical staff received to carry out the abortion with the excuse that they couldn’t care the responsibility. According to her the legal restrictions on abortions would mainly have effects on economically unstable women, who don’t have access to private services. And that the imposition of legal limitations already was happening in practice, but that it would encourage the abuse of the law.

Abortion limitations and other recent changes in the law have led to women being more dependent on their husbands and marriage. Besides this, the Turkish parliament changed the civil law in 1991 which made it for a husband easier to divorce their wife, without their agreement. The previous law (1924) which was a reaction on the Sharia law where polygamy was allowed, has been designed to protect women against uncertainty of the marriages and to help built strong families based on the European model. To be able to implement gender equality, the current abortion law prescribes that the wife needs to have written permission from the husband to be able to have an abortion.

Points of view of abortion proponents

De juristic ground for the legalization of abortion is that it could endanger the moral standards of the society and the fundaments of the Turkish family life. Arguments to legalize abortion are originating from the center of left parties and liberal sectors of the parliament. Interestingly enough are the two main reasons to support the legalization of abortion in Turkey the same as the ones to forbid it. One of the main reasons to allow abortion is that it was already being performed on unhygienic and unsafe places by uneducated people. This caused serious health risks. This caused the government to step in and legalize it to be able to have control over the situation. Statistics show that every year around 10.000 humans die due to traffic accidents, the number of women dying of abortions and miscarriages was higher than this, 25.000! Mainly for this reason (preventing these tragedies) the abortion proponents are defending the legalization of abortion.

An estimated amount of around 200.000 women have in the year 1982 undergone non-medical necessary illegal abortions in Turkey. The minister of Health and Social Security has in this year stated that abortion was already being practiced in large amounts around the country, despite the illegality. There have only been 4 to 5 cased being brought to justice in all that time. This made him conclude that there were no reasons to not legalize abortion.

A humanitarian argument that promotes the legalization of abortion, is the conception that it’s unethical to force women to have an unwanted baby. Mainly because the women are responsible to raise the children. The anti-abortion people are concerned that women may start using abortion as anti-conception and that the legalization of abortion is causing women to use the normal form of anti-conception.

Points of view of abortion opponents

This group mainly existed out of conservative Muslims/ Islamists. When the population issue and abortion issues became political, mainly the Islamic points of view became a new subject for public discussion. The juridical implications were also being discussed publically. Other religious perspectives such as orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish (who represent together around 2 – 3 % of the Turkish population) did not have a large impact on the population policy.

In the Islamic doctrine itself, anti-conception and abortions are being subjected to different interpretations. A discussion about Islamic perspectives about abortion requires an understanding on the comparability of Islamic philosophy, case law, history, and social life.

In the Middle Ages, when anti-conception was considered normal, the Islamic points of view against abortion were not consequent and clear. Around this time there were no Islamic religious point of view on abortion. Musallam suggested that abortion was historically being tolerated. The debate was about the fundamental and juristic question about whether the fetus could already be considered a human being. At that moment the Muslim judges, who have interpreted the Qur’an literally, that the fetus changed into a human after the 4th month of the pregnancy (120 days). The merely of these Muslim judges prohibited abortion after 120 days. Then the fetus has a soul, it is considered to be a living being.

The merely of Hanafi jurists existed out of orthodox Muslims and have allowed abortion till the fourth month of the pregnancy. The Hanafi mindset became the base of the official system of Islamic interpretation which have been adopted by the Abbasids, Seltsjoeks, and Ottomans. This school is at the moment not only dominating Turkey but also Central Asia, India, and Pakistan. It is meaningful that the think that the pregnant woman has the right to even (without permission of her husband) to have an abortion, but this was not allowed without a good reason. An acceptable reason could for example be that the woman had a foster child.

Many Shafi and Hanbali jurists converged with the Hanafis to tolerate abortion. The difference was only that in some cases the age limit was restricted to 40 or 80 days (instead of 120). What they did have in common was that all the jurists prohibited abortion after 120 days. The only exception was when giving birth could endanger the woman’s life seriously. On the other hand, most Malaki jurists prohibited abortion completely. Their point of view was just like the other schools that the fetus could not be considered a human without having a soul. But they claimed that the soul was being given on the first day of the pregnancy. Some of the Maliki allowed abortion until 40 days instead of 1.

