Name: Muhammad Yori Rafiadli

NIM: 01071180162

Theme: Sheila is a 38 year old housewife from a village in Nias. She has 4 children. Her husband
was a fisherman who recently died in a motor cycle accident. Sheila finds out that she is 3 months
pregnant. She is very poor and is determined she does not want another child and will seek an
abortion. She comes to the local health clinic requesting an abortion. Jessy is the clinic doctor.
If you are Jessy. (considering Sheila is your patient and you have a duty), will you provide a ‘safe’
abortion for Sheila? Provide the moral reasons for your action.

What are the moral principles or values at stake?

Abortion is one of the major issue that occurs amongst women in Indonesia. It is quite controversial
topic issue because there are many variety different opinion on how people view women with an
abortion from religious and legal perspectives. Every year, millions of women become pregnant
unintentionally because of many reasons and many choose to end their pregnancies despite the
fact that abortion is generally illegal according to Indonesia Law and Indonesian social system.
This is because women who do not have access to legal abortion often try to end their pregnancy
by look/seek for illegal abortions that usually performed by unskilled providers with unsafe methods
that might be danger for the mothers. The death rate from unsafe abortion is relatively high, the
estimation number of abortions in Indonesia is about 2,000,000 per year. There are a lot of
controversies behind the policy to reduce the death rate from unsafe abortions. On one side,
human rights activists suggest a rights based approach for dealing with abortion and improving
quality of the providers to reduce the death rates (Stanggenborg, 1991). On the other side, pro-life
activist are against abortion practices, based on moral, political, legal and religious perspectives
(Beckwith, 2007).

Indonesia is the biggest Muslim country in the world and it is a religion that highly against abortion.
Abortion is forbidden in Islam because they believe that destroying the value of life. It means when
women commit an abortion the sin is almost as big as when people commit a murder or suicide.
Also, it will give a big impact to the woman’s family. The family would be ashamed of because in
islam people are not allowed (haram) to have sexual intercourse before marriage. Hence, muslim
has a big responsibility when it comes to this kind of topic issue such as abortion especially
teenager.

Hence, if i was Jessy a clinic doctor asked to perform an abortion I must strongly oppose the
patient’s favour referring to what I have mentioned above about the way how people see abortion
based on religious and legal perspectives. Firstly, the reason is because there are moral principles
that a doctor has to value such as Sumpah Dokter in Indonesia. It is the essence of every doctor
and any other medical profession where they have to vow that Sumpah Dokter is the most
important value. Sheila’s case is very contradicting with one of the policy from Sumpah Dokter that
a doctor has to preserve some else’s which included a foetus. Abortion is illegal and strictly
prohibited under Indonesia Law and Indonesian social system. According to KUHP (Kitab Undang-
Undang Hukum Pidana) abortion is a criminal act and will be punished based on the law. Also, as a
muslim my religion play a strong role which give an impact on my moral principles. The fact that
abortion is forbidden in my religion because it destroying the value of life, I also believe it is to be
cruel and inhuman. Therefore, in this case for whatever reason I would not provide Sheila with
abortion because for me every lives does matter.