Turkey’s women face dangerous conditions to obtain legal abortion

Turkey's women face dangerous conditions to obtain legal abortion
Women seeking an abortion in Turkey face considerable danger and many hurdles. While the procedure is legal, experts say in reality there is a de facto ban, believed to be orchestrated by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Date 27.01.2019
Author Burcu Karakas

"I thought I'd go to some sort of hospital. But instead, it was an apartment on the second floor of a three-story building. A man with a cigarette in hand opened the door. I entered an apartment with a living room and kitchen. The bathroom in what apparently was the parents' bedroom had been converted into an abortion room. The operating table was filthy and covered in blood."

Horror takes hold of Gul as she describes the place in Istanbul's Alibeykoy district where she went to have her pregnancy terminated. What she encountered was one of Turkey’s illegal abortion clinics, often housed in converted apartments despite the procedure being legal in Turkey.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/turkeys-women-face-dangerous-conditions-to-obtain-legal-abortion/a-47257680


Turkey: Abortion is legal but not accessible, university study shows

Thursday, October 20 2016
Hurriyet Daily News

Almost 10 percent of gynecology units at Turkish public hospitals do not offer abortion services, while some 78 percent provide the operation only if it is a life-threatening situation, research prepared by the Istanbul-based Kadir Has University has revealed.

It concluded that although abortions are legal, they are not very accessible in the country.

The study, “Legal But Not Necessarily Available: Abortion Services at State Hospitals in Turkey,” prepared by the university’s Gender and Women’s Studies Research Center found that there were around 431 hospitals in Turkey that have gynecology units but that out of this number, around 11.8 percent answered the question of whether they provide abortion services or not as “no.”

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Source: Hurriyet Daily News