Abstract
The purpose of this research is to study exception of abortion in South East Asian region compared with globally legal abortion standard, and to bring this knowledge obtained to improve Thailand’s abortion law for its government is planning the use the country as the center of South East Asian’s medical hub. It has a research method by study and analyze The statue of law and any rules which relate in each country which be a primary information. We conducted our studies from wide variety of academic writings, well-accepted research, widely proved documents and related websites. The result of studies discovered that nowadays the enforced restriction of abortion is not supportive to human’s freedom and is a major cause for illegal abortion which could threaten health and life of pregnant women. Therefore, in some countries, legal abortion has become more common. In Thailand, legal abortion can be performed only if the pregnant is sexually abused or abnormal pregnancy is medically proved. Among South East Asian countries, abortion laws can be divided into two poles – 1) Laos, Indonesia, The Philippines, Brunei, Myanmar – ones can have legal abortion to protect life of the pregnant women. In Malaysia, ones can have legal abortion within the first 120 days of pregnancy. The country where freedom of abortion is more open than Thailand’s is Cambodia where within the 120 days of pregnancy is considered legal to perform abortion. If pregnancy is beyond that, life threatening reasons such as health of the mother or the unborn, or unwanted pregnancy from being raped will be taken in consideration if legal abortion could be performed or not, but can be done only within the first 16 weeks of pregnancy. And in Vietnam, there is no laws to prosecute those who abort their pregnancy at all. Hence, The Thailand’s abortion law should have a revision to conform with international standards, and to support the country to be Asian’s medical hub. By doing so, Section 305 should be amended by allowing aborting pregnancy aged not more than 16 weeks legal but this must be under permission and consultancy of both psychologists and doctors. After that, the pregnant women who wish to have abortion would be allowed at least 24 hours before making decision whether to abort their pregnancy or not. Moreover, if pregnancy’s age is over 16 weeks, abortion could be performed when health of the mother and the baby are not in good shape or have tendency of serious health problems, birth with disabilities, or chromosomal abnormalities. Moreover, it should enact that in any case of abortion has to give on agreement from at least 2 medical practitioners.
Author Information
Chanin Maneedam, Bansomdejchaopraya Rajjaphat University, Thailand
Paper Information
Conference: GLOBAL2017
Stream: Public Policy (including Health and Education)
This paper is part of the GLOBAL2017 Conference Proceedings (View)
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