Field of Science

Turkey takes another step back toward the middle ages

Turkey is such a fucked up country in many ways, and now they can add another.

It is now illegal for women to go abroad and get artificially inseminated. Doing so could get them up to three years in Turkish prison.
Insulting "Turkishness", taking part in demonstrations, or showing the slightest sympathy for the banned Kurdish Workers' Party, for example.

Now you can add to that long list the crime of using a foreign sperm donor.
It is also a crime to hide the father's identity:
A spokesman at the Department of Health, Irfan Sencan, said the regulation was covered by article 231 of the criminal code, which makes it a crime to conceal the paternity of a child.
The moral conundrum of this boggles my mind.

While they present the new law as having to do with the right of the child to know their father and grandfather, it is horribly in line with the general oppression of women. just like Prime Minister Erdogan's call for women to have at least three children each. Keep them breeding, but make sure the father are decent Turkish men.
It is hard to imagine pregnant women being put on trial just for the way they conceived, but not impossible in Turkey, where last month a 15-year-old Kurdish girl was jailed for nearly eight years just for taking part in a demonstration.
Wow! Eight years? For demonstrating? For a 15-year old? Honestly, fuck that shit. And Turkey is even thinking about the possibility of joining the EU?! This way it just ain't gonna happen, dude. The rest of the members won't tolerate new members with laws that belong in the middle ages.

4 comments:

  1. Imagine a women comes home and says she got inseminated naturally... but doesn't know the father?

    She was too drunk, it was late, and her 35 friends all came home with her... ?

    One of these super stupid laws, not only because of being inhuman but also because of being overly stupid.

    Cheers Arend

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  2. Yes, how the hell it's going to be enforced is a mystery, too.

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  3. I consider it an open question whether they, as you suggest, shouldn't be admitted to the EU because of barbaric laws like those; or if they should be admitted in order to accelerate the abandonment of these sorts of laws.

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  4. Yes, I agree with you, James. If admitting them into EU could help in this respect, then it is worth considering. Very much like whether threatening to separate the Faroe Islands from Denmark will stop the slaughter of dolphins or not.

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