Evidence of Kosovo abortions trade

With a several-minute call, without preliminary consultation and detailed analysis, shopping can easily be done in Kosovo for an abortion in private gynecological ambulances.

These never subject you to an inspection of abortions, nor do they identify them in their records pregnancy breaks, which are accomplished in amounts that range from 300 euros to a thousand euros. The chairman of the Kosovo Gynecologists' Association claims there is abortion abuse.

Don't talk any longer on the phone... at 9 o'clock on the test, not me at 12 tomorrow I'm leaving for Pristina... at 9 p.m. tomorrow, tomorrow, without eating and drinking any more conversation on the phone. Don't get me drunk any more, tomorrow at 9 o'clock or masesier on 9 that I'm on my way to Pristina, on the table, come on, drink, on the table. At 8 and a half o'clock, they're here at the Hospital Law, I have the orientation, so if there's any tests to be done with ba”

This is a several-minute discussion with a gynecologist from Prizren (the name known for editing) that took place for the appointment of an abortion. This gynecologist, is just one of seven who have been contacted along with our research, in order to understand how abortion deals are conducted in private municipalities in Kosovo.

A few words, and without hesitation the terms are easily determined. “Doesn't last much procedure, 12 minutes”, is the answer to another orientation.

Unlike the QKUK staff who say that patients are advised and trying to convince them not to perform abortion because of the health consequences they may have, the staff in 7 private agencies that have been contacted about the needs of this research, and the selection is completely random, it's more open, and it doesn't even intend to determine the term immediately. “Come here and choice to do”, it's a frequent response.

And in an audience in downtown Pristina, the cost of shopping is shown. “300 or 350 thistie somewhere costs”, is the nurse's response after setting an abortion term for Wednesday, November 28th at 8.

Since these agencies have been contacted by the need for research rather than abortion, their names will only be offered to the investigative bodies if they decide to verify whether these agencies have ever performed abortions and whether they were carried out under the pre-lawed conditions.

However, conversations recorded with staff and gynecologists working in these agencies, 7 out of 98, are found in a list that is easily accessible on an internet click and where they figure registered ordinances and their contacts, show that”pazar” is easily performed over the telephone.

Out of 1478 agencies licensed for this year in Kosovo, 81 expert ambulances are licensed by the Health Ministry to provide gynecological services. That number is smaller than he had two years ago.

In 2016, gynaecological ambulances licensed were 108. However, few are those that are hospital institutions.

Women over the age of 18 are allowed to abort until the tenth week of pregnancy voluntarily, or because of family planning. Those under 18 should get permission from their parents. After the tenth week, abortions can be performed only at QKUK and whether the Professional Health Commission under the Department for Family Planning at QKUK decides that the health of mother or fruit is at risk.

But women and girls who do not have marital status do not prefer to perform abortions at the public clinic say that the causes of the clinic are said to be the privacy they seek and not recording abortions performed in health history. The other side, most obstetrical gynecologists, who, according to a list of the staff of the Gynecological Clinic provided to be 40, also have private orientation.

These clinics are licensed to provide gynecological services. Why not precisely know what the parameters should be under which gynecological ambulances should be licensed and under which private hospital institutions to offer abortion as service.

License rules are determined with four administrative guidelines on the official website of the Ministry of Health, which has provided no answer to what criteria must meet private orientations to carry out abortions.

The suggestion has been to look at administrative guidelines, but even in these guidelines it has not been possible to find specific criteria for ending pregnancy. Besides listing some gynecological equipment and general hospital conditions.

Chief health inspector Ardita Barak in the interview given in this research says it is not aware that there is specific document specifying criteria for abortions.

I'm not aware that there's something specific about abortion, but it's up to you to confirm this”, she says, but according to her, all those health institutions that are licensed to provide gynecological services can also perform the suspension of pregnancy since it is considered gynaecological service, in the Souza of existing law.

What Barak mentions as a need in the meantime is that they have agreements with blood transfusions, blood supplies, possible complications that may arise as a result of abortion, which is intervention, and in most cases of bloodshed.

