Counteracting the antichoice threat in Eastern Europe: women's groups know from bitter experience that states are too willing to pay lip service to women's equality.

SINCE THE FALL OF THE BERLIN Wall in 1989, much has changed in the landscape of women s reproductive freedom and rights in Central and Eastern Europe. However, these changes have not all been for the better. With the accession of eight Central European countries to the European Union in 2004, and with Bulgaria and Romania looking to join the EU in 2007, questions have been raised about where women's reproductive rights are headed. Especially controversial is the issue of abortion.

To understand the future, it is crucial to know the past. Much has been written about the status of abortion in Eastern Europe during the postwar period. On the surface, Eastern bloc countries, compared to those in the West, prioritized women's reproductive rights as a cornerstone of their project of women's emancipation. Women in many countries had the legal right to abortion starting from the 1950s. In contrast, some countries in the West did not pass abortion laws until the late 1970s (Italy), others not until the 1980s (Greece). Belgium did not pass abortion legislation until 1990, and even today abortion is almost completely illegal in countries like Portugal and Ireland.

However, the real situation in the Eastern bloc was much more ambiguous and access to abortion shifted over time to meet the political agendas of individual states. In 1956, Hungary overturned its strict abortion law and allowed for abortion on request. Less than 20 years later, due to a decline in the birthrate, it once again tightened its abortion policy by limiting it to unmarried women, those with two children, women over 35 or those who lived in poverty. However, in Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia, even if a woman met these conditions she was still required to take her case to state-appointed committees who determined if her claim was justified.

Even in Romania the situation was not as clear as it seemed. Here too the issue of demographics and state politics came into play. The Ceausescu regime overturned Romania's previously liberal abortion policies in 1966 by introducing draconian legislation that prohibited abortion except if the woman's life was in danger, she was over the age of 45, the pregnancy was a result of rape, there was a risk of passing a hereditary disease on to the child or the woman already had four children. However, these restrictions were loosely enforced when it came to Romania's minorities such as its sizeable ethnic Hungarian and Roma populations. Certain types of citizen were less valuable than others in the country's attempts to increase its birthrate. And we should remember that the state's policies were not very closely aligned with the will of the people; the day after Ceausescu was assassinated, abortion was once again legalized.

It is important to note that throughout this period abortion was used as the major means of contraception in communist Eastern Europe. Women could not access contraceptives because of a lack of financial resources and information and the limited reproductive health services provided by the state. Even today, abortion is the most common form of family planning. In Bulgaria there are approximately 700 abortions per 1,000 live births; in Romania there are an estimated three abortions per live birth and about 60 percent of all pregnancies in Russia end in abortion. (ASTRA Network, 2006)

DEBATING ABORTION TODAY

The abortion debate today reflects the ongoing struggles of a region in which secular states clash with those that consider their identities in religious terms, where the birthrates of minority populations continue to rise relative to the majority and where the East's economic transition has yielded uneven results. What is new to the debate are the tools employed by states and citizens to push forward their demands.

Integration into the European Union has been a key goal of many Central European states. These states have had to establish institutions and appoint representatives to EU bodies as part of the harmonization process with EU laws and bodies and these offices have often become mouthpieces for a country's stance on abortion.

Hungary appointed Krisztina Morvai as its independent expert to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a UN committee of experts that monitors compliance with the CEDAW Convention. During a Committee meeting in 2005, Morvai expressed her concern about abortion. She is quoted as saying: "No woman actually wants to have an abortion. We have this illusion that women have free choices. But abortion is a terribly damaging thing psychologically, spiritually, and physically." She added that she hopes one day that "abortion will be the past" and that it will be looked at "like torture in the field of human rights."

Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004. Less than three months later it appointed Anna Zaborska to be the chair of the European Parliament's Committee for Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities. Zaborska is publicly opposed to abortion and is a prominent member of the Forum of Life, an association of Slovak NGOS and interest groups that seeks to ban abortion. She represented the Slovak government at the 49th session of the Committee on the Status of Women in New York in 2005 and requested that her government support an amendment to the session's declaration, proposed by the United States, conveying its reservations on abortion rights as part of any commitment to reproductive health.

