Data from an Amnesty International (AI) study in Portugal, presented today in Lisbon, identified “several barriers in access to voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) in the country.”
The report highlights that “2,525 residents of Portugal terminated their pregnancies in Spain” between 2019 and 2023, averaging about 500 women per year, based on information from the Spanish Ministry of Health.
In the last two years of this period, “of the 1,327 pregnant women who underwent the procedure across the border, 613 did so up to 14 weeks,” the gestational limit permitted in Spain, the report states.
“Looking at the weeks in which the procedure was carried out, in two-thirds of the cases the termination occurred after 10 weeks, the legal limit for IVG in Portugal,” the study reveals.
According to the human rights organization, citing data from the Directorate-General for Justice Policy, between 2007—when the law legalizing IVG up to 10 weeks of gestation came into force—and 2024, 159 reports of alleged “abortion crimes” were registered by police authorities.
Up until 2023, 58 defendants were tried in court, of which 33 were convicted in the first trial and 20 acquitted due to lack of evidence, the report notes.
The document warns that these numbers do not specify whether the defendants were pregnant individuals seeking, attempting, or undergoing termination, healthcare professionals, or other individuals who may have assisted, attempted, or performed these procedures and under what conditions.
AI advocates for the total decriminalization of abortion to ensure that “no one, including pregnant people, healthcare providers, or others, is subject to penal or punitive sanctions” related to IVG.
“Evidence shows that criminalization does not affect the decision to abort nor prevent women from aborting. On the contrary, it simply limits access to safe and legal abortion and increases recourse to illegal and unsafe abortion,” the human rights organization emphasizes.
The report further indicates that judicial processes are “disproportionately brought against marginalized populations, including young, low-educated, single, or poor individuals.”
Amnesty International also warns that Portugal, alongside Croatia, Ireland, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Turkey, currently has the shortest limit in Europe for IVG—10 weeks—while most countries permit this procedure up to 12 weeks.
“Although in 2023, the average gestational age at which IVGs were performed in Portugal was 7.4 weeks, and in 77% of cases, the procedures occurred when the pregnancy was below eight weeks, the 10-week gestational limit makes it impossible for many in Portugal to access the care they need within the legal timeframe,” states the report.
Furthermore, AI points out that in 2023, only 14 terminations were carried out up to 10 weeks in the Azores, all at the Hospital da Horta, meaning 144 women had to travel to the mainland for an IVG.
“However, according to information collected by Amnesty International Portugal, by May 2025, the situation had worsened as there were no longer doctors performing these procedures in Hospital da Horta or Hospital da Terceira,” the study notes.
The situation in Alentejo “was also grave in 2023,” AI highlights, noting that of the 696 terminations requested by residents in the region, only 190 (27%) were performed in hospitals in Alentejo.
The report adds that in 38 public health units, 533 doctors “expressly registered” their refusal to perform abortions due to conscience, representing about 71.3% of gynecology and obstetrics specialists in the SNS.
Among the recommendations AI makes to Portuguese authorities are the need to ensure access to IVG across the entire national territory within a reasonable geographic distance, the abolition of the legal gestational limit, or at least the extension of the current ten-week limit, and the repeal of the mandatory three-day reflection period.
Data released at the beginning of the month by the Health Regulatory Entity indicate that the number of women who opted to terminate their pregnancy within the first 10 weeks gestation increased by 5.5%, reaching nearly 18,000 in 2024.
