The prime minister Erdogan has brought the whole country into a discussion after surprisingly saying in his party's congress '' “I see abortion as murder… I am asking you: what’s the difference between killing a baby inside a mother’s womb and killing a baby after birth?” for no reason at all. Somebody claimed that Erdogan just tried to change the agenda as his government was under intense public pressure about a debatable airstrike that led to the killing of 34 Kurdish civilians in Uludure, Turkey's Iraqi border. “Each abortion is one Uludere,” Erdogan said, adding that abortion and caesarean births were part of a sneaky plan to slow the growth of Turkey’s population. Abortion has been legan on request (up to 10 weeks) since 1983.
The next day, his health minister expressed that they've started to work on a new law proposal that would restrict caesarean and abortion. His saying that the state would take care of babies born because of incidents of rape caused a great public criticism. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) reacted furiously, “The prime minister should stop guarding vaginas,” said CHP's woman lawmaker Aylin Nazliaka.
A deputy from his party tried to justify Erdogan saying that abortion is still discussed among Western societies. A government-supporter journalist read a fictional letter on a TV program titled '' A letter from an unborn baby to his/her mother '' and then she began to cry. There are such efforts in some channels and newspapers to convince the public that it is a real murder exploiting people's emotions.
Now there has been a harsh debate in public for a few days, from my point I can claim that people are divided about half and half about this issue. I'm against its restriction, some women's organizations began to hold protests in the squares.
Is it a natural result of the party's being social conservative just like the Republican Party in USA ? are there such discussions there ? and are there states there prohibiting abortion ?
EDIT: The government has decided not to change the current abortion law (10 weeks on request, 20 weeks on the occasion of rape) in the recent meeting, probably due to the great public reactions and protests.
And it now strengthens the claims that they just used this abortion issue to distract people's attention for a while, they did not really care about it from the beginning at all.
