The East Timorese Ministry of Justice is preparing a penal code that would decriminalize many abortions, but with little visible public support and no public debate, civic groups are questioning the law’s origins.
The law, which is similar to abortion laws in Australia, Timor’s southern neighbor, and Portugal, East Timor’s former colonial power, would make abortions available to women if the pregnancy threatened the life, physical or mental health of the mother.
East Timor does not have its own penal code and instead relies on an old Indonesian penal code. That penal code outlaws abortion.
Fernanda Borges, the only female party leader in parliament, has accused foreign legal advisers and the UN of pushing the law against the will of Timor’s 1 million people, the majority of whom are devoutly Catholic.
“People like [the UN Population Fund] think it’s great because it’ll reduce population size, but that’s not the point,” Borges said. “The point is development.”
The UN Population Fund has been working in East Timor since the country’s break from Indonesia in 1999, but agency representative Hernando Agudelo said it does not promote abortion.
“We are respectful of cultural principles in this country,” he said. “In Timor the people are against abortion, so we must respect this culture’s beliefs.”
Agudelo said the agency had never been consulted about any abortion laws and he believed the law was written by Portuguese legal advisers within the ministry.
Borges said she, too, suspected Portuguese advisers had a hand in the abortion law as Portugal just passed a similar law last year.
Borges called the abortion law, “a Western thing. I’m against the idea of Western culture that says abortions are a way to reduce population size.”
Even Timorese women’s leaders who have pushed publicly for decriminalization say there ought to have been more public debate on the draft.
“The public should have a say in this because it affects our culture,” said Merita Alves, the head of the East Timor’s Popular Women Organization the oldest women’s rights group in the country.
Last week the draft penal code went before the parliament.
Under the Constitution the parliament has the right to debate the draft code and can approve or reject it. But the parliament chose to give authority to the justice ministry instead.
Alves said her group would support a law like the one in the draft code, but no one from the ministry had spoken with her group.
“They haven’t asked our opinion and there’s not yet been any debate,” she said. “I think the government should at least open itself up to have a debate about this.”
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