The scourge of clandestine abortions in Turkmenistan

The death of a girl in the province of Čardževskij has brought to the forefront the phenomenon of the growth of abortions among underage girls who turn to improvised midwives. The law forbids abortion after the fifth week. Sometimes the parents agree and force the children into marriage, sometimes it is they themselves who indicate the clandestine route to avoid gossip.

Ashgabat (AsiaNews) - As Khroniki Turkmenistana correspondents inform, the problem of underage abortions in Turkmenistan is growing significantly. Out of fear of the reactions of their parents and adults, the girls seek every possibility to carry out clandestine abortions, turning to improvised midwives, without any qualification or education, who only in difficult cases ask for advice from professional gynecologists, for illegal payment.

Clandestine abortion, carried out with medicines or operations of dubious effectiveness, costs around 2500-3000 manat (130-150 dollars at the black market rate), a truly remarkable sum for young Turkmens, and often entails unpleasant consequences for the girls' health .

In recent days, a girl from the agricultural unit of Amu Darya, in the Čardževskij province, was brought to the neonatal department of the Turkmenabat hospital in rather serious conditions. The police found that the girl had stopped going to school for 12 days, because after learning that she was pregnant she had gone to the city, where in a "green" bar, one of those in the local market, she had found a shopkeeper who performs abortions at home.

Together with her helpers, the woman had tried to perform the abortion in her apartment, but the pregnancy appeared to be in a rather advanced state, and the improvised midwife did not have much experience.

The girl was saved by doctors in hospital, but she is unlikely to be able to have children in the future. Pregnancies among students starting from middle school is not a rarity throughout the country, although obviously there are no official statistics on the matter. In the agricultural communities of the Amu Darya area, at least a dozen cases have been reported in the last months of this year.

Sometimes the parents of the interested children agree and force their children to marry, but often it is the parents of pregnant girls who seek the solution of clandestine abortion, to avoid gossip and exposure to public shame.

According to an investigation by Radio Azatlyk, representatives of the local authorities have also begun to deal with the issue, calling children from the more advanced classes and their parents to "educational conversations". Students are warned to abstain from sexual relations, and parents are asked to follow their children with greater severity, taking care of their "moral education".

Sexual education lessons are not held in Turkmen schools, while since 2015 the permission to terminate a pregnancy has been reduced from 12 to 5 weeks. The International Family Planning Federation (IPPF) claims that the majority of women in their fifth week do not yet know they are pregnant and that this "restricted" rule actually encourages illegal methods.

Again according to data collected by the IPPF, the vast majority of Turkmen women are not in a position to make autonomous decisions on issues concerning their health, especially on contraception and consent to sexual acts, which makes their condition increasingly vulnerable to risk.