Indonesia's abortion law improved on paper. Using it got harder.

Indonesian law still treats abortion as a crime with a short list of exceptions. Law 36 of 2009 allowed it for a medical emergency, or for a pregnancy caused by rape if it was under six weeks. The 2022 Criminal Code stretched the sexual violence limit to 14 weeks, and Law 17 of 2023 on Health kept that. Writing for Indonesia at Melbourne, Maidina Rahmawati says the exceptions look generous and work badly. Ministry of Health Regulation 3 of 2016 ordered the ministry to name the facilities allowed to provide safe abortion. Ten years later it has not named a single one.

The newer rules narrow the door further. Health Ministry Regulation 2 of 2025 allows the service only at advanced hospitals staffed by obstetrics and gynaecology specialists, doctors trained in pregnancy and women's health, and asks survivors of sexual violence to produce a police certificate, a Surat Keterangan. The earlier rules let primary clinics act on an examination certificate from a psychologist. Rahmawati notes that police corruption can block the certificate itself. The medicines are also out of reach: the World Health Organization lists mifepristone and misoprostol for abortion up to 12 weeks, and Indonesia does not let mifepristone circulate and has never registered misoprostol for this use.

The gap this leaves is large. Estimates put unintended pregnancies at between 10.7 and 17.5 per cent of all pregnancies. Komnas Perempuan, the national commission on violence against women, recorded 22,848 cases of sexual violence in 2025, and documented 103 rape cases that led to an unintended pregnancy between 2018 and 2023. Research by the legal institute ICJR in 2021 and reporting by Project Multatuli in 2023 found specialists quietly performing abortions outside any official list, which is why Rahmawati moves the argument from "choice" to reproductive justice: a right you cannot reach, afford or prove is not much of a right. About 45 per cent of abortions worldwide are unsafe, the WHO estimates.

Why it matters

The women most affected are the ones with the fewest options: survivors of rape who need a police document to get medical care, and anyone far from a big hospital with a specialist on staff. The practical thing to watch is whether the health ministry finally names authorised facilities and whether the police certificate rule survives, because until then the law on the books and the care available are two different things. If you are advising someone in this position, assume the paperwork, not the pregnancy limit, is the real obstacle.