She was 17, in her senior year. Was on the pill, but it still went wrong. She knew right away that she was pregnant, Alina Chakh says, and that she didn’t want to be. She found a clinic where she was welcome the same day. “I was able to get an abortion pill, but it seemed very difficult to undergo it at home on my own.” She asked if she could make an appointment for a suction curettage, where the uterus is drained. That was possible, but not until next week. Why that was was mentioned quite casually, she recalls. “They said something like, ‘Okay, now your legal cooling-off period starts.’”
Time to think? Alina Chakh (now 26) had no idea. “I was in high school, had social studies and biology, but I couldn’t remember when we had learned this.” In the end, it also took almost two weeks because of Christmas before she could end her unwanted pregnancy. Unbelievably tough days, she says. “I felt like I had to hide. Something grew in me that continued to develop every day and I felt such a distance from it.”
A pregnancy, that’s how it has been since 1984 in the law, in the Netherlands is ‘not terminated earlier than on the sixth day after the woman has visited the doctor and discussed her intention with him’. A large majority in the House of Representatives wants to get rid of this mandatory reflection period of five days. Women experience that according to two evaluations as redundant, annoying and patronizing. D66 served a private member’s bill in which will be discussed further this Wednesday.
It will be difficult for CDA and ChristenUnie, because the two liberal and two Christian parties in Rutte IV disagree on few subjects as much as on medical ethics. In the coalition agreement, the parties agreed that the abortion issue would become a ‘free issue’: each MP makes a personal decision when voting.
Also read: Chamber is quickly moving towards abolishing the reflection period for abortion
Empathy
Alina Chakh watched the first debate out of interest on Thursday and, despite the broad support for the bill, was left with a bad feeling. “I was quite touched. It was a lot about the balance between the rights of the unborn and women’s self-determination, which is crazy to hear if you’ve ever been faced with the choice. I lacked empathy. What are you basing your opinion on, I would like to ask some MPs. Do you know what it’s like?”
Eva de Goeij, researcher and program manager at the Humanist Association, has worked in recent years for better care and ‘more humane’ legislation on abortion. She too watched the debate with distaste. “It hurts me to see how we go back in time. That we have apparently forgotten what battle has been fought. The mandatory reflection period was the result of a political compromise 40 years ago. To me it feels like a power game played over the backs of people getting pregnant.”
Through the platform openoverabortus.nl – where women anonymously share stories – and the campaign ‘Abortion saves lives’ De Goeij tries to present a more realistic picture of abortion. According to her, the anti-abortion lobby still influences too much how people think about the subject in society. “The pro-life movement is well united and has a clear strategy. I still often see images of heavily pregnant women in abortion reports. Or is it about people being forced. But that’s only a fraction of the whole.”
Representative
The Dutch Patients’ Association (NPV), a Christian organization that advises on medical-ethical issues, also acknowledges that there is resistance to the current abortion legislation. But when it comes to the mandatory reflection period, says Elise van Hoek on behalf of the NPV, nuance is important. She points out that for the research from 2020 on which the bill is partly based, only 57 women who had an abortion were consulted. “Every year there are 30,000 abortions in the Netherlands, so that is not a representative picture. The researchers themselves emphasize that the results should be interpreted with great caution.”
She can, says Van Hoek, ‘certainly imagine’ that there are women for whom the consultation period is very difficult. “At the same time, we know that many women hesitate. You can read in annual reports of abortion clinics that some of them ultimately do not show up at the appointment. I think that points to doubt.”
That room for doubt will not disappear – the D66 proposal states that the doctor and the woman can agree on a term “in joint consultation”. But Van Hoek finds that “very hypothetical”. “I wonder who is going to check that. We prefer to see clear agreements about how you can provide the best possible guidance for unwanted pregnant women.”
It is true that a legal cooling-off period can lead to women delaying or missing out on care (for example, the abortion pill can only be prescribed for up to nine weeks). the World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out in 2012. The WHO also mentioned a more fundamental point: the provision lowers a woman to a person who is incapable of making her own decisions about her own life.
Alina Chakh found the latter incomprehensible when she was confronted with it as a 17-year-old. “I thought: I’m here, isn’t my decision clear? But what I thought and said at the time was apparently not good enough for the law.”
As a student, she increasingly wondered why abortion was so quiet. Why was it all the time about sex, but never about this? Was she the only one? “Slowly but surely, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and I began to understand why abortion is still often surrounded by guilt and shame. I found out that the sites I visited weren’t always independent. That reflection time, that abortion is not in the Public Health Act but in the Criminal Code… I noticed that it all made a deep impression on me.”
Also read the comment of NRC: It is high time that the cooling-off period for abortion disappeared
Her view on the subject changed when she became pregnant again last summer. In a way, she says, it was a valuable experience. “This time I was stronger in my shoes and I knew what I thought of abortion.”
She tells how she got into conversation with three other women in the clinic over lunch. “It turned out that everyone had used some form of contraception. Although it doesn’t matter, I did find it interesting. When I asked the doctors about it, they said, You know, birth control is never 100 percent reliable. It can happen to anyone.”
For her, says Alina Chakh, abolishing the mandatory reflection period would be an important first step towards good health care and legislation, and more equality between men and women. That’s why she started talking about it. “Ultimately, abortion does not belong in the Criminal Code at all, of course. We deserve a normal law that stands up for our interests.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 2, 2022
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