Indonesia Legalizes First Trimester Abortions in Cases of Rape or Medical Emergency

Indonesia will allow women to have an abortion up to 14 weeks gestation in some instances, from six weeks previously, as part of regulatory changes aimed at arresting one of Southeast Asia’s highest rates of maternal mortality.

The new rule, signed into law by President Joko Widodo this week, follows demands from women’s rights activists and health-care practitioners who argue that the previous rule was too restrictive in cases of rape, leading some women and girls to be jailed for terminations beyond six weeks.

Abortion is illegal in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, with the exception of medical emergencies and rape. Even still, a 2018 study in Java, where almost 60% of Indonesians live, estimated that 1.7 million abortions took place there annually.

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Calls to decriminalize abortion in Indonesia intensified after a teenager raped by her brother was sentenced in 2018 to six months in jail for terminating her pregnancy. She was later cleared by a higher court after a public outcry. 

The new regulation is part of broader measures introduced to improve women’s reproductive health that include private funding for public hospitals, and increase the supply of doctors by encouraging foreign -trained doctors to work in Indonesia, and reducing tuition fees for medical students. 

Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, has six doctors for every 10,000 people, compared with 25 in Singapore and nine in Thailand, World Bank data show.

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With 189 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, Indonesia has a substantially higher maternal mortality ratio than other countries in the region, according to the United Nations Population Fund. That leads Indonesians to spend an estimated $11.5 billion a year on medical treatment overseas.

Indonesia is seeking to improve health-care services for its 278 million people, as the lack of doctors in remote areas and months-long wait for treatments keep its life expectancy at 71.3 years in 2019. That compares with the 76.3 years average for the upper middle-income countries.