We've asked for answers from Blood Transfusion about which private agencies offering gynaecological services have agreements on blood supply, but the director of T JJ, Beauty Zhubi in a reply has said that they offer supplies of blood to clinics and hospitals with which they have an understanding agreement as necessary but that it is only about large hospitals that are somewhere around five sosh.

With no small gynaecological ambulances, I don't even know if they're registered, we offer supplies to these large clinics and hospitals alone. They're looking for us, the rest I don't know, and we don't have any deal”, Zhubi said.

The exact number of abortions or requests for abortion in Kosovo is unknown, the state has no precise data, but the practice of abortion in private orientation is already a public secret.

In a 2016 report by the Kosovo Ombudsman Office entitled “Rights on Sexual and Reproductive Health in Kosovo: A reality beyond the law?

There's a very serious and widespread problem that is the cladest abortion from private clinics, which are not licensed to conduct the procedure, even though there are a number of public health clinics that provide safe and legitimate abortion services”, the ombudsman report says.

Under even unregulated circumstances, the report points out that abortion is not safe. “Grath and teenage girls are reported to seek such abortions due to lack of privacy and privacy in the public sector.

Even reporting abortions is limited, especially by private institutions, which make it impossible to assess the degree of the problem”, further states in the report recommending Government to take steps towards preventing this problem.

The ombudsman wants the Government to address the problem of abortion that is carried out in a disunited condition by private institutions and not authorised to conduct the procedure. However, this issue has never received a proper echo. Leonidas Molyqaj is among the first journalists to have worked on a research report for the Centre for Investigative Journalies “Per”, which he launched in 2016.

Research “Tourp on the body”, Moliqaj had then started precisely from the experience of a friend who at a public clinic in Pristina, in which she had realized that she was pregnant, the doctor had offered her a card for private orientation as a suggestion for the place where she could have an abortion. Which had happened.

Molyqaj shows that the research had been difficult precisely for the fact that there has been very little information on abortion and much more about illegal abortion in Kosovo, which continues to occur.

And it's been a problem that you didn't have much information, and I first applied to the inspectors to send me the data on licensed and unlicencumed agencies, and it's generally been a problem issue because they haven't even been open to the institutions to talk about this subject, but neither the people I've wanted to do interviews with, like women who have performed abortions like doctors who have been taken out of this job, because abortion is without something shameful and shouldn't be disk about it.

Much the way she talked about the menstrual cycle in us is more about abortion because she is considered to be something of a sin but also about the shape of the woman's body in patriarchal society, which means that everything she has to do with reproductive health is not appropriate to be spoken in society”, she relates.

And this “taken” exists despite the fact that abortions are known to be conducted in Kosovo even in illegal ways. This awareness was shown by the director of the Gynecological Clinic at QKUK, Myrvete Pacharada, who in an interview given in 2016, for a research conducted with BIRN, even claimed to know that doctors who are its staff conduct abortions illegally in their private clinics.

I'm aware. But listen to what I'm saying until no one comes and tells me that this one did it and this one's hands are tied”, she said, reasoning with the lack of evidence to prove the act done.

Lack of evidence is also one of the reasons Kosovo's leading health inspector, Ardita Barak, takes on the basis of lack of data concerning illegal abortions in Kosovo. However, this says that even the clinical director is obliged to report on staff or colleagues if he has information.

She has explained that there is no specific license for abortions. The law on pregnancy suspension stresses that it must be carried out in the health institution. And now if we go back to private, that institution that is not licensed is not a health institution, but only a subject that performs illegal health activities”, she says.

So 1 should be a health institution, 2 should be performed by professional gynecologist, and that also means that the doctor should be licensed and the third second precondition that the institution that performed the pregnancy suspension must meet the conditions to manage the possible consequences of that intervention. An example of drastic consequence is the beginning of bloodshed. A gynecological ambulance in a small village where an illegal abortion is performed there begins the problem of managing blood. Private hospitals are then subject to blood transfusions, and access to licensed private hospitals would meet those preconditions. Small private ambulances do not have that precondition, and it increases the risks”, the top inspector says.

Which, however, claims they've never had any inspections in private ordance on abortion issues.

