The Workers Party of Belgium (PTB) has introduced a bill to reform the abortion law

The Workers Party of Belgium (PTB) has introduced a bill to reform the abortion law

June 25, 2017
by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion

A number of other proposals for legislation have already been introduced by other opposition parties – sp.a, PS, Challenge and Ecolo-Groen – to remove abortion from the criminal law and to amend the law in a number of different ways. The PTB say they want to ensure that these proposals are addressed as quickly as possible within the Parliamentary Public Health Commission, in order to remove abortion finally and definitively from the Penal Code.

The PTB proposal was introduced on 12 June. It would extend the right to abortion up to 20 weeks after fertilisation, as in the Netherlands. It would also reduce the period of “reflection” between the request for an abortion and the abortion itself from 6 days to 48 hours. It would continue to allow conscientious objection.

They have dedicated the initiative to Lucie Van Crombrugge, feminist activist and a leader in the struggle for the complete decriminalisation of abortion – although she always argued for no restrictions.

Because of the current 12 week time limit, unless the woman has a medical reason for the abortion, and the 6 days for “reflection”, many Belgian women are too late and have to travel abroad, currently some 500 women per year, mainly to the Netherlands, which costs them hundreds of euros.

SOURCE: PTB, by Koen Hostyn, 16 June 2017 ; PHOTO: François Lenoir, Reuters

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Source: International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion: http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/the-workers-party-of-belgium-ptb-has-introduced-a-bill-to-reform-the-abortion-law/


Lucie Van Crombrugge, lifelong Belgian abortion rights activist, has died aged 72

Lucie Van Crombrugge, lifelong Belgian abortion rights activist, has died aged 72

June 9, 2017
by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion

by Nausikaä Martens
Kollektief Anticonceptie – Abortuscentrum Gent

Lucie Van Crombrugge was born in November 1944, the youngest of three children. She grew up happily and as a young girl attended a strict Catholic school. At university, she took a degree in history.

She married an engineer and the couple moved to the Democratic Republic of Congo for several years, where she had two daughters. Lucie looked after the household and the children there and continued to do so after their return to Belgium, as a conscious choice at the time to be a full-time mother. Soon a third child came. She became adept at anti-authoritarian parenting, as a very caring and loving mother who, in a democratic way, let her children decide what they wanted.

Continued at link: International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion: http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/lucie-van-crombrugge-lifelong-belgian-abortion-rights-activist-has-died-aged-72/