Taiwan Pro-Abortion Groups Bash Six Day Abortion Waiting Period Measure 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 3, 2006
Taipei, Taiwan (LifeNews.com) — Pro-abortion groups in Taiwan are slamming a measure that would require a six day waiting period before women could have an abortion in the Asian island nation. The pro-abortion organizations claimed to speak for the women of Taiwan and said they should be able to decide on their own when to have an abortion.
The Sanitation, Environment and Social Welfare Committee in the nation’s legislature is slated to review the amendment to the Genetic Health Law on Wednesday.
Tasi Wan-fen, the secretary-general of the group Taiwan Women’s Link, claimed abortions would be more dangerous if women had to wait almost a week longer to have one. She said it assumes that women who want an abortion haven’t thought much about it beforehand.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying backed the pro-abortion groups saying the waiting period is unnecessary.
The amendment also proposes that women considering an abortion meet with a trained counselor who would encourage them to look to alternatives such as keeping the baby or an adoption.
Abortion was illegal in Taiwan until 1985 and is now commonplace and the nation legalized the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug in December 2000.
According to NIH, 46% of the women in the country have had an abortion with 54.8% having had one abortion, 29.7% two, and 15.5% having had three or more.
The abortion ratio was 379 induced abortions per 1,000 live births and 255 per 1,000 pregnancies. The abortion ratio was highest for women younger than 20 years of age and for aboriginal women.
Illiterate women had the lowest abortion ratio, while women who had completed senior high school had a greater tendency to have induced abortions. Women who worked outside the home were much more likely to have an induced abortion than those who did not, according to an NIH study.
