Talk:Abortion in Mauritius

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 13:08, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that Mauritius's abortion law was "dormant for nearly two centuries", as one newspaper put it?

• Source: First, the courage posted by the government proposing an amendment to a part of the legislation that has remained dormant for nearly two centuries must be recognized.

• • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Tommy Suggs

Moved to mainspace by Vigilantcosmicpenguin (talk). Number of QPQs required: 2. DYK is currently in unreviewed backlog mode and nominator has 21 past nominations.

— Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 20:57, 3 December 2024 (UTC).

• Article was moved into mainspace on December 2 and was nominated on December 3, making it new enough. It is long enough, and is cited throughout to reliable sources. No copyright violation detected, and I'm assuming good faith that it isn't a close paraphrase of the many foreign language references used. Hook fact is interesting, a good length, and verifiable to the article, but the source is cited one sentence beyond the hook fact. This is a minor problem, but there must be an end-of-sentence citation directly after the quote. This will mean repeating a citation, but we do have to have it there in order to approve the hook per policy at WP:DYKHFC. Once this minor issue is fixed, please ping me and I will approve the hook. Best.4meter4 (talk) 15:22, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
  • @4meter4: Done. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 18:05, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

All issues resolved. This hook can be promoted.4meter4 (talk) 18:19, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Nice work

FuzzyMagma (talk) 08:53, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Abortion in Mauritius/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Vigilantcosmicpenguin (talk · contribs) 01:48, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Thebiguglyalien (talk · contribs) 21:00, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

I'll look over the article within the next few days. This will let me check off Mauritius in my goal to review one article for each country. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 21:00, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Source review

This table checks 6 passages from throughout the article (10.5% of 57 total passages). These passages contain 6 inline citations (9.7% of 62 in the article). Generated with the Veracity user script. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 19:48, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Reference #	Letter	Source	Archive	Status	Notes
The Ministry of Health has authorized five regional hospitals and several private hospitals to provide abortions, as of 2022[update].
2	a	imazpress.com		Y
The 2009 Contraceptive Prevalence Survey found that Mauritius had between 15,000 and 20,000 abortions per year.
18		lexpress.mu		Y
Attorney General Yatin Varma proposed the Criminal Code (Amendment) Bill, saying he supported freedom of choice. Leader of the Opposition Paul Bérenger supported the bill and called a special session to debate it.
24	a	lexpress.mu		Y	I want to double check ambiguous pronouns here, especially since I'm reading through machine translation. It looks like the source could be referring to Varma or to the leader of the MMM.
and religious groups including the country's Council of Religions supported the law.
30		lexpress.mu		N	As far as I can tell, this only says the Council of Religions supported abortion rights in specific circumstances. I don't see where it expresses support for any specific law or mentions any groups supporting abortion rights other than the Council of Religions.
The Ministry of Health developed a sexual and reproductive health plan in 2022, which addressed abortion.
3	b	defimedia.info		Y
Abortion is a taboo subject in the country.
40	a	defimedia.info		Y

The Ponceneau citation at [37] is undefined. Besides this, all sources appear to be reliable. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 19:48, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

• Fixed this ref. Double-checked source 24, and the statement about freedom of choice is unambiguously about Varma. As for the Council of Religions statement, it looks like you're right; the council used vaguer wording, so rephrased. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Prose review

Lead

• "In the 2000s, illegal abortions were frequent, but legislative debate was rare due to religious opposition to abortion." – Was this only true in the 2000s? I suggest replacing it with something like "before it was amended".
  • Replaced this statement with another statement about unsafe abortion with a different timeline. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• "some religious leaders supported the bill, while other religious leaders opposed it" – This seems a little redundant, and it underplays that most religious groups opposed it (unless I'm misreading the article).
  • Rewritten, as I had misinterpreted the source. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Legislation

• It's confusing reading the text of the law and then reading a description that contradicts the text. If it's supposed to be different like this, then there should be some explanation of where these differences come from, and possibly the text from those laws as well.
  • Rephrased to say includes exceptions. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• Define "an adult". We've already been told it has to be approved by physicians (presumably adults) or a police report (presumably written by an adult).
  • Rephrased to "parent or guardian". (The source says "parent or other adult" but the actual text of the law clearly indicates that this means "guardian".) — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• Consider defining "Conscientious objection" in this context so a reader unfamiliar with abortion law can understand it without clicking on the link. Right now it's not clear that it's the physician objecting.
  • Done.
• Do we have any more information about the laws surrounding government authorization to provide abortions?
  • Added the statement Facilities must be licenced to provide abortions. I can't find any information about more specific requirements. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• It might help to describe in a few words what the Maputo Protocol is.
  • Added the phrase Maputo Protocol on women's rights. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Abortion ban

• It should be made clear that Mauritius inherited French law. The lead explains this more clearly than the body.
  • Added.
• "During this era, abortion was common among enslaved women, and Malagasy slaves were frequently accused of it" – Unclear what this means without context
  • Rephrased.
• "cannot testify about patients' conditions" – testify in what context?
  • Rephrased
• Why weren't "procedures to prevent pregnancy before implantation" available? The article implies it was intentional but doesn't explicitly say so.
  • Rephrased; it was not intentional but merely a lack of training. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

2012 amendment

• The section needs to describe what specifically the amendment changed, preferably in the first sentence or two.
  • Done.
• "the vote was not split along party lines" – Do we know what the dividing line was if it wasn't party?
  • I can't find any information about which politicians (besides Bérenger) supported or opposed the law. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Post-2012

• Has infanticide only been an issue post-2012? Its current placement in this section implies that this is the case.
  • Removed that sentence; upon re-reading the source, it doesn't actually make this statement. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Prevalence

• This is the second time the article says women's rights groups are split on the abortion issue. Earlier it was presented as a historical pre-2012 fact, but here it's presented as being true today.
  • I think it's worth mentioning both times; rephrased the statement in the history section to flow better with the mention of the Common Front on Abortion. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• Information about the effectiveness of these different methods would be interesting, but it would be subject to WP:MEDRS.
  • I think the statement that traditional methods often result in complications is adequate. I doubt there's any research on each specific method used by traditional healers in a small island country. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
• Is this 3–4/1000 women who had abortions, or 3–4/1000 of all women in the country?
  • Rephrased to "women of reproductive age".

Vigilantcosmicpenguin, the article looks good, mostly just some things where I could use some clarification. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:50, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

• • @Thebiguglyalien: K think I got everything. Thanks. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 04:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
    • It pretty much looks good to go, I just have one more comment. "Section 235 of the Criminal Code of Mauritius says" makes me feel like the subsequent text is the full text of the law, but then the next sentence says "The Criminal Code includes exceptions". Those exceptions aren't in the quoted excerpt, so as a reader I have no idea how much legislation there actually is or what it fully entails. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 19:09, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
      • @Thebiguglyalien: Ah, I'm now noticing that this is the former text of the law, which is why it's written as if all abortions are illegal. I've moved the blockquote to the history section, and I've added a different paragraph about criminal penalties. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 00:19, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
        • It kept nagging at me that some sort of discrepancy was there, that would explain it. With that, the article looks good to me. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 01:16, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.