Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: New Taipei City Government
EARLIER THIS MONTH, the Ministry of Justice withdrew proposed amendments to the Criminal Code that would have raised fines and increased criminal penalties for abortion. The amendments were quickly withdrawn in a few days after pushback from women’s rights groups.
In particular, Taiwan legalized abortion under the Genetic Health Act in 1985. More than 100,000 abortions take place in Taiwan annually under these provisions.
The new proposed amendments by the Ministry of Justice would have continued to allow for abortions to take place under the Genetic Health Act, but they still would have taken a punitive attitude to abortion.
The Ministry of Justice sought to increase penalties for women carrying out abortions themselves from 3,000 NT to 80,000 NT. Penalties for carrying out abortions for financial gain would have been increased from 15,000 NT to 500,000 NT, with jail sentences increased from six months to five years. Penalties for abortions that cause “aggravated injury” would increase from 15,000 NT to 2 million NT and lead to imprisonment for between three and ten years. However, criminal penalties for advertising abortions would be struck off the books, with the Ministry of Justice stating that nobody had faced charges under this law for over ten years.
The Ministry of Justice claimed that this was in line with the Covenant for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW is one of a host of human rights agreements that Taiwan has voluntarily ratified, despite not being a member of the United Nations. More generally, Taiwan’s voluntary ratification of human rights covenants has been a means of seeking admittance to the international community from which Taiwan is excluded through raising Taiwan’s profile as a good citizen, in spite of diplomatic isolation and exclusion.
Likewise, the Ministry of Justice increased fines with the claim that this was because such penalties were light by modern standards, as well as that fines had not kept pace with changing times. Though this may be true, that the length of prison terms was increased seems to illustrate that this was not the case.
The Ministry of Justice. Photo credit: Yu tptw/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
Indeed, women’s rights groups had cause for concern. Language used by the Ministry of Justice emphasized the right to life of the fetus, while suggesting criminality for abortions except in extenuating medical circumstances. Regardless of what the Ministry of Justice’s aims were, women’s rights groups pointed out that the legal change would stigmatize abortion by making it seemingly ambiguous as to what abortion’s legal status is.
Taiwan has made international headlines in past years as a bastion of pluralism when it comes to sexual freedoms. This was the international perception after Taiwan legalized gay marriage in 2019, becoming the first nation in Asia to do so.
At the same time, sexual freedoms in Taiwan still face other obstacles. This can be observed in challenges regarding trans recognition of IDs without a surgical requirement that necessitates sterilization to change one’s gender marker on forms of national identification. Similarly, Taiwan initially saw barriers to transnational gay marriages and joint adoption for children of gay couples who were not the biological child of one of the members of a couple.
Furthermore, Taiwan continues to face issues with regard to rulings made by “dinosaur judges.” Such judges, often appointed during the authoritarian period, refuse to retire and continue to make rulings on the basis of outmoded social values.
This may pertain to abortion, with regards to laws drawn up by the Ministry of Justice, which may continue to be out of step with the times. Indeed, in the past, then-Minister of Justice Chiu Tai-san actually took a negative view of gay marriage, suggesting that gay marriage would be an aberration from Chinese tradition and lead to confusion regarding memorial tablets for ancestors.
Conservative groups in Taiwan became organized around the time that Taiwan was on the precipice of legalizing gay marriage. Though they eventually ran out of momentum, there has been another wave of organizing among conservative groups in opposition to trans recognition.
Though there has not been a strong movement against abortion rights in Taiwan, it is to be seen if conservatives begin to organize the issue. The political momentum of conservatives may be buoyed by the pushback against abortion in the US, with anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric drawing to a great extent from the rhetoric of American conservatives.