abortion

(Posted at NEWW-Polska)

Every year 1.2 million Russian women deliberately terminate pregnancy and 30,000 of them become sterile, many from the estimated 180,000 illegal abortions.

Russian law permits abortions up to the 12th week of pregnancy. If the future mother is suffering from tuberculosis or mental illness she is permitted to terminate a pregnancy later than 12 weeks.

There is also a variety of social factors, which permit women to commit an abortion up to the 22nd week of pregnancy, including rape, imprisonment and poverty, and death or severe disability of the husband.

Nonetheless, Illegal abortion is widespread in Russia - unofficial estimates say 10-15% of the total, or up to 180,000 terminations.

A very powerful poem, read by Lauren Zuniga and directed to the oppressive, hypocritical and destructive anti-abortion laws recently passed in Oklahoma.

(h/t Her Authority)

"Socialized medicine", "death panels", "government mandated health care" . During the year long debate over health insurance reform, that worked to provide coverage for millions of Americans and stem rising insurance rates and global billing charges from medical providers, many political observers heard virtually all opponents (mostly conservatives and Republicans) of the legislation repeat ad nauseum those talking points.

You would think the veracity with which opponents fought a "government mandate" would mean they actually fucking mean it. Turns out, they don't.

Last week the Oklahoma legislature passed a series of bills that would mandate doctor's providing a legal medical procedure to precede said medical procedure with a vaginal ultrasound , you know so the women would have "all the information they need to make an informed decision" . Another bill also protects doctors from revealing all there is to know about the fetus, because the physician could have bad news like the fetus has severe deformations. Both were vetoed by the state's Democratic governor. Sadly, the legislature overrode that veto by a hefty margin to make these bills law.

If mandating an invasive ultrasound prior to a legal medical procedure isn't government mandated health care , then what is? It sure is fuck isn't me getting a cheaper premium on my Kaiser health care insurance. It sure is fuck isn't getting my son health care and free lunch at school.

Oklahoma's Republican dominated legislature ( and some Democratic members) has proven quick obviously that they don't care about women or women's rights. In my opinion, this bill is a mandate to rape women seeking a legal medical procedure. I am sick and livid.

LaPrincipessa | Twitter | Email

(Posted at Women Undefined)

Targeting: The U.S. Senate and The U.S. House

Started by: Feminist Majority Foundation

Dear Congressional leader,

I am outraged that fake clinics, or so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), deceptively advertise as comprehensive women’s health clinics, provide false and misleading information about birth control and abortion and often receive federal funding.

A Congressional study found that 87% of so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers provide false and misleading information by telling women that abortion is linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility, and mental illness including suicide, and tell women that condoms won’t protect against sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. The American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the World Health Organization all dispel these false claims.

Furthermore, the Hatch Amendment to the health care reform bill reinstates $250 million in federal funding, over five years, for failed abstinence-only Title V programs. Fake clinics, or so-called CPCs, in states that opt into the Title V program will be able to receive millions of dollars in federal funding and this is an outrage!

I urge you to support federal legislation that would stop fake clinics’ deceptive advertising practices, require that medically accurate information is provided, and eliminate ALL federal funding for fake clinics!

[Your name]

For more information, please visit Feminist Majority Foundation.

The European Women’s Lobby, together with its member organisations from Belgium (Belgium coordination of the EWL), Cyprus (Cyprus Women’s Lobby), Poland (Polish Women’s Lobby) and Ireland (National Women’s Council of Ireland) actively supports a Belgian campaign aiming at promoting the right to abort for all women in Europe.

The initiators of this campaign are a platform of civil society organizations from Belgium, Cyprus, Ireland and Poland, which joined forces to lead a campaign on the right to abort for all women in Europe and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Belgian law decriminalizing abortion.

Read the flyer presenting the campaign ( front   / back ), which has been disseminated in Brussels and Wallonie in March 2010.  The platform has delivered an open letter and is calling on national and European organisations and politicians to support it by signing it by 30 March. The open letter with all its signatories will then be sent to the European states which do not recognise the right for women to abort and to the European Union.  Please read it below (in French and English).

Please send the name of your organisation or your name as national or European politician to the following email address to be part of the supporters of the open letter: cypruswomenlobby@gmail.com, by March 30.

By Armin Rosen

NEW YORK, Mar1, 2010 (IPS) - Last fall, the push to reform healthcare in the United States was all but hijacked by one of the country's most passionate recurring cultural debates.

