The COVID19 pandemic is hitting hard women and girls hard in Europe. Not only because they are often overrepresented in professions with a high risk of infection, or because they have been more exposed to gender-based violence. Some of the measures adopted to contain the spread of the coronavirus are undermining women and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Access to abortion care has been difficult for women in some European countries for years. Lockdowns and travel restrictions have worsened this situation, especially for women and girls who live in the few European states, like Malta, where abortion is illegal or severely restricted and who now cannot travel abroad to seek assistance and care. But even in states where abortion is legal, pre-existing obstacles such mandatory waiting periods and counselling, unnecessary hospitalisation, widespread refusals of care on grounds of conscience and the limited use of medical abortion pills, may hinder access to time-sensitive services.
Access to contraception has also been hindered. Barriers already in place before the pandemic, including the high cost of contraception in some countries, are even more difficult to overcome in these times of economic restrictions and limited freedom of movement.
To make things worse, a number of reports have shown harmful practices imposed on women in childbirth, medically unjustified separations of mothers and new-born babies, refusal of a birth companion’s presence and other failures to ensure adequate standards of care and respect for women’s rights, dignity and autonomy in childbirth. In Slovakia, for example, the Public Defender of Rights has expressed concern about such practices in the country, stressing that they were at variance with international human rights standards and the guidelines of the World Health Organization.
Regrettably, in Poland, the lower house of the Parliament recently failed to reject a bill that would further restrict access to abortion, keeping it instead for further examination. There have also been worrying attempts by ultra-conservative groups to use the pandemic as an opportunity to call for the rolling back of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.
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