Analysis provided by Soraya Pascoe, Legal Expert on Gender

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Women's health: specific services for women which are provided by women, in Austria, are generally supplied by private or charitably funded initiatives. However, the Federal Ministry for Environment and Family Affairs has supported and extended a network of family counselling centres for free and a anonymous counselling on a wide range of matters from sexual health to family planning to social work support and legal advice. The ministry has also allocated extra funding specifically for women's health issues within the counselling centres. The focus being on hormone clinics, menopause and sexual and reproductive health. There is also provision for training healthcare professionals on how to assist victims of domestic violence.

80 per cent of nurses in Austria are women, while only 35 per cent of medical doctors are female. In the field of gynaecology, only 18 per cent of practitioners are female.

Much healthcare in Austria is still traditionally undertaken by untrained female care workers, usually family members in the home, the government is addressing this by various programmes about health awareness and access to preventative health care particularly and specifically in the field of women's health and medicine.

While Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to start a family at least within marriage, surrogacy and egg donation are banned in Austria. The law regulating reproduction is the 1992 Law on Reproductive Medicine.

Abortion in Austria is available on request and it is one of the very few countries in Europe that does not place a restriction on where the abortion is carried out or by whom, as long as the professional is a qualified doctor. Hence an Austrian woman seeking an abortion may visit a clinic where she could also obtain other gynaecological related services without consulting with her general practitioner. An abortion is available on request for up to 14 - 15 weeks and it is beyond that timescale that she may only be allowed an abortion if she can show a risk to her physical or mental health or the health of the foetus, then the legal limit is 24 weeks. If the abortion is requested by a girl under 14 years old, she would need the consent of her parents. The governing legislation is the Federal Law of 1974 and sections 96, 97 and 98of the Penal Code.

If an abortion is procured by any other person than a qualified doctor, then the same law stipulates the sentencing for both the person conducting the abortion and the woman herself. (one to three years imprisonment for the person conducting and three years for the woman herself). A woman conducting an abortion on herself can be sentenced for one year.

The clinics at which a woman can seek gynaecological, social and even legal help bypass the necessity for consultation with a general practitioner. While the services are confidential, federally, confidentiality is enacted by virtue of the Physicians Law.

Exceptions to professional confidentiality enacted by the Physicians Law 1998 82/03 apply however, in certain circumstances. Paragraph 54(4) stipulates one such circumstance, when a doctor suspects an adult has been mistreated, tortured, neglected or sexually abused. Here the doctor is obliged to report the matter to the authorities.

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