c. 2005 Religion News Service

PORTO, Portugal _ Pregnant with her third child in January, 36-year-old Maria Silva decided to call it quits at two.

In most European countries, the next step would have been simple: to check into a clinic for a surgical or medical abortion.

But Silva lives in the northern Portuguese town of Aveiro, where seven women went on trial just over a year ago for ending pregnancies. So instead, she followed step-by-step Internet directions on performing the procedure herself.

“I didn’t want this pregnancy,” said the married mother of two boys, speaking by telephone from her home roughly 40 miles from Porto. “Now I feel free, like a new person.”

Until recently, Portugal and Ireland had Europe’s toughest abortion codes. But the European Union’s enlargement last year has changed the equation. Today, eight of the 25 EU members either restrict abortions or _ in the case of Malta _ ban them altogether.

Interviews with more than two dozen European politicians, sociologists and activists on both sides of the abortion debate suggest an increasingly polarized region where secular and liberal values are clashing with those in conservative, Roman Catholic countries.

While France recently marked 30 years of legal abortions and Spain is moving to relax strict abortion laws, other countries like Poland and Slovakia appear headed in the opposite direction.

“Things are changing,” said Manuela Sampaio, the Porto-based regional head of the Association of Family Planning in Portugal. “Before, when the European Union only had 15 members, there was a recommendation that member countries liberalize their abortion legislation. But now with Poland and so on, we don’t know what will happen.”

To be sure, Europe’s right-to-life movement has nowhere near the grass-roots and political clout of its U.S. counterpart. In most Western European countries, its influence remains minimal.

“It’s not a public issue” in Western Europe, said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, a Washington-based advocacy group that often takes positions contrary to church teaching.

One of the few areas of potential concern, Kissling said, are efforts by conservative European lawmakers to restrict EU aid for family planning organizations overseas. Even so, she predicted, it would not evolve into a “dire problem.”

Early indications suggest the new pope, Benedict XVI, is unlikely to soften the Vatican’s conservative positions on right-to-life issues crafted under his predecessor, John Paul II. In an early May address in Rome, the pope likened the “freedom to kill” to “tyranny” that would reduce humans to slavery.

“Let’s say his record in his previous position is not helpful,” said Vicky Claeys, regional director for the International Planned Parenthood Federation in Europe. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict was charged with enforcing the Vatican’s conservative line, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“The question is, will his new role change his views? Will he be more flexible?” Claeys added. “It’s hard to say. But, to be honest, I doubt we’ll see an important change.”

For their part, anti-abortion advocates argue they are gaining clout _ powered not only by an increasingly activist Roman Catholic Church, but also by Europe’s dismally low birth rates and concerns about human rights.

“I think Europeans are beginning to wake up,” said Brussels-based Emilia Klepacka, European director of the World Youth Alliance, a U.S. anti-abortion group. She estimates membership has climbed to half a million since the European branch opened five years ago.

“Young people are fascinated by the whole concept of human dignity,” Klepacka said. “And many people are concerned about the fact that the European continent is dying, that there are fewer and fewer Europeans of working age. They’re beginning to rethink their approach toward the family.”

Even in Britain, debate is growing over whether to tighten one of Europe’s most liberal codes, which allows abortions to be performed up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

“We believe people are rethinking their absolutist stance on abortions and women’s rights,” said Josephine Quintavalle, spokeswoman for the London-based Pro-Life Alliance. “The focus is moving from the mother to the child.”

Like a host of other social issues in Europe, the right to abortion is a national, not a regional, matter _ underscoring the limits of the EU’s competency.

Nonetheless, battles over the primacy of life vs. women’s choice have inevitably found their way into institutions like the European Court of Human Rights, which last year ruled against a fetus-rights case. And while Italy’s Roman Catholic candidate Rocco Buttiglione lost his EU justice commissioner bid last year, Slovak anti-abortion lawmaker Anna Zaborska was elected to head the European Parliament’s women’s committee, over strong objections.

“There’s no doubt there are more anti-choice forces at work in Europe than over the last 20 years,” said Joke van Kampen, an Amsterdam-based consultant on sexual and reproductive rights, who is pro-choice. “Even in the Netherlands (with abortion on demand), there are some groups picketing in front of clinics. That would have been unheard of a few years ago.”

In Portugal, a conservative Catholic country of 10 million, abortions are allowed only to save a woman’s life and mental health, or in cases of rape, incest or fetal impairment.

Socialist Prime Minister-elect Jose Socrates has vowed to hold a referendum on whether to liberalize the code. But even party members are split. Portugal’s former Socialist leader, Antonio Guterres, was an abortion opponent.

“I myself have strong doubts about changing the law,” said 43-year-old Helena Vilaca, a Socialist party member strolling the dusty cobblestone streets of Porto one Sunday. “When I became a mother, I started to see life in a different way.”

Pro-choice groups estimate several thousand Portuguese women go abroad for abortions each year, mostly to neighboring Spain, where similar abortion restrictions are interpreted more liberally. Another 20,000 to 40,000 women quietly search out medical help nearer to home, or perform the procedure themselves.

Maria Silva found directions on how to terminate her pregnancy on the Internet site of Women on Waves. The Dutch activist group was prevented last summer from docking off Portugal’s shores a ship carrying contraceptives and abortion equipment.

Silva’s husband bought the abortion-inducing medication, Misoprostol, in a pharmacy. Sold locally under the brand name of Cytotec, the drug is also used to treat ulcers. She aborted without any complications, Silva said. But she remains afraid to tell even close friends about it.

“I don’t feel secure,” Silva said. “This is a very conservative society.”

Several highly publicized abortion trials in Portugal have reinforced the climate of fear and secrecy, pro-choice activists say. Dozens of doctors, nurses and patients involved in illegal abortions have been hauled into court on charges that carry prison sentences.

So far virtually all, including those in the Aveiro trial, have been simply fined or acquitted. Even the Catholic Church has called for decriminalizing abortions, while supporting the current law.

Despite polls showing most Portuguese back a more liberal law, observers say a referendum, expected later this year, could mirror the dynamics of a 1998 referendum. Then, Portuguese voters narrowly rejected a measure allowing abortions up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. Just 32 percent of registered voters bothered casting ballots.

“I think the public is ready for change. People were shocked by the trials,” said Ligia Amancio, a social psychology professor at ISCTE, a higher-education institute in Lisbon.

“But I’m not sure how far the change will go. Portuguese society is extremely conservative on the status of women.”

Many doubt Portugal will follow the example of neighboring Spain, where Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has vowed to drastically overhaul the country’s strict abortion legislation as part of far-reaching social reforms.

Meanwhile in Poland, birthplace of Pope John Paul II, the ruling Democratic Left Alliance Party has pushed back a long-promised pledge to loosen strict abortion laws until after fall elections.

Polls show most Poles support a looser code. But that sentiment doesn’t translate into public activism, women’s rights groups say. And the Roman Catholic Church, hailed as a liberator from Communism, remains a powerful political force.

“Politicians think it’s better to listen to what the church is saying, not the society,” said Wanda Nowicka, head of the Federation for Women and Family Planning. She estimates up to 200,000 illegal abortions are carried out in Poland every year.

MO/PH END RNS