Swiss Criminal Code

¹ The ter­min­a­tion of a preg­nancy is ex­empt from pen­alty in the event that the ter­min­a­tion is, in the judg­ment of a phys­i­cian, ne­ces­sary in or­der to be able to pre­vent the preg­nant wo­man from sus­tain­ing ser­i­ous phys­ic­al in­jury or ser­i­ous psy­cho­lo­gic­al dis­tress. The risk must be great­er the more ad­vanced the preg­nancy is.

² The ter­min­a­tion of a preg­nancy is like­wise ex­empt from pen­alty if, at the writ­ten re­quest of a preg­nant wo­man, who claims that she is in a state of dis­tress, it is per­formed with­in twelve weeks of the start of the preg­nant wo­man’s last peri­od by a phys­i­cian who is li­censed to prac­tise his pro­fes­sion. The phys­i­cian must have a de­tailed con­sulta­tion with the wo­man pri­or to the ter­min­a­tion and provide her with ap­pro­pri­ate coun­selling.

³ If the wo­man is in­cap­able of judge­ment, the con­sent of her leg­al rep­res­ent­at­ive is re­quired.

⁴ The can­tons des­ig­nate the med­ic­al prac­tices and hos­pit­als that ful­fil the re­quire­ments for the pro­fes­sion­al con­duct of pro­ced­ures to ter­min­ate preg­nancy and for the pro­vi­sion of coun­selling.

⁵ An abor­tion is re­por­ted for stat­ist­ic­al pur­poses to the com­pet­ent health au­thor­ity, whereby the an­onym­ity of the wo­man con­cerned is guar­an­teed and med­ic­al con­fid­en­ti­al­ity is pre­served.