ALL FORMS of abortion are illegal in Cyprus and unless the law is revised both doctors and their patients could technically face imprisonment, the House Legal Affairs Committee Chairman said yesterday.
Ionas Nicolaou said that as the current law stood, all terminations were illegal and both doctors and their patients risked prosecution.
“It is illegal that private doctors perform abortions even if they are not essentially prosecuted,” he said.
Nicolaou said by law both doctor and patient could be taken to court and punished with imprisonment.
Asked whether anyone ever had been, he said never.
In Cyprus abortion is only legal under very specific conditions, Nicolaou said.
These include saving the life of the mother, preserving the physical health of the mother, preserving the mental health of the mother, in cases of rape and incest, and when the unborn child has medical problems or birth defects.
According to the Family Planning Association (FPA) the law was ambiguous and often open to interpretation, particularly if the reasons affected the mother’s mental health.
But abortion on demand, where no reason must be given, was not legal, said FPA president Christiana Kouta.
“The law does need to be amended. It doesn’t say abortions are forbidden but it should be made easier for women to have abortions so that they can be given the choice,” she said.
Although the FPA did not champion abortion, it did believe in giving women the freedom of informed choice.
“Most women avoid the state sector because they need to have a various serious medical reason to get an abortion which needs to be verified by two doctors. Privately they can go anonymously. They are in and out and no one knows,” said Kouta.
Nicolaou said the House Legal Affairs Committee planned to readdress the issue but that it was waiting for the Justice Ministry to prepare the necessary legislation.
“We discussed it in the past and the Justice Ministry said it would prepare the bill,” he said.
“It is an issue for the Justice Ministry not the Health Ministry because it is criminal offense… and as it stands today, abortion whether it is a pill or an injection is illegal and doctors and women can be prosecuted and go to jail,” he concluded.
Family Planning Association (FPA) president Christiana Kouta said the FPA was not in favour of the abortion pill as it had serious side effects and risked being incomplete.
“It’s very serious and women might not be able to conceive again,” she said.
Kouta said if the pill method was indeed illegal, doctors who prescribed the medication to their patients should be reported.
As far as she knew, however, a large proportion of women who went the medical abortion route was foreign and purchased the drugs in the occupied areas.
“They are afraid that if they are pregnant they will be deported if their employers find out they are pregnant and sometimes the pregnancy is a result of a rape,” she said.
Some Cypriot teenagers and adult women had also had medical abortions but none that would openly admit to it, she added.
A leading Nicosia gynaecologist who wished to remain unnamed said he had never prescribed the abortion pill and as far as he knew the medication was not even available on the island.
“I don’t know if [private] doctors are getting it elsewhere, but our pharmacies don’t have it,” he said.
Other than the occupied areas, the only other place women could be getting their hands on the drugs was online.
The Postal Services said all packages from third countries were x-rayed before they were delivered. If the contents were suspicious they were opened for further inspection. In cases were the package contained medications, the pharmaceutical services were called in to investigate.
“They then decide whether or not the drugs should be confiscated,” a Postal Service official said.
Only packages from within the European Union were scrutinised less stringently and could sometimes slip through the net if the declaration regarding their contents was false, she admitted.
The “morning after pill” is not the same as the “abortion pill”, said Dr Stavros Neophytou.
The latter was only taken when women were actually pregnant, he said.
Neophytou was referring to Tuesday’s House Human Rights Committee meeting where he brought up the issue of the abortion pill.
During the meeting deputies heard how young women, often underage, took the abortion pill and then visited state hospitals with dead embryos in their wombs.
He said the pill was widely available on the internet, in the occupied areas, or from a number of private doctors.
Neophytou, who did not wish to give out the medication’s brand name, said it contained a hormone called prostaglandin, which made the womb push out the foetus, resulting in the abortion.
According to pharmacists and the State Pharmaceutical Services the drug is not available at local chemists.
“There used to be drug with that hormone years ago but it was stopped,” a local pharmacist said.
Unlike surgical abortions, also known as vacuum aspiration, the abortion pill method is known as a medical abortion. Practitioners said this type of abortion was only an option for women who were eight weeks pregnant or less.
According to the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Group a medical abortion involves taking two different tablets, usually two days apart. Patients need to visit the clinic or hospital twice and have a check-up about a week later.
The first pill blocks the hormone progesterone needed to maintain the pregnancy, according to the Feminist Women’s Health Centre.
“Because this hormone is blocked, the uterine lining begins to shed, the cervix begins to soften and bleeding may occur. With the later addition of the second medication [which contains the hormone prostaglandin], the uterus contracts and the pregnancy is usually expelled within six to eight hours,” it said.
The problem is medical abortions are less predictable than surgical abortions and have a higher failure rate. An incomplete abortion means that part of the contents of the womb is left behind and must be surgically removed.
About two in 100 women who have a medical abortion need surgery afterwards, said the BMJ Group.
