Austria : Abortions in public hospitals

A call for wider access to abortion in Austria has seen tempers flare, reigniting a debate over whether it is a right and whether public hospitals should offer the procedure. Women, is not being taken seriously if in all of western Austria this option (of abortion) does not exist," the Social Democrat Stoeger told News.



"Carrying out abortions is not the job of public hospitals, and it will stay that way," fumed Vorarlberg's vice-governor Markus Wallner in response. "Abortion is not a state duty," added Karlheinz Kopf of the conservative People's Party, the Social Democrats' coalition partner in government, while the Austrian medical association deemed it "alarming" to link access to abortion with the allocation of state funds.