On average somewhere, as she shows, 90 health subjects per year are closed because they are not licensed. But none of them because of the illegal abortion are found in patients ' records.

Illegal suspension of pregnancy is also considered a criminal offence under the Kosovo Criminal Code with Article 184. The maximum rate of the prior penalty with Penal Hill for those who refuse to give birth to women is ten years until they complete the pregnancy against the woman's consent until 15 years in prison.

According to Kosovo Police data, between 2013 and 2017, 14 cases reported to police for illegal suspension of pregnancy are found. Three of them were reported only last year, while there is no record of this year.

All these cases have been addressed in comfort to police procedures, and actions are being taken in co-ordination with justice organs (the prosecutor)”, the police response reported.

The data of all key prosecutors in Kosovo, meanwhile, shows that in Pristina, five subjects of this nature are found, of them in one case, there is tossing criminal speculation, and in another case the investigation ceases, while in just three cases there are charges. While one subject has been dropped in Mitrovica, another is still under investigation.

The answer to whether there are evidence sentences regarding court decisions for this criminal act, we asked the Kosovo Judiciary Council, but the information office has not responded to the request.

According to the Court of Appeals' records, in this court only finds a subject awaiting examination at Appeals, and with the verdict on the first instance, the accused has received a one-year guilty sentence for breaking the attempted pregnancy. None of these three justice institutions has already provided information on whether there are doctors accused or ever investigated for non-legal suspension of pregnancy.

The health inspector's activity in such cases is based mainly on citizens' complaints, which are proceeding further for investigation if there are criminal elements.

Chief Inspector Barak recalls that during her term, there have been only two complaints to the health inspectors about performing an illegal abortion.

Those complaints had gone to the Inspectorate's address only after the woman who had conducted the procedure.

We have a call after a complaint about an abortion in a private administration many years ago. There was one, two I know in inspectors. What has been the last patient has actually complained about the consequences of breaking the pregnancy. But I say it like that, the responsibility is both of the parties and the person who has decided to quit and the doctor. Some problems have occurred later, and at that point she complained about not performing good service.

The substance was worked in cooperation with the police, and after our share of the work continued work”, she says. So one does not answer these cases. Is it the stigma of conversation or privacy, or are they simply satisfied with the service they've taken and all these are issues that we can't value because we're talking about illegal abortions.

I don't know about illegal abortions because we don't have data, our task is that when we understand them, make sure that the institution, the professional technical and sanitary conditions and the care of the patient have been maximum and it has been possible to stop under those circumstances legally, this is our task”, says chief inspector Barak.

The health inspector in Kosovo has about 1500 objects that he inspects at regular and annual bases. Only 10 inspectors conduct this inspection at the Kosovo level.

This, according to Barak, made it even more difficult for any special inspection of abortions to take place.

My search for citizens is “. Please inform. How can I interfere with something that I have no clue about. The complaint comes, says Mother. My mother was in gynaecology, and the doctor hasn't looked at her. Well, who's the institution, who's the doctor, it means we need something that needs to be suspicious based on a seven-way inspection”, she reasons.

In this year's ISH annual report, there is also the case of a patient's complaint that had been in a state of health problem after a private administration suspended pregnancy.

But there is no other record of inspections regarding pregnancy breaks in general or those illegally, even though various reports raise the issue as problematic.

The chairman of the Gynecologists' Association, Professor Shefqet Lulaj, at the same time former director of the Gynecology Clinic at KKUKU for seven years (2005 com 2012), claims there are abuses with the right to abortion in Kosovo in the health system in Kosovo.

Lulaj has also noted in the existing Law about the break of pregnancy. This law was sponsored by the Health Ministry in the mandate of Minister Ferid Agani of the Justice Party. According to Lulaj in Albania, the break of pregnancy is allowed until the 12th week of pregnancy, counting from the first day of the last period, for voluntary abortions. In Germany it is considered the Day of Conceptation - two weeks more than 12 weeks after the conception - as many European states claim.

In Kosovo it is estimated by law that the right to willful abortion falls by conception 8 weeks of embriology. The “here has had misunderstandings and will always be because it is not co-ordinated with the laws of an abortion of Europe or even Albania.

