abortion

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.

Policies Designed to Sabotage Access Both at Home and Abroad

(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.

NAIROBI, 19 October 2009 (PlusNews) - Julia Nyaberi's* "clinic" in Majengo, a slum in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, caters to one type of client only - pregnant women seeking abortions.

Young women writhe in pain on the floor of the poorly lit house; the neighbours all know what happens here and have become immune to the moans and wails.

"They come to me and each pays me 50 shillings [US$0.70]," Nyaberi told IRIN/PlusNews. "Most of them are sex workers who operate here in Majengo and have conceived by mistake."

She uses a concoction of herbs to induce abortion, and admits there have been fatalities. "Even qualified drivers at times cause accidents; I do not do this job to kill anyone, but at times some are unlucky and go together with the child they came to abort," she said.

Diana Awuor*, 21, is a sex worker in Majengo, and fell pregnant after unprotected sex with a regular client.

"Not that I have sex without a condom every day but there are some regular clients you can excuse at times and I think that is how I became pregnant," she said. "We cannot do our work while pregnant because nobody will want you, so I have to abort to stay in business, and also, I don't want a baby."

COOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Millions of people marching for patriarchy control of women's reproductive organs.

More than a million people streamed through the streets of Madrid to protest against a loosening of Spain's abortion laws on Saturday, one of the largest demonstrations since anti-war rallies held in 2003 and 2004.

The Madrid regional government estimated the crowd at 1.2 million. A spokesman for one of the rally organizers, HazteOir (Make Yourself Heard), told Agence France Presse that 1.5 million people had attended.

"The presence of each of you here today in this demonstration is a commitment to fight for life," Benigno Blanco, head of a group called Forum on the Family," told the crowd. "Those of you who govern us must listen to the voice from the streets."

Marchers held signs reading "For Life, Women and Motherhood," "Women Against Abortion" and "Madrid 2009, Capital of Life.

Really?

- Sophia

By Patience Nyangove

WINDHOEK, Oct 7 (IPS) - Ten years ago, a move to legalise abortion in Namibia failed. The number of unwanted pregnancies remains high, with many people unwilling or unable to use contraception. Despite the risks, illegal abortions remain common.

Misoprostol - a drug used to control ulcers, more usually known by the brand name Cytotec - has become a favoured method for inducing abortion.

The drug costs around $14 U.S. dollars per tablet from a pharmacist and is readily available on the streets of Windhoek. Medical doctors who conduct abortions illegally using the drug charge between 140 and 200 U.S. dollars.

Twenty-two year-old Monisha (not her real name), a student at University of Namibia, decided to have an abortion because her boyfriend is a married man and hence could not marry her.

"My parents would have killed me if they had found out that I was made pregnant by a married man, who can't marry me," she says. "I am also not ready to be a mother, I am still a student."

By Stephen de Tarczynski

MANILA, Sep 30 (IPS) - Sitting in an apartment in central Manila, 70-year-old Lydia (her second name has been withheld to protect her identity) speaks in hushed tones. A manghihilot, or traditional midwife, she is wary when talking about her experiences of abortion, an often-taboo subject in the Philippines.

While Lydia, speaking through a translator, insists that for more than 50 years she has merely been "a local midwife who helps women give birth", she also reveals several instances in which she assisted in the termination of pregnancies.

In the most recent of these, a woman seeking abortion arrived at Lydia’s doorstep in August. Initially turned away, the woman returned three days later, this time bleeding from her vagina.

According to Lydia, the woman told her that she had received an injection and taken cytotec in order to abort her pregnancy. Cytotec is the trade name of misoprostol, a drug whose uses include the treatment of gastric ulcers but which is commonly used for self-administered abortions in the Philippines.

From Amnesty International: Legislators will essentially ban abortions out right and deny in many cases, life saving treatment to women and girls. The mortality rate during child birth has risen in the last 10 years, in part due to the lack of medical care available and the lack of support from government entities.

Proposed changes to the constitution of the Dominican Republic could lead to a ban on abortions, putting the lives of women and girls at risk and potentially increasing maternal deaths in the country, Amnesty International has warned.

 

Article 30 of the constitution would introduce the inviolability of life from "conception to death" under the proposal. It is widely acknowledged that this will lead to changes in the country's Penal Code that could lead to a total abortion ban.

 

The Congress of the Dominican Republic is to vote on the proposed changes on Thursday.

 

If the article is approved as proposed, it would severely limit the availability of safe abortions, even in cases when a woman is suffering from life-threatening complications or is in need of life-saving treatment incompatible with pregnancy – such as that for malaria, cancer or HIV/AIDS.