Introduction
Abortion was legalized in Turkey in 1983 as per the Population Planning Law 2827 (1). The law allows abortion on request to be performed until the end of the tenth week of gestation. However, it requires spousal consent for married women (1). The Turkish Penal Code further allows abortion up to the twentieth week of gestation if the conception occurred as a result of a criminal act (2). Despite the legal framework, abortion has been highly contested in the Turkish political landscape in the last decade. Many studies have shown that abortion services have been gradually discarded by hospitals and the number of medical doctors who are willing to provide abortion services has decreased in recent years (3,4).
Moreover, medical abortion with pills combining mifepristone and misoprostol is still not available in Turkey (5). While misoprostol is registered for gastrointestinal indications, it has been withdrawn from outpatient pharmacies in 2012 due to alleged “misuse” (6). Insofar, no studies analysed the use of misoprostol outside the formal healthcare and the potential demand for medical abortion in the Turkish context. In this article, we analysed the consultation surveys and email correspondences that Women on Web (WoW) received from women in Turkey to construe perceived barriers to formal abortion services and the demand for medical abortion in Turkey.