Abstract
It is an established fact in present-day Thailand that most hospitals, both government and privately owned, have, for years, been performing therapeutic abortions on women for health reasons, and, lately, on women infected with the AIDS virus. Apart from these abortions, there are also illegal abortions performed at private clinics, particularly on teenage mothers who were pregnant out of wedlock, to get rid of their unwanted babies. Though the exact number of such illegal abortions is not known to the public, it was estimated by the Ministry of Public Health that in 1993 there were as many as 80,000 cases.1
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Notes
Ministry of Public Health, Public Health Statistics (Bangkok: Thirawong Press, 1993), 211.
See also Frank E. Reynolds, ‘Civic Religion and National Community in Thailand,’ Journal of Asian Studies Vol. xxxvi No. 2, 1977: 267–82.
See Bardwell Smith, ‘Buddhism and Abortion in Contemporary Japan: Mizuko Kuyo and the Confrontation with Death’, in Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender, ed. Jose Ignacio Cabezon. (N.Y.: State University of New York, Press, 1992), 65–90.
See Pinit Ratanakul, ‘Bioethics in Thailand: The Struggle for Buddhist Solutions,’ The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy No. 13, 1988: 301–312.
See Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
See Pinit Ratanakul, ‘Community and Compassion: A Theravada Buddhist Look at Principlism,’ in A Matter of Principles: Ferment in U.S. Bioethics ed. by Edwine R. Du-Bose et al. (Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1994), 21–129.
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© 1998 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Ratanakul, P. (1998). Socio-Medical Aspects of Abortion in Thailand. In: Keown, D. (eds) Buddhism and Abortion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14178-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14178-4_4
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