Abstract
Introduction
Abortion in Turkey has been legal since 1983 and remains so today. Despite this, in
2012 the Prime Minister declared that, in his opinion, abortion was murder. Since
then, there has been growing evidence that abortion access particularly in state hospitals
is being restricted, although no new legislation has been offered.
Objectives
The study aimed to determine the number of state hospitals in Turkey that provide
abortions.
Study design
The study employed a telephone survey in 2015–2016 where 431 state hospitals were
contacted and asked a set of questions by a mystery patient. If possible, information
was obtained directly from the obstetrics/gynecology department. I removed specialist
hospitals from the data set and the remaining data were analyzed for frequency and
cross-tabulations were performed.
Results
Only 7.8% of state hospitals provide abortion services without regard to reason which
is provided for by the current law, while 78% provide abortions when there is a medical
necessity. Of the 58 teaching and research hospitals in Turkey, 9 (15.5%) provide
abortion care without restriction to reason, 38 (65.5%) will do the procedure if there
is a medical necessity and 11 (11.4%) of these hospitals refuse to provide abortion
services under any circumstances. There are two regions, encompassing 1.5 million
women of childbearing age, where no state hospital provides for abortion without restriction
as to reason.
Conclusion
The vast majority of state hospitals only provide abortions in the narrow context
of a medical necessity, and thus are not implementing the law to its full extent.
It is clear that although no new legislation restricting abortion has been enacted,
state hospitals are reducing the provision of abortion services without restriction
as to reason.
Implications
This is the only nationwide study to focus on abortion provision at state hospitals.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 12, 2016
Accepted:
September 6,
2016
Received in revised form:
September 5,
2016
Received:
June 17,
2016
Footnotes
☆Funding: This work was supported by Kadir Has University Research Grant No. 2016-BAP-01.
☆☆Conflicts of interest: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