In the law, it's also preemptive that before a woman lays out her desire for abortion, she needs to explain the preliminary advice on the obstetrician obstetricist, and it takes at least three days in advance to consult about abortion, method, consequences and then two days should be passed, because that is the period when the woman thinks and logic what has been said by a gynecologist and is likely to change the mind. Three days are necessary until abortion must be performed”.

According to Lulaj, there are people and institutions that make abortion and those that make it less secure.

According to Lulaj, an issue that needs to be discussed further is the age of burden and its legally increasing to enable voluntary abortions even up to 12 weeks without having to be introduced into professional commissions like the one at KKUK.

According to him, complications like 10th week as 12th of the burden are the same and there is no need for patients to enter the Commission because it can influence its psychic in a negative way. Another issue in which the chairman of the Gynecologists' association provides the answer is that it is the license of private gynecological agencies with licenses to provide gynecological services the same as those in hospital institutions and that offer gynecological services.

This is anachronic because in the west I've worked there, too, ambulances and agencies don't have the right to have abortions. I'm aware that we have major abortions and we've raised this issue, and the tracking organs are aware that when major abortions arrived at the clinic, we've seen that someone provoked them, I'm talking about when I was director of the Clinical Center. Today, even as many abortions are available in Kosovo, abortions are not announced, even though we are forced to enter artificial abortions into statistics. Ask someone how many abortions in Kosovo there is no longer a market idea, except those at the KKUK”, says Professor Lulaj, stressing that there is no proper reporting of abortions.

A report on men's praise on gender equality in Kosovo, drafted and launched by U NFPA and O The SEU in Kosovo, it is said that about two percent of the men surveyed have had a partner who has experienced a forced abortion.

And 32 percent of men have been part of that decision. Finding women shows that five percent of them have claimed to have had a forced abortion and that in 43 percent of these cases their partner has been part of the decision.

Their partner has paid the procedure in 57 percent of cases - when women have had forced abortion.

While a small percentage of men (31%) whose partners have had a forced abortion claimed they have paid the procedure, most men (7.8%) have accompanied their partner for abortion. The areas they prefer, especially young couples, are said to be private, not public, for some reason.

Married women prefer private clinics for abortion

Since at the Gynecological Clinic at QKUK, almost most cases of pregnancy have been performed on women with marital status and who have one or more children, young women or girls prefer abortions in private clinics.

Most of the time, they don't protocol their case.

KKUK Chief of Family Accession and Planning Jakup Ismaili says young girls with non-marriage status are not even applying to the public clinic. According to him, this is about the fact that QKUK is a major hospital centre and there is a large circulation of people on daily grounds, and they want to escape the stigma and maintain the classified procedure.

Whatever's unmarried is reluctant to come because of the mass of this is clinical, due to privacy. But we do it before 10 weeks, we do it”, he says. Annie why Ismaili claims that most who have abortions at QKUK are married women or who are in a relationship and seek solutions with their partner.

Jehona Binishi Hysa, is a gynecologist and works at Bahcegi Hospital, which has a license to provide gynecological services, including the suspension of pregnancy.

It shows that they have between 3 and 4 requests a week for this service, but even in this institution, most women who seek service are married or in public contact with their partner.

And what it looks like here is [the young girls] are hesitant because we protocol and we have everything legally so we don't have many young girls, there are small cases”, she says.

Binish -Hysa shows, however, that there are times when patients pay extra time to go to late hours for abortion, when there are fewer people in the hospital, or even there were times when they did not offer identification to protocol and were refused.

The “gives no reason, but we release the paper and protocol we declare to the state. We don't give the name if someone comes and asks, and we guarantee it to the patient. There were times when we were not given identification, and we automatically refused. You can ask your doctor for privacy, and no one but the investigative organs has a right to charge, but these are the most cases that have extramarital pregnancies”, she relates.

The abortion in small areas, meanwhile, is seen as a dangerous thing for women's health, because professionals say they do not meet the conditions of intervention in cases of complications.