In addition, the Slovak government came close to signing a treaty with the Holy See that would allow hospital staff at institutions founded by the Catholic church to refuse to do abortions or provide fertility treatment on religious grounds.

However, as Eastern European countries continue to seek new mechanisms to put forth their agendas on abortion, the region has also witnessed the emergence of civil society initiatives and organizations aimed at defending and promoting women's reproductive choice. In response to the efforts by the Slovak government to restrict abortion, Pro-Choice Slovakia was founded. The coalition brings together NGOS and individuals fighting for women's fights, including the liberalization of abortion. Its spokesperson, Olga Pietruchova, considers the current battle over abortion to be somewhat ironic, given the country's transition from communism to the ideals of democracy. She stated, "If the limitation on freedom and human rights was the biggest flaw of socialism, paradoxically, after the liberalization, human rights of women started to be constricted even more than before." Pro-Choice has raised awareness in the media and in the international arenas about the plans undertaken by the government to restrict abortion and lobbied hard against the proposed treaty with the Vatican.

In Poland, the Federation for Women and Family Planning has been the country's leading NGO in promoting and protecting women's access to abortion since 1993 when Poland drastically limited women's access to abortion. The "Family Planning Protection of Human Fetus and Conditions for Termination of Pregnancy Act," curtailed the previously liberal 1956 abortion law. The act allows for termination of pregnancy only if a doctor other than the one to conduct the abortion has determined that the health of the mother is threatened, prenatal exams reveal irreversible damage to the fetus or the pregnancy is the result of a criminal act such as rape or incest, which must be confirmed by a prosecutor. In the first two situations, the abortion must be conducted in a public hospital. Yet any doctor in a public hospital can refuse to perform an abortion on moral grounds. As a result, many women's NGOS believe that there are now up to 200,000 illegal abortions a year.

Led by Wanda Nowicka, the federation organized a tribunal where women testified about the resistance and obstacles they faced from doctors and hospitals even when they sought to terminate their pregnancies within the restrictions of the law. More recently, the federation is serving as the key liaison in a landmark case taken to the European Court of Human Rights. Polish citizen Alicia Tysiac, who has severe myopia, has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that the Polish government violated her rights after a doctor insisted in 2000 that she continue her third pregnancy despite warnings that she could go blind. She was refused permission to petition for an abortion on medical grounds and, after giving birth, her eyesight has deteriorated and she has been classified as significantly disabled.

A partner in this case is ASTRA, the Central and Eastern European Women's Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. ASTRA actively lobbies at the international level for women's reproductive rights. A network of more than 15 NGOS in 12 countries, ASTRA has also produced reports to the EU on the status of women in former Soviet countries and a guide for local lawyers on how to use case law of the European Court of Human Rights to fight abortion cases in their own countries.

The debate around abortion in Europe has taken on new forms and advocates on both sides have begun to use new tools as the new Europe takes shape. The issue continues to be wrapped up in concerns over population demographics and in the emergence of nationalist identities. It is particularly vital for leaders and civil society organizations in former socialist countries to work together to develop multiple strategies to address issues that are fundamentally linked to abortion, such as access to contraception, adequate and affordable reproductive health care, integrated sex education in schools and the continuing need to combat huge disparities of wealth and income. Unless these issues are tackled, the landscape for women's reproductive rights and freedoms will remain uneven and fragmented.

A number of reports on recent developments in Europe that complement the information in this article are available online. These include:

ASTRA, "Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Europe, Report to the European Union," 2006--www.astra-org.pl/srhrEU.pdf.

Ipas, "Achieving ICPD commitments for abortion care in Eastern and Central Europe: The unfinished agenda," 2003--www.ipas.org/ publications/en/ICPD_04/ICPDEU_E03_en.pdf.

ANNIE HILLAR, who served as the program officer for the region with the Global Fund for Women from 2000 to 2005, is completing her master's thesis at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, on the relationship between donor agencies and women's rights NGOS in Central and Eastern Europe.