Official Islamic points of view about anti-conception and abortion in 20th-century secularist Turkey have also focussed on children's rights, motherhood, and gender equality. An important reason for the Islamic position hasn’t resisted against family planning practices, is that many verses in the Qur’an and hadiths are focussing on strict child education. These verses are pointing out that it is not good to have to many children without having the resources to educate them with the right Islamic values and norms. When the law about abortion in the 80s came up for discussion, the chairman of the High Council of Religion, that the Council has decided to allow the use of anti-conception with the agreement of the husband. Abortion was being seen as a crime.

The points of view above can successfully conclude that (even though secularisation and modernization have tried to reduce the influence of Islam on politics), Islam became an ideology of opposition and conservatism. The progress of Islamic and republican values have narrow underlying ties that may suggest that they contain different sides of ideological and social control. Human rights advocates have shown that the new preventive technics and advanced medical care, have managed to increase women's ability to manage their fertility. But some Muslim conservatives, who ignore the flexibility of the Islamic doctrine, have stated that Islam is prohibiting abortion and is limiting the use of anti-conception purposely.

There are no litigable sources which can give a clear answer on the question if the Kemalist regime tried to use the Islamist anti-abortion perspectives to denigrate the Islamists and to conciliate the citizens to their sides. Yesim Arat stated in her paper ‘’Feminists, Islamists, and Political Change in Turkey’’ that ‘’Where abortion had ignited feminist hearts in many Western countries, domestic violence activated feminists of different persuasions in Turkey’’. This underlined that a large part of the Turkish woman saw abortion as a European affair and felt like they should have the same rights. At this point there is a clear connection with the Kemalist regime and not with the Islamists which was beneficial for the Kemalist regime who made clear that they were in the process to legitimize abortion. 

Nowadays in Turkey, the radicle Islamic and nationalistic perspectives are completely against the idea of anti-conception and abortion. Their argument for this statement is that the population policy is an imperialistic or Zionist conspiracy, brought to life by the enemy. These critics are focussing on the exploitation of women under global capitalism. While the official Islamic position is explicitly deviates of these extreme anti-western attitudes on anti-conception and abortion, it is not as liberal and accommodating as the earlier Ottoman Hanafi.

Conclusion

In this paper I tried to reflect the points of view of pro- and anti-abortion viewed people. To be able to give a clear answer on my research question I find it important to base my comparisons on the perspectives with the time period in which the mentioned developments took place.

The abortion problem has been a controversial issue in Turkey, with pro- and anti-abortion groups holding opposing views on the subject, with secular laws offering more distinctness on the case. As mentioned in my paper, disagreements on the legalization of abortion mainly existed among the Kemalists (the regime and the feminist organizations) and Islamists (the Many Shafi, Hanbali, and Malaki schools). While looking at the abortion matter in Turkey, there has to be noted that the secular changes have been deliberate reforms made by the Kemalist regime. These changes took place in a period in which the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic experienced a dominance of cultural extension from Europe.

We can clearly see that the religious perspectives on abortion are more conservative than they used to be in the middle ages. Secular laws offer selective changes which offer more distinctness on the case. In my paper, I also underlined that the attitude of the woman from whom is expected that they raise the children has been one of the important reasons to legalize abortion. The reason for this is that the woman’s mental and physical health is necessary to successfully raise all her children.

This finding stands in opposition to the conservative and moralistic points of view. The point of view of the pro-abortion viewed people nowadays is that the woman has the right to decide over her own body. This group sees prohibiting abortion as a violation of woman’s rights. The argument of increasing the birthrates which have been mentioned as one of the reasons to legalize abortion in the Kemalist regime, does nowadays not have an influence on the situation in Turkey.

The anti-abortion viewed people’s current main argument against abortion is that every living being has the right to live. No one has the right to take this right away from it. Not even the mother. The only one who has the right to take lives is the one who gives the life, which is god.

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