Any medical intervention, especially illegal ones, can directly endanger the health of the mother. Of the most frequent complications that may occur during an abortion are the bloodshed that can directly threaten the woman's life, then the procedure that develops very often after criminal or illegal abortion, infection that can lead to synechiaurin and sterility, the reinforcement of the uterus that can be associated with intestines, urinary verics, and bleeding to a severe state of shock”, shows the chief of accession and family planning at QKUKUK, Jakup Ismaili.

According to him, the first child's abortion may even lead to fertility. I may never be born at”, he says, disposing of the approach against abortion he and his public clinic colleagues have. However, not all doctors agree.

Jehona Binishi Hysa from the “Bahcegi” does not agree with such a conclusion. It says that abortion methods have advanced, and now when properly performed, there can be no injuries leading to fertility.

And the instruments are sophisticated today, so we make the aspirin of the silicon that's thin five millimeters, round and thin, and it's very non-traumatic, and the performatic, and the percussive, to the bone is very low, because it's silicon, unless you're too aggressive, you're so stubborn, it's now perfection, and it's done with a perspirator as a large vent, it's decided that the aspirer of the absorbone, and at the same time you monitor it, at the same time, at the moment we're looking at the content that we're going to, it's all over again.

The patient has been bleeding for a week, but it's normal, so it's very little traumatic today, because they're the sophisticist and the instruments that [the abortion] becomes”, she relates.

The argument “that after the first abortion you can no longer have children”, according to journalist Leonidas Moliqaj, however, is most seen as a tendency to intimidate girls and women not only for abortion but also for their sexual life that should never be highlighted in Kosovo patriarchal society.

And sexual relations for men and women are generally seen differently. As long as it's easier for men, it's not a question for women.

Not that there's nothing allowed to be anything for married girls or women but sex. That's what I've noticed, for example, in interviews with doctors, in one of the interviews at one of the biggest private clinics, says that we don't accept girls who come with abport without a partner or a husband of the house. Because they consider girls not worthy of their own decision whether they want to be nana or not, even though they have over 18x1>, Moliqaj says.

Women's rights activists under the other side see problems driving young girls into illegal abortion even access to medical staff at the Gynecological Clinic in KKUK or other regional public hospitals. Especially because of the <x0moralist approach” and punishative of abortion as in the case of the KKUK staff, which calls abortion “suicide” and tries to persuade patients to give up their request for abortion.

Adelina Berisha from the Women's Group Network says this approach is also a tendency to cover doctors. Most doctors working at QKUK have private ambulances.

“Kisa was good at looking at who these gynecologists are first and it's good to look at or work at these clinics where they're entitled to an abortion or have these kind of little gynaecological ambulances where I think they're directly taking these patients there to benefit from”, says Berisha.

It may also be considered illegal if there is a tendency to turn women and girls away from public clinics and send them to private ones where the price is markedly different from QKUK, where it pays about 50 euros for abortion.

And in private office prices range from 300 euros to thousands of euros. Neither gynecologist Jehona Binishi Hysa agrees with the approach to convince the patient differently from her opinion, even though she says that cutting out pregnancy is not a pleasant procedure for the doctor either. She says that in her private administration, which she says is licensed she doesn't get abortions in pregnancy for over six weeks. But it does not affect the patient's decision if she is over 18 years old and determined.

And as long as it's ripe and has decided to do that, in the rule of law, that's harder for it than for us as professionals, because it's not easy for me when I do such a procedure, but it's my profession, and as long as it does, it doesn't belong to me to stop”.

Jakup Ismaili on the other side, flatly denies that the approach of the KKUK staff or the Commission may be to send girls or women to private ambulances.

I've been here for four years. No abortion was committed. Most abortions are performed by local anesthesia, but even those that insist are performed with general anesthesia. But I was told to go back to the Private Clinic, not while I'm here, not”, he says. Even aware that in cases where the professional Commission refuses a patient, she finds solutions elsewhere - even in clinics in Skopje.

Listen if the Commission returns after the tenth week, it finds a solution goes to Skopje and goes there and... They're coming in here, we have cases in the 14th week that I'm short of why I'm interrupted, or in 15 weeks that's a crime, murder”, he says.