Slovakia Court Rules Against Abortion Ban, Prohibits Late-Term Abortions 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 4, 2007
Bratislava, Slovakia (LifeNews.com) — The top court in this eastern European nation of Slovakia ruled on Tuesday against a request to prohibit abortions there. However, the constitutional court upheld the time limit when abortions can be done — which makes late-term abortions illegal by stopping any done after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
The Christian Democratic political party had submitted the request to ban abortions six years ago, according to a report by the TA3 television station.
When Slovakia was part of Czechoslovakia and under communist rule, abortions were frequent and often used as a measure of birth control — a common theme in former eastern European nations.
There were as many as 56,307 abortions there in 1989, but the number has dropped to 19,332 as recently as 2005.
After communism fell, pro-life advocates in this heavily Catholic nation began working to limit abortions there.
In September, International Planned Parenthood published a new action plan saying it wants the European Union to make abortion legal throughout the continent.
The European branch of the leading abortion business recently issued a document titled "Why We Need to Talk about Abortion" calling for the legalization of abortion continent-wide.
Planned Parenthood complains that the nations of Malta, Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia still make it difficult for women to get abortions — with the first three prohibiting them.
Maciej Golubiewski of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a pro-life group that lobbies at the United Nations, commented on the new document and said Planned Parenthood used a story involving Slovakia to press its case.
"One story is of a Slovakian woman who aborts her child and is supposedly castigated by a Catholic priest during Sunday Mass, though there is no substantiation for such a claim. The story ends with her Catholic husband leaving her," she said.
"It should be noted that most countries of the European Union have more limitations on abortion than the United States where there is abortion on demand," Golubiewski explains. "Most European countries have fairly conservative gestational limits on abortion, and some EU countries ban abortion outright."
In January 2006, officials in Slovakia worked with the Vatican to draft a treaty that would allow hospital staff to refuse to do abortions or fertility treatment on religious grounds.
The treaty, first drawn up in 2003, said it is based on "recognizing the freedom of conscience in the protection and promotion of values intrinsic to the meaning of human life."
