This British overseas territory has some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe - welcome to Gibraltar

Last week, the Argentina's senate blocked a bill to legalise abortion up to 14 weeks. In a year marked by progress for women's rights campaigners - including the Ireland referendum victory to repeal its outdated abortion laws - it has come as a huge setback. 

Not even stories of 500,000 illegal abortions, leading to 100 unnecessary deaths every year - including one in the days since the bill was blocked - could break through the staunchly Catholic country's status quo.

The impact of Ireland’s referendum in May has also been felt closer to home. In June, a human rights organisation lost a Supreme Court appeal about the legality of Northern Ireland’s abortion law, which only permits abortion in cases where the mental well-being or life of the mother are at risk. However, the majority of Supreme Court judges said that, in some cases, Northern Ireland’s law does defy the European Convention on Human Rights.  

Their admission sent shockwaves of hope across the Irish Sea, and also reverberated right down to the Mediterranean, where a British overseas territory with similarly archaic laws has finally taken notice - Gibraltar.

In response to the news, Gibraltar's government have started a consultation process to assess current laws on abortion - some of the most drastic in Europe. According to the Gibraltar Crimes Act 2011, except in cases of preserving the mother’s life, abortion is illegal with life imprisonment the potential consequence.

Though there is no record of this maximum sentence ever being enforced, women from the oft-forgotten, two-and-a- half square mile British peninsula are still travelleing across the border to Spain, to access terminations.

Statistics on how many women make the trip do not exist, but numbers obtained by the  Telegraph from one of the only nearby clinics in the southern Spanish port city of Algeciras, on the Bay of Gibraltar, suggest that around 30 Gibraltarian women have the procedure there each year. Not conclusive, nor stratospheric, but significant considering the peninsula's tiny 34,000 population.

Abortions can cost between £450 and £800 and at the Algeciras clinic there are no English-speaking nurses and doctors to explain the procedure. One Gibraltarian woman, who does not wish to be named, says that her abortion at the clinic two years ago was "traumatic" as she had no way of communicating previous problems she'd experienced under anaesthesia.

With Brexit looming, some have voiced concerns that Spain could have new leverage at the Gibraltarian border. Should these fears be realised, access to abortion for the peninsula's women and girls could be limited even further.

Gibraltar's chief minister, Fabian Picardo, refutes this. "I really think that the frontier is going to operate better than it does today after Brexit, I don’t see there being issues at all," he told the Telegraph. 

Logistics aren't the only obstacle, however. Much like Argentina and Ireland, the abortion debate here is interlaced with religion, in a tiny community where almost three quarters of residents identify as Catholic.

Though local anti-abortion groups deny religious connections, some links are hard to ignore. "Pro-life workshops" have been organised by locals with strong ties to the Church; vocal pro-life members of the community have cried "murder" and cited Bible verses underneath womens' accounts of their abortions on  online forums.

Schools are not immune either. From the early Nineties until 2013, an anti-abortion propaganda film from 1984 called The Silent Scream - which included graphic images of foetal corpses in buckets - had been part of the religious studies curriculum at the girls' comprehensive. The shame residents attach to abortion is perhaps unsurprising, considering that sort of education.

Rose Olivia, a Gibraltarian, who had an abortion in Spain 11 years ago and has campaigned for changes to abortion law, says that she was shamed, when her GP refused to provide the morning-after pill.

“I had a five-day-old baby, I begged her," she says. "But my doctor said it was against her beliefs.” Oliva went to a pharmacy in Spain on that occasion, but when she later found out she was pregnant in the midst of an abusive relationship, she didn’t even consider going back to her GP to discuss her options. 

Considering that Gibraltar will only get its first sexual health clinic next month, its openness about sexual health is still a long way off modern standards. 

The consultation process on abortion law has involved the chief minister meeting with women who have had terminations, and groups campaigning on both sides of the debate. He says that he expects to present a bill to local parliament by November this year.

"The law has to change and will change," Picardo says. "I expect [it] to happen during the course of what’s left of the calendar year." 

But he also recognises that there are limitations to the difference a change in the law will actually make, admitting that some women wouldn't use abortion services in Gibraltar on account of confidentiality concerns. 

Gossip in a small place where practically everybody knows everybody, is perhaps inevitable. It’s one of the reasons the sexual health clinic was delayed for so long, and stringent measures are being put in place to ensure confidentiality is maintained when it opens later this year, including recruiting professionals from outside Gibraltar. 

Gibraltar's doctors and nurses are part of an incredibly small community, and often know their patients personally. Some have a reputation for telling friends and family about cases they're working on; rumours have spread about those with STIs; and there have been cases where the family members of those killed in road traffic accidents have found out through other people, rather than from the authorities, because nurses or doctors have messaged friends. 

So there is a very real fear that people will not be able to have an abortion without the community finding out. 

"In the UK you’d lose your registration, but in Gibraltar they don’t really give nurses and doctors harsh penalties [for breaching confidentiality],” says one nurse, who herself had an abortion in Malaga late last year. “You can’t give patient privacy.” As a result, she cannot envision the Gibraltar Health Authority ever legalising abortion.

Picardo says in such a tight-knit, tiny community, a solution to this is "impossible", adding "due to this, as well as discussing decriminalisation, the consultation process has considered the viability of sending women to the UK for abortions." 

As with Argentina, there is no guarantee that a proposed bill to relax abortion restrictions will be taken up. 

Even if it is, one local nurse sums up the fears of many: “You can change the law, but you can’t change a culture.”