U.S.-Based Groups Campaigning In Portugal Referendum That Would Loosen Abortion Restrictions

Abortion-rights supporters and opponents from the U.S. and other countries recently have been campaigning in Portugal, which on Sunday will hold a referendum that would legalize abortions during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, USA Today reports (Stinson, USA Today, 2/8). Abortion is illegal in Portugal except when necessary to protect the life or health of a woman or if a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape. The Portuguese Parliament in October 2006 approved a government proposal to hold the referendum. It will ask voters: "Do you agree with the decriminalization of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, in the first 10 weeks, in a legally authorized health establishment?" (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 1/5). The referendum will be valid only if more than half of Portugal's registered voters cast a ballot (USA Today, 2/8). The country in 1998 held a referendum of the issue, but only 32% of registered voters cast a ballot. According to Rui Oliveira Costca, a pollster for Eurosondagem, about 45% to 55% of registered Portuguese voters are expected to abstain on Sunday. Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates has campaigned in favor of the referendum and has said that abstaining from the referendum could maintain the "national shame of clandestine abortions" (Bugge, Reuters UK, 2/7). According to USA Today, the Virginia-based antiabortion group Human Life International and the New York-based abortion-rights advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights have been campaigning in Portugal. A Jan. 28 poll by the newspaper Jornal de Noticias found that 38% of likely voters supported changing the current law and that 28% of likely voters opposed changing it (USA Today, 2/8).

Other European Countries' Abortion Laws
Socrates said the country's abortion policy is "backward" and pointed to the 23 other European Union countries that allow abortions. "What we have to do now is what more developed nations did 20 or 30 years ago," he said (Hatton, AP/International Herald Tribune, 2/8). Ireland, Malta, Spain and Portugal, which are predominately Catholic, have the most stringent abortion laws in Europe, while 19 countries on the continent allow the procedure with few restrictions, according to USA Today. Poland this spring will decide whether to adopt a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion in the country, and a similar proposal is pending in Slovakia. Last month in Paris, thousands of women participated in a march that called on the French government to ban abortions, and the Vatican encouraged voters in a recent election in Italy to support candidates who opposed to abortion rights. Christina Zampas, European legal adviser for CRR, said the "power of the anti-choice movement is not as strong" in Europe as in the U.S., but "it is growing." HLI President Thomas Euteneuer said, "There's a growing movement willing to go to bat for unborn children in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe" (USA Today, 2/8).

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