AMSTERDAM— Dr. Rebecca Gomperts operates what pro-life activists refer to as the “Ship of Death.” The vessel is a project of the group Women on Waves (WoW,) a Dutch non-profit founded in 1999. The group sails yachts to countries that restrict access to abortion in order to give women a chance to have legal abortions.
WoW’s ship docks in countries such as Ireland, Spain and Morocco, where women board the boat and are taken to international waters. The women then are able to undergo a medical, non-surgical abortion that involves a pill containing the drugs misoprostol and mifepristone.
Because the procedure takes place in international waters, the people on the boat are beholden to the laws of the boat’s registration. Abortion is legal in the Netherlands up to six-and-a-half weeks after conception.
WoW’s ship is by definition limited in scope; thus, most of the organization’s work occurs online in WoW’s initiative, Women on Web. The site, which Gomperts estimates answers 100,000 emails in 12 languages every year, spreads information on how women can get misoprostol.
In addition, WoW promotes the creation of safe abortion hotlines in Peru, Venezuela, Pakistan, Thailand, Kenya, Indonesia and other nations. The hotlines provide information, based on findings by the World Health Organization (WHO,) on how women themselves can use misoprostol to induce an abortion safely.
Hotlines are protected by law because of international human rights agreements.
WoW’s founder, Gomperts, is a Dutch physician and women’s rights activist. She is motivated by “the right to autonomy and self-determination,” she asserts.
After Gomperts became an abortion provider, she traveled abroad to Guinea to intern at a hospital. It was there that she saw the realities of women in countries that restrict abortion access.
“There were constantly women coming in there on the verge of shock, infected and bleeding because of botched abortions,” Gomperts states.
After her time in Guinea, Gomperts became a doctor on the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior II, where she says she was politically educated. It was during her time with Greenpeace that she came up with the idea of a floating abortion provider.
WoW’s first ship, Aurora, launched in 2001 and sailed to Ireland. It had 20 RU-486 pills, condoms, birth control pills and a surgical abortion facility that Gomperts had designed.
WoW reports that about 100 women requested abortions in Ireland, but upon docking, the ship was inundated by protesters and the media. The Dutch justice minister, worrying about political ramifications, claimed that WoW did not have proper medical license, and the ship was forced to return home.
A mission to Poland in 2003 was met with similar resistance, with protestors threatening to take photos of women who entered the ship. The next year, the ship was sent away from Portugal by two Navy warships that the government had launched.
Excluding Gomperts, every member of WoW is unpaid, and women who utilize WoW’s services pay nothing.
The ship runs because of Dutch investors and donors. Each mission, lasting a week, costs the organization roughly 30,000 to 40,000 Euros.
The WHO reports that 21.6 million women undergo unsafe abortions globally every year, 18.5 million of which occur in developing nations. Experts suggest that actual figures could be much higher.
Further, 47,000 women die due to complications stemming from unsafe abortions, which constitutes 13 percent of maternal deaths.
“The most important misconception is that abortion is rare, or that it’s ever going to be rare,” Gomperts asserts. “One in three women in the (United States) have [sic]had an abortion. And worldwide, it’s almost every woman…It’s one of the safest medical procedures. It’s safer than giving birth.”
Gomperts and WoW are the subject of a recent documentary that premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2014. Filmmaker Diana Whitten followed Gomperts for seven years to shoot the film.
Both filmmaker and physician feel that premiering the film in Austin, Texas is a powerful statement.
Texas has recently become a major battleground in the fight over abortion rights in the U.S., with strict new laws for abortion clinics coming into effect in the state in November 2013. Such restrictions have led to clinic closures; the state currently has 19 abortion clinics, a significant decrease from the 44 in 2011, and restrictions could cause the closures of all but six of those abortion clinics.
“I couldn’t ask for a more ideal place in terms of drawing that connection between the realities of women here and the realities of women abroad,” states Whitten.
Sources: The Daily Beast, Women on Waves, The Guardian
Photo: Muslim Daily