There are both written laws and unwritten rules about abortion. The written ones we can read, discuss and change if we want. But the unwritten rules are harder to see and handle. They control us more than the written laws. The unwritten rules are "rules" which mean that we can think that one thing is wrong and another thing is right. You can think that it is not responsible to get pregnant, if you don’t want to, even though you know how to protect yourself.
Abortion has existed us in all times and all cultures. If it was forbidden or limited to make legal abortions, if wouldn’t lead to that abortions would be unusual. No, it would only lead to an increased suffering for women. In countries where abortions are forbidden women often die of dangerous and illegal operations. The world’s health organisation (WHO) has estimated that there are about 10-20 million illegal abortions done each year and every year a half million women dies in connection with pregnancies and deliveries.

The law about free abortion was introduced in 1975. Sweden’s abortion law says that women has the right to choose whether the abortion will proceed or not, until the 18th pregnancy week.
From the 13th pregnancy week a special investigation has to be done. The women have to talk with a curator. After the 18th week one need the social board’s approval to an abortion. There must be certain reasons for example if the foster is very malformed, or if the pregnancy means danger for the mothers life.
The most usual abortion surgery takes about 10 minutes But late abortions are done by a caesarean operation. There are about 150-200 selective abortions done each year in Sweden. A selective abortion is when you do an abortion because the baby isn’t healthy. It could be malformed, have a hereditary decease or something else which prevents the future individual to have a worthy life.
In Sweden there are physical complications in 6% of the surgical abortions. The most common complication is when pregnancy rests are left inside the womb.
If you aren’t qualified to perform an abortion, but performs it anyway, you will be sentenced to pay a fine or go to jail not more than a year.

In January 1993 abortion pills came to Sweden. Up to the 9th week an abortion can be done with these pills. You must see a doctor and you can get hormonpills with antiprogestron. That ends the pregnancy and it all ends up with a bleeding. In this way the abortion looks like a miscarriage.

A pregnancy test can be done for free at an maternity welfare or at a youth clinic. You can buy selftests at a pharmacy and you will get the answer in just a few minutes.

Here in Örnsköldsvik we have a place called "Ungdomsmottagning" or in English "youth clinic". This is a place where we can go to discuss different problems. We can go there if there are for example problems at home, drugbuse, pregnancy, venereal diseases etc. All tests you need to do are for free. At the clinic you can even talk to a priest and he works one day/week. He talks to people who has tried to commit suicide, and other difficult problems.
We think it’s good to have somewhere to go when you want to talk with anyone about problems you don’t want to share with your parents.

© 2001 Freeway
Writers: Anna Karlsson (a83k@hotmail.com), Sandra Höglund (saandraa@hotmail.com) and Lena Westman (Lena.Westman@usa.net).
HTML by: ONy (olle@park.se).