15-year-old sentenced to six months for terminating pregnancy after six-week limit
Indonesia girl jailed for abortion after being raped by brother
A 15-year-old Indonesian girl who was raped by her older brother has been jailed for six months for having an abortion, an official said on Saturday.
The girl was sentenced on Thursday alongside her 17-year-old brother in a closed hearing at Muara Bulian district court on the island of Sumatra, the court spokesman Listyo Arif Budiman said.
“The girl was charged under the child protection law for having an abortion,” he said.
Her brother was sentenced to two years in jail for sexually assaulting a minor.
Indonesia forbids abortion unless a woman’s life is at risk, or under certain circumstances if she is raped.
The law requires that an abortion must be performed by a registered professional no later than six weeks into a pregnancy, and the woman must undergo counselling.
The girl, who was raped by her brother eight times starting in September last year, had her abortion about six months after becoming pregnant, Budiman said.
She was helped by her mother, who faces separate charges.
Police arrested the siblings in June after a male foetus was discovered at a palm oil plantation near Pulau village in Jambi province.
Prosecutors had originally asked that the girl be jailed for a year and her brother for seven. They say they may still appeal the decision.
Global health authorities and rights groups have long criticised Indonesia’s abortion laws, which they say restrict women’s rights to reproductive health and lead many to undertake dangerous abortions at illegal clinics.
Abortions account for between 30% and 50% of maternal deaths in the country, according to a 2013 World Health Organisation report.
Edgeo113r on July 21st, 2018 at 23:08 UTC »
As an older brother I don’t get how he could do that.
Mirewen15 on July 21st, 2018 at 21:57 UTC »
"Indonesia forbids abortion unless a woman’s life is at risk, or under certain circumstances if she is raped."
She was raped by her brother... what is a 'better' circumstance?
MySweetBitch on July 21st, 2018 at 16:02 UTC »
In Indonesian law, she had 6 weeks to legally abort the fetus. I feel like there was very little likelihood of this girl having access to a pregnancy test or an abortion by the 6th week of her pregnancy, and I'm assuming that if she was being continuously raped by her brother, that she had at best a lackluster support system. The reason the girl is in jail is because she ended the pregnancy at 6 months. This should be a wakeup call to all you people criticizing Indonesia. Because the laws that put this girl in jail there are the same laws that would put her in jail in the US. So those states that demonize sex education and make it hard for girls to access birth control, this is exactly the end that it leads to. It leads to the young women who are worst off in society ending up in jail. Shocker.