Topic: Reproductive Health
Country: Portugal
Delegate Name: Emma Ellefson-Frank
School: Williamston High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Portugal position papers GLIMUN 2017 committees
For decades, women in countries all around the world have been struggling to gain basic rights over their own bodies. Included in this quest for equal protection under the law are problems with access to contraception, safe abortion, and information about family planning. This lack of interest and funding from governments and citizens alike has led to an elevated death rate of young women from STDs and illegal abortions.This should be of concern to all nations with governments promising to do the best for their people because it concerns half of their population. To begin with, Portugal has recently become aware of the errors in its policies concerning women’s healthcare. In a single year 5,000 women were hospitalized as a result of illegal abortions. In an effort to combat this startling statistic, Portugal passed a law in 2007 allowing abortion up until 10 weeks into the pregnancy. Additionally the use of condoms and reliable birth control pills have gone up almost 5% since 1997. Portugal looks favorably upon changes in policies about sexual and reproductive health. Although Portugal has made recent advancements in terms of women’s healthcare, anything too radical would not be in Portugal’s best interests. In response to this issue of women’s access to healthcare, Portugal would like to suggest a plan that allows for distribution and easy access of both male and female contraceptives. This would allow for fewer unplanned pregnancies and therefore fewer illegal abortions. Additionally Portugal is interested in better educating young people in terms of family planning and sexual education. However Portugal is not interested in any laws allowing abortion past 10 weeks. Support in this matter would be expected from countries with firm stances on abortions but flexibility with concerns of other forms of birth control. Some of these countries would include but are not limited to, Chile and El Salvador.
