Abortion nurse jailed in Portugal

MAIA, Portugal -- A nurse who terminated pregnancies in her own home has been sentenced to eight years and six months' imprisonment in the trial of 43 people accused of violating Portugal's tough laws against abortion.

Maria do Ceu Ribeiro was found guilty on Friday in the northern town of Maia of illegally practising abortion, forging documents, fraud and narcotics trafficking in a case that drew international attention to abortion law in the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Speaking before a packed makeshift courtroom set up in a tennis complex to accommodate all 43 defendants in the mass trial, Judge Francisca Mota Vieira acquitted 15 of 17 women accused of illegally terminating their pregnancies.

One of the 17 had charges dropped and another had a prison sentence reduced to a fine.

A lawyer acting for the convicted nurse told Reuters her client, Maria do Ceu Ribeiro, was considering an appeal.

Ribeiro used a network of taxi drivers, pharmacy workers and colleagues to attract clients, the court heard. Business cards passed out by the alleged ring included directions to her clinic.

Of 25 people tried on charges of belonging to Ribeiro's network, 19 were acquitted and the remaining six had jail sentences commuted to fines.

The three-month trial in Maia, a town of about 9,500 people just north of the industrial city of Porto, was by far the biggest of its kind since a 1998 referendum narrowly defeated a proposal to allow abortion on demand up to 10 weeks into pregnancy.

Advocates of abortion rights said the trial showed Portuguese law was at odds with reality. Portugal's Planned Parenthood Association estimates 20,000 to 40,000 illegal abortions are carried out each year.

Thousands more women travel abroad for the operations. Government figures show 574 legal abortions were carried out in 2000, the last year for which numbers are available.

Global protests

Less than two months before parliamentary elections, Portugal's two main political parties have been guarded in their comments on the Maia case.

Ana Manso, a member of parliament for the opposition centre-right Social Democrats, told private TSF radio that Portugal must improve its public health service and sex education to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

"We are intransigent defenders of the right to life," she told Reuters.

Public Works Minister Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, expected to lead the governing Socialist party in the March elections, said only a new referendum could alter the law.

Another referendum could only come "when there are cultural and political conditions that will make the results different," he told Visao news magazine in an interview.

The Maia case has sparked international protest. A petition backing the 17 women circulated by Ilda Figueiredo, a Portuguese Communist deputy to the European Parliament, has been signed by hundreds of cultural and political figures from 42 countries.