Call for Women's Right to Abortion in Lebanon

[Nasawiya logo. Image from nasawiya.org] [Nasawiya logo. Image from nasawiya.org]

Call for Women's Right to Abortion in Lebanon

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following position paper was issued by Nasawiya on 28 September 2012.] 

Women`s Right to Abortion in Lebanon 

Abortion laws have become an international political issue, resulting in continuing debates leading to social change and policy reforms throughout the years. Visible efforts to address abortion started in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) that was held in Cairo, in which the international community agreed on a common position regarding abortion, which stated in paragraph 8.25 of the ICPD Program of Action (PoA) that

All governments and relevant intergovernmental and  non-governmental organizations are urged to strengthen their commitment to women’s health, to deal with the health impact of unsafe abortion as a major public health concern... In circumstances where abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe. In all cases, women should have access to quality services for the management of complications arising from abortion. (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2011)
 

Subsequently, in 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action reaffirmed the aforementioned agreement and recommend that countries should 

Consider reviewing laws containing punitive measure against women who have undergone illegal abortion (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2011) 
 

These conferences and subsequent international consensus documents that supported the removing of legal barriers to abortion reflected a global trend toward the liberalization of abortion law. Consequently, since 1994, 26 countries have removed some level of legal restriction on abortion, resulting in a total of 73 countries (constituting 61% of the world’s population) permitting induced abortion for a wide range of reasons (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2009). 

For example, in 1996, South Africa amended its abortion law, which initially allowed abortion only to save a woman’s life and in cases of rape, incest, or fetal impairment, into a law permitting abortion without restriction as to reason during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and thereafter on numerous grounds (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2011). Observing research from countries where abortion laws have become more liberal, data shows that the number of unsafe abortions and related maternal morbidities and death has declined. Exemplifying the case of South Africa, the number of maternal deaths due to unsafe abortions has decreased by 90% from 1994 to 2001 (Dabash & Roudi-Fahimi, 2008).

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)* region, 55% of women (aged between 15-49) live in countries where abortion is prohibited except to save the woman’s life and 24% live in countries where abortion is permitted to preserve the woman’s physical or mental health, resulting in about 80% of women facing some form of legal barrier(s) to abortion  (Dabash & Roudi-Fahimi, 2008). This leaves only about 20% of women in the region, ones who live in Turkey and Tunisia, with access to legal abortion in the first trimester without any restrictions (Dabash & Roudi-Fahimi, 2008).

Observing data produced from Turkey and Tunisia (only two countries in the region with non restrictive abortion laws) it suggests that the legalization of abortion resulted in safer abortions as well as a reduction in the number of abortions sought especially that their family planning programs have expanded. For example, in Turkey, the number of abortions dropped to 11% in 2003 from an 18% of pregnancies in 1993, while the number of women married using contraceptive methods, during that same period, increased from 34% to 42% (Dabash & Roudi-Fahimi, 2008). 

With medical and scientific advances abortion has become a safe procedure when performed under trained medical supervision and high standards of care (Dabash & Roudi-Fahimi, 2008); however, till now, millions of women in the developing world go through unsafe abortions resulting in tens of thousands maternal deaths each year, accounting to about 13% of all maternal deaths in developing countries (WHO, 2007). This makes unsafe abortions a public health challenge that has been clearly neglected in our region and that needs to be addressed (Dabah & Roudi-Fahimi, 2008). 

In Lebanon 

The wave of change hasn`t reached Lebanon yet. Today under the Lebanese law, that was drafted in 1943 based on the French penal code at the time (Hessini, 2007) articles 539-546 state that abortion is illegal under all circumstances. It wasn’t until October 1969, that the Presidential Decree No.13187 allowed abortion only to preserve the woman’s life, if in danger (United Nations, 2001).

Legal consequences 

The law that is governed by eight articles prohibits the dissemination of information on abortion or methods used to facilitate it, the selling or accusation of objects that are designed to perform it, in addition to punishing any woman who induces abortion and any other person who aids her to do so (United Nations, 2001). Even with the woman’s consent, under the law, the person who performs an abortion is subjected to one to three years of imprisonment and the woman herself is subjected to six months to three years imprisonment. 

There are no official statistics that accurately estimate the prevalence of abortion in the Lebanon; yet, the procedure is sought in the “black market” where it is performed in private clinics or at homes in unsafe environments mostly with no psychological support or post abortion care (Human Rights Council, 2010). According to statistics by World Health Organization (WHO), the estimated number of unsafe abortions (performed in unsanitary setting, by unskilled providers or both) in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) in 2003 was around 2,800,000 abortions, accounting for 12% of all maternal deaths in the region (World Health Organization, 2007). 

This position paper was drafted in consultation with a number of young feminist activists who are part of Nasawiya, the feminist collective in Lebanon, and highlights their views on abortion rights in Lebanon. It also suggests a policy alternative to the current abortion law, promoting for abortion to be framed within a framework that respects women’s bodily autonomy and their right to make choices in relation to their reproductive rights.  

[Click here to download the full paper.] 

 

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412