One person, one idea… look at the outcome.
Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Women On Waves.
Did you know that every six minutes, somewhere in the world, a woman dies as a result of an illegal abortion? I didn’t and I am very glad that Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts, former Greenpeace activist, had a great idea that is saving many many lives… She founded Women On Waves, an organization known above all for a clinic ship that dispenses the RU486 pill to women who live in countries where abortion is illegal. But that is only a small part of what they do.
I recently met Rebecca and asked her a few questions:
How did everything start?
The idea came to me in 1997 when I was sailing on a Greenpeace ship in Central America: Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama… I was the ship doctor, but there was not much medical work to do, so I was painting the ship, organizing tours for visitors to the ship, and chatting with the crew members… During one of these group discussions, I realized that outside territorial waters (12 miles off the coast) local law no longer applies. The law of the country where the ship is registered does. That means that on a Dutch boat in international waters, abortion is legal.
Why did you think about abortion?
As a doctor, I was trained as an abortion provider in the Netherlands. As a woman, I knew that abortion is a huge problem around the world: it’s against the law in many countries and performed in unsafe ways. You see, I don’t think that having an abortion is an easy decision for any woman. Still, every year, about 41 million women worldwide choose to have an abortion for all sorts of reasons, and 20 million of them do it illegally. Making abortion illegal does not reduce the number of abortions, it just causes the needless death of a woman every six minutes.
Who are these women who are dying?
Most of them belong to the lower socioeconomic classes. White middleclass women usually find a way to abort even if it’s forbidden in their country, certain private clinics provide safe abortions in secret for a good sum of money. Legalizing abortion would make it more available to lower classes and prevent many tragic outcomes. When a woman dies from an abortion, her other children lose their mother, suffer psychologically, have less income, often don’t finish school, and are more likely to get involved in crime. All this has profound social consequences.
When was Women On Waves born?
After the initial inspiration I had onboard the Greenpeace ship, I did some legal research, made a plan, and started looking for money. It took me a couple of years. Other women decided to join me on this adventure and in 1999 Women On Waves was officially registered as a nonprofit foundation. The first private donations came from ten wealthy feminists. We used the money to put together our first mission: a boat sailing to Ireland.
How did it go?
We worked on it one year and a half. We had organized everything with the support of local pro-abortion groups, but things took a bad turn. When we were en route to Ireland, the international media started taking about our boat. There was a huge outcry and the government of the Netherlands declared that we couldn’t provide legal abortion on our boat. Of course we could, but the Irish pro-abortion groups lost their trust in us. They actually became very angry with us and we couldn’t do anything. After this huge media mess, we took our case to court in the Netherlands and were vindicated.
Other court cases?
Eleven so far against various parties.
Has the Dutch government always been hostile to your work?
Not really. When we first presented our project to the press in the Netherlands, in 1999, the Dutch Minister of International Development praised it as a “concrete solution to a concrete problem” and stated that the Dutch government should support it. This led to a parliamentary debate and extensive media coverage which attracted private donors. But after the outcry associated with our first mission, the Dutch government tried to stop us. They said we were giving bad publicity to Holland by exporting abortion. As a matter of fact, all abortion clinics in the Netherlands are government funded; we are the only one that doesn’t get any public funding.
After Ireland, you organized several other missions. What factors are crucial to their success?
The most important part is the local women’s organization that invites us. They prepare everything locally and we arrive with the ship. Our presence not only helps the women who visit us onboard, but also encourages debate in the media. That means it also attracts adverse reactions: that’s why all of us have had security training and we often hire security services. It may be very necessary. In Poland, for instance, the opposition was very violent.
What do local authorities usually do?
Generally speaking, local police try to avoid an international scandal so they make sure that demonstrations do not degenerate. They might defend us while at the same time preventing us from doing what we have set out to do. So we have to initiate complicated negotiations. There have been times when local authorities have gone… a bit too far.
An example?
In 2004 when we sailed to Portugal. Local anti-abortion groups – the most aggressive that we had met so far – had organized a big demonstration against us. When we were in international waters we were stopped by huge warships. The minister of defense Paolo Portez, a staunch Catholic, sent them to us asserting that we were threatening the national security of Portugal. This episode created such a scandal that the Dutch minister of foreign affairs had to intervene. Meanwhile the debate in the media and among people grew enormously, a new government came into power and two years later abortion was legalized. Six years later, in 2010, we brought the case to the European Court of Human Rights and we won.
Are there other countries that changed their laws following your actions?
Spain, but we can’t take all the credit for it. In fact public opinion was already very ripe and change was in the offing. In other parts of the world we didn’t get the laws to change, but there is much more awareness now in countries visited by our boat. Our actions are meant to encourage discussion in the media, inform the public, and invite politicians to address the problem. The boat is a good way to stimulate the debate, but it’s only a small part of our activity.
What else do you do?
We have been in Africa but not with a ship. We went to Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and other countries to train local women’s groups in how to deal with the problem. Among other things, we teach them how to use pills, IUDs, and condoms. Contraception can prevent abortions and women need to be informed. Unfortunately contraceptives are not foolproof. Indeed half of the women seeking an abortion in the Netherlands do use contraceptives. Anyway, our main work at the moment is to help women around the world to help themselves. Our website, which offers practical instruction and information, has over one million visitors per year. We also started a separate organization called Women On Web that answers about 8,000 emails per month and explains how to get an abortion with medicines women can buy over the counter. We have also set up safe abortion hotlines – in countries such as Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Pakistan, Indonesia – run by local organizations. They all dispense medical information.
How can they legally teach people how to get an abortion on the phone in countries where abortion is illegal?
They don’t teach how to get an abortion, they give scientific information. For instance: “According to the World Health Organization, a woman that uses this medicine will have a 90% possibility of miscarriage”. Here they are referring to a stomach drug, Misoprostol, that can also provoke a miscarriage. It’s not the best method, but it may be the best method under certain conditions. In Pakistan you can buy it over the counter for one dollar. One dollar can save a woman’s life.
How many women have been helped so far by your organization?
I have no idea about numbers because our outreach goes far beyond our contacts. The local organizations that we train can go on to help hundreds or thousands of women… It’s about empowering people.
The next destination for the Women On Waves boat?
It’s top secret. And we also do many other top secret actions There is no need to publicize everything we do, especially when we operate in countries where it’s really dangerous.
