ABORTION AND THE LAW

Vol. 16 No. 10 (October, 2006) pp.833-835

ABORTION AND THE LAW: FROM INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON TO LEGAL POLICY, by Albin Eser and Hans-Georg Koch. The Hague: TMC Asser Press, 2005. 325pp. Hardcover. $90.00 / £50.00. ISBN: 90-6704-197-1.

Reviewed by Francis Regan, Legal Studies, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Email: Francis.Regan [at] flinders.edu.au.

This potentially fascinating comparative study of abortion law and policy is unfortunately neither a very interesting or useful contribution to modern scholarship. Although a comparative study of modern debates about abortion law and policy would be a useful and timely contribution to the literature, it is not the purpose of ABORTION AND THE LAW. Instead this book is a summary work that reports on a large and long term project that examined and compared the laws and policies of nations in relation to lawful termination of pregnancy.

First some background about the important but little-known research project: The “The Law of Abortion: An International Comparison” project was conducted under the auspices of the Max Plank Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. The project began in the 1980s and involved an international survey of abortion law and policy in 64 countries, 26 of them in Europe. The long life of the project means that it has generated many previous publications including books and articles. It is important to note, however, that most of the previous publications were in German. For example, the initial national reports were published in two very large volumes in German in the late 1980s. Other findings have been published reporting on the criminal aspects of the project, including prosecution for illegal abortions. A final book was published in 1999 comparing the legal frameworks in the different countries and updating the national material reported in the 1980s. In sum, ABORTION AND THE LAW draws upon the original national reports and the later updates to build a comparative summary of abortion laws and policies. The relative lack of English publications emerging from the project seems to be the main reason for publishing. But that rationale creates a major problem for the book, as I explain below.

The strength of the work is its careful canvassing of the competing views, principles and legislative considerations in relation to abortion. While it is often at a high level of abstraction, Part One draws upon the national reports to examine a number of issues related to abortion including social services provided and the overall role of family planning. Part Two also draws on the national reports to consider the different regulatory regimes that allow abortion, including the regulation of time periods for legal abortion, consent, procedures, the role of the physician and the range of services linked to abortion such as counseling services. The discussion of these issues is in great detail such that it might be overwhelming to the interested but non-expert reader. Nevertheless, this is a detailed synthesis of the relevant [*834] issues related to abortion in the 64 countries for the period when the material was collected. Part Three draws on the national reports to present a variety of fascinating statistical information relating to abortion, including prevalence of abortion, criminal statistics related to illegal abortion, and trends in prosecution. Finally, Part Four summarises the findings of the study and proposes principles for, and the draft of, a text for a model abortion regulation that the authors argue could be adapted for any society.

Despite these strengths, the book is quite frustrating to read. The main weakness is the age of most of the data. It is in a sense a “time capsule” of a particular period of history. The problem is that, although the 2005 publication date and the title together imply that the content is at least reasonably contemporary, that is not actually the case. In fact the date and title do not relate closely to the book’s content. Indeed, most of the data considered in ABORTION AND THE LAW were collected in the 1980s and are therefore more than 20 years old. The authors explain in the preface that they had collected more recent data but decided not to include them because it would make the book too long. The consequence however is that after reading this book one is little wiser as to the contemporary law and policy of abortion in any of the societies discussed. Similarly, the national statistics presented in Part Three refer to the period from the1960s to the 1980s. By any measure this is a very long time ago. The book could, therefore, more accurately be titled “Abortion and Law in the 1980s” because the focus of most of the content is in fact in that period. In other words, the book is best understood as a contribution to historical abortion scholarship relating primarily to the 1980s. Finally the time capsule nature of the book means that the more recent broader abortion literature is not engaged.

A further frustration lies in the quality of the translation from the original German. At many points the text is quite simply difficult to read and understand. It seems often to be a literal translation rather than one designed for English language readers. It is of course a difficult and delicate process for translators to achieve a balance between the competing objectives of producing an accurate translation of the original text, whilst at the same time making the text easily accessible to the second language readers. But I think the translation here is too literal, and the result is that it is a very dense work to read. The dense prose is not helped by the often very long sentences. For example, for the purposes of this review, I chose a page at random (pp.76-77) and found a sentence 117 words long. It is by no means the only very long sentence in this book.

One other frustration point is worth mentioning: the absence of a genuine bibliography listing the references consulted in writing the book. ABORTION AND THE LAW does include a bibliography of works published that were related to the project. But the absence of genuine bibliography that lists all the additional [*835] reference material used is a peculiar and frustrating omission.

Perhaps the lesson from ABORTION AND THE LAW is that publishing the key findings at the end of a long-term project is fraught with difficulties. This particular project might have been better served by producing a book that was at a minimum shorter, more focused, better translated, and that was clearly identified as an historical study of abortion law and policy in the 1980s.

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