Helsingin Sanomat of Finland reports that Finnish officials are set to crack down on travel by women who are past the 24th week of pregnancy. Late term abortions are illegal in Finland – after the 24th week – unless there is a “serious threat to the mother’s health.” So, women sometimes seek to travel to other European Union countries where late term abortion is less regulated. Technically, travel in the last few weeks of pregnancy by air, water, and rail is made difficult by transportation rules and by carriers. But Finland has been discussing expanding the authority of the state to keep pregnant women from leaving the country for such services. Aside from the practical complexity of such a rule, the annual national doctor’s convention in Helsinki discussed the ethical issues; Ursula Vala (long time bioethics voice in Finland) said that “a doctor who reported such a patient to the authorities would probably be in violation of doctor-patient confidentiality.”
Finland is roughly the size of a bar of soap, but it had 800 abortions past the 12th week in 2003, a significant enough number to make this a public health as well as ethical and medical issue.
Labels: abortion, abortion vacation, confidentiality, doctor-patient relationships, Finland, late-term abortion