June 20, 2003
Dutch abortion ship sails to Poland.
Andrew Osborn of the Guardian
reports on the floating abortion clinic that is heading to Poland, where it is due to raise quite a fuss. Poland, home of Pope John Paul II, is solidly Catholic and does not allow abortion except for the certain, very limited cases.
A large Dutch-registered yacht will slip into the northern Polish port of Wladyslawowo tomorrow with a shipping container-cum-mobile abortion clinic lashed to its deck.
The crew will not be amateur sailors but doctors, nurses and trauma counsellors who will seek to circumvent restrictive Polish abortion law and offer free abortion pills, contraception and advice to interested Polish women.
... The Amsterdam-based group says that Dutch law applies on a Dutch boat provided it is in international waters and nobody has so far challenged them. The group therefore plans to pick up "patients" in Wladyslawowo, which is near Gdansk, and then sail out into the Baltic Sea and drop anchor 12 miles off the coast where Dutch law will take effect.
The group behind this is called "Women on Waves", which is the brainchild of a Dutch doctor, Rebecca Gomperts.
The idea for a "seagoing women's health clinic" came to her when she was working as a doctor on the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace boat sunk by the French secret service during an anti-nuclear protest in 1985, and she has no regrets.
"Making abortion illegal does not reduce the number of abortions," she argues. "It only means that it is done illegally, unsafely and at a very high price, financially as well as physically."
"As long as the issue of unwanted pregnancies and abortions is surrounded by taboos, silence and shame, laws will not change and neither will the problems of women with unwanted pregnancies," she says. "As a result of backstreet abortions a woman dies unnecessarily every five minutes."