On Nov. 7, 2009, Congressmen Bart Stupak, a liberal Democrat, and Joseph Pitts, a conservative Republican, sponsored a stipulation in the healthcare reform bill that would severely limit federal funding for abortions in a reformed healthcare system.

If Barack Obama's comprehensive reform bill were passed, consumers would be able to buy discounted health insurance from an index of government-subsidised providers. But under the Stupak-Pitts amendment, an insurer could only be included on the index if its plans excluded abortions from its coverage.

The amendment passed, 240-194, and the debate over health care reform turned into a debate over abortion rights. Suddenly, a vote for reforming health care was also a vote for curtailing lower and middle-income access to abortions in the United States.

Wendy Chavkin, a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, is a member of a group of academics that authored a position paper on the place of reproductive health in the healthcare reform process.

(h/t @HunterSony)

Policies Designed to Sabotage Access Both at Home and Abroad

Women in need of abortion services should, as a matter of international law and – frankly - human decency, be able to count on support from their government as they face a difficult situation. But in Ireland they are actively stonewalled, stigmatized, and written out.

Marianne Mollmann, women’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch

(Dublin, January 28, 2010) - The Irish government actively seeks to restrict access to abortion services and information both within Ireland and for its residents seeking care abroad, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 57-page report, "A State of Isolation: Access to Abortion for Women in Ireland," details how women struggle to overcome the financial, logistical, physical, and emotional burdens imposed by restrictive laws and policies that force them to seek care abroad, without support from the state.  Every year thousands of women and girls travel from Ireland to other European countries for abortions.

"Women in need of abortion services should, as a matter of international law and - frankly -human decency, be able to count on support from their government as they face a difficult situation," said Marianne Mollmann, women's rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "But in Ireland they are actively stonewalled, stigmatized, and written out."

For the past week, this video made the headlines of numerous blogs and websites, no doubt for its absurdity, humor and how close to reality the concept seems to be. Making light of the abortion issue is not normally something I condone, but The Onion hits this issue right on the head, complete with pretentious pundits and dramatic rhetoric. In his clip, The Onion reports Women are now required to paint the nursery and name the baby before having an abortion.

A very common theme among the Pro-life crowd is the notion that women who obtain an abortion are somehow "uneducated" about the decision they make. Aside from the degrading assumption that women are uninformed about their healthcare choices for no other reason than being a woman, this talking point is used mercilessly in stripping away abortion rights little by little across the country. Whether its new laws requiring a "waiting period" or requirement to obtain "counseling" before an abortion; all are making it more difficult for women to have the freedom of making their own reproductive decisions.

And The Onion gets right to the heart of that issue. In the most horrifying way, I think this video raises the question of morality in stripping women of the right to make their own decisions about their body brilliantly.

New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

-Sophia

My heart hurts. Never before have I felt so betrayed. I have been deeply involved with getting health reform passed. As a volunteer, donor and blogger, I feel I have invested a substantial amount of time and energy on this very important issue. I believe all humans have equal rights and deserve fair and equal healthcare at an affordable cost. I believe the rising costs of healthcare are damaging our economy so quickly that if something isn't done immediately the repercussions could be far reaching. When the United States House of Representatives passed the landmark legislation, I rejoiced, and then I read this:

Pro-choice lawmakers and organization leaders are firing back after the House passed its landmark health care reform legislation late Saturday night. The bill included what's known as the Stupak-Pitts amendment, language offered by Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) that prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion services in any health exchange be it public or private

For two primary reasons, I generally avoid writing about the American Moral-Majority-type Evangelical Christian movement.  First, I think they already get overwhelmingly more attention than they deserve, and second, I don't want to humor the part of their binary-based ideology that classifies every person as either (a) Christian or (b) sexually liberal, and defines both camps in part by their mutual enmity.  But I'm going to break my own boycott for a moment, because I was that enthralled by This American Life's recently repeated episode featuring Hell House.

As Ira Glass explains about ten minutes into the episode:

In 1999, documentary filmmaker George Ratliff read about a church in Cedar Hill, Texas, which is a suburb of Dallas, that was staging a re-creation of the Columbine Massacre.  That church, Trinity Church, was putting on a haunted house, called Hell House.  They'd been doing it every year for years, each Halloween.  The Columbine scene was just one scene of about a dozen.  There was also an abortion scene, there was a scene where a gay man dies of AIDS, and a scene where a mom meets a man on the internet and then deserts her family for that man...  And the point is: Devils are around us, trying to trip us up, every day.  Sin is real; the devil's real; so you better get right with God.