Sandra Cordoza got off quite lightly. She could have been sent to jail for three years. Instead, the three judges who passed sentence on her in the the Portuguese town of Maia last month, gave her the option of serving serving four months in prison or paying a fine of €120. She had been found guilty of having an illegal abortion, writes Mary Holland
Earlier 2l-year-old Ms Cordozo, poorly dressed and shivering in the weak winter sunshine, had told the court of the circumstances of the crime she committed three years ago. Sobbing almost unconrollably, she explained that at the time she already had a daughter who was severely affected by asthma and that her relationship with her abusive partner was breaking up. "He was violent, drank too much and gambled," she said.
The case against another young woman, who told the court that she had an abortion after becoming pregnant by her father at the age of 16, was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired. The crime had occurred in 1995. Fifteen other women were acquitted because the evidence against them was inconclusive.
The hospital nurse who terminated these pregnancies, 48-year-old Maria do Ceu Ribero, was sentenced to 8½ years in prison. The prosecution had asked that she be given the maximum 12-ear sentence, but the judges said they had taken into account she had acted "to help other women". Six people who helped Ms do Ceu Ribero (a social worker, staff at the hospital where she worked, two pharmacists and a taxi driver) were given the choice of six months in prison or paying €1,000.
What the 17 women accused of procuring illegal abortions had in common was that they were poor. "If they had had the money they would have gone to Vigo" one of their supporters said.
Many Portuguese women do travel to Spain each year to have their pregnancies terminated, but official statistics show that between ten and twenty thousand women seek illegal, backstreet abortions each year.
Ten thousand women are treated in hospital each year after botched, backstreet abortions. Commenting on this latest trial, Dr Milice Ribero, a Portuguese psychologist, said "Women are scared of sex, scared of being punished, scared of dying in the places where they go for abortions. There is evidence that pregnancy is a significant factor in adolescent suicide."
I was in Spain last month when this case was provoking debate among Portuguese politicians and protests on the streets. The coverage in the Spanish newspapers that I read made the point that Portugal ranks second in the EU for its restrictive laws on abortion. The dubious honour of first place goes to Ireland. But, the reporter usually continued, the Irish Government has never gone so far as to prosecute anybody for having had an abortion.
Is this a good or a bad thing? On the one hand, we must welcome the fact that the law here is largely aspirational. No woman who has had a pregnancy terminated, either in Britain or in this State, is likely to be dragged before the courts like Sandra Cordoza.
That does not mean that Irish women escape the sense of shame and fear of discovery which so clearly affects their Portuguese sisters. One of the concerns expressed by the Adelaide Hospital in its recent submission on next month's abortion referendum is that it will further stigmatise Irish women who have had abortions in Britain and make them fearful of seeking treatment should anything go wrong. Well, we say complacently, at least they won't end up in court.
IN Portugal, on the other hand, people have been forced to confront the reality of what it means for a woman, particularly a woman who is not well-off, to deal with a crisis pregnancy. The laws in that country are relatively liberal, at least when compared with our own. Abortion is allowed in cases of rape, severe foetal abnormality or a threat to the life of the mother.
In 1999, 541 legal abortions were performed in Portuguese hospitals. A referendum the previous year, which would have allowed the laws to be liberalised, was declared void when less than a third of the electorate voted. Of those who did go to the polls, 32 per cent voted for change and 52 per cent against.
But last month's trial, and in particular the spectacle of women being dragged into court to give evidence about this most painful and private of crises, has provoked an angry debate.
When the verdict was handed down, members of parliament joined protesters on the streets of Lisbon. Mario Gagi, Minister for Science and Technology in the Portuguese government, was among them He commented "The situation will have to change. It makes our country look so backward." In Ireland our highly developed talent for hypocrisy has enabled us to bask in the belief that we are uniquely moral in outlawing abortion, while turning a blind eye to the plight of thousands of Irish women who travel to Britain each year.
Will we ever see a day when an Irish cabinet minister says publicly that the situation must change, if only because it makes our country look so backward? Perhaps not, but at least the rest of us have the opportunity to express that view by voting No on March 6th.
As Francisca Lorca, a Portuguese socialist deputy, commented on the trial of Sandra Cordoza and her co-defendants, "The present law is the crime not the abortion."