November 1, 2017

Five Things to Know About Congressional Republicans’ Total Abortion Ban

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
Leave a Comment 

“They want to outlaw all abortions for everyone, period.”

King is confident the total abortion ban would prevail in the nation’s highest court because, as he falsely claimed, “There’s nothing more precise in its medical definition than a heartbeat …. I don’t know how a court can rationalize their way around that.”
 Drew Angerer/Getty Images 

A proposal to ban abortion care nationwide takes a key first step Wednesday in the “regular order” of how a bill proceeds through the U.S. House of Representatives to become law.

The so-called Heartbeat Protection Act (HR 490) is modeled on a failed Ohio Republican attempt to end legal abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy—before many people know they’re pregnant. As technology advances, the ban’s maestro, Faith2Action leader Janet Porter, hopes to end abortion access much earlier. She’s found an ally in Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who introduced the federal ban at her behest in January. King believes the U.S. Supreme Court “unconstitutionally decided” Roe v. Wade, which established the right to an abortion in the United States until fetal viability, determined by doctors to be around 24 weeks’ gestation.

Congressional Republicans’ sudden momentum on banning abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy falls in the shadow of an equally unconstitutional 20-week cutoff that the House passed in September. Reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates fear that the GOP might pull off a bait-and-switch to make the 20-week ban appear reasonable.

Could the total abortion ban become law? The ban’s future depends on its history, much of which is repeating itself on a national stage. Here are five important facts to know about the bill and the politics surrounding it.

1. The so-called heartbeat bill is an unconstitutional, medically unsupported, total abortion ban.

Because “heartbeat bills” target abortion care so early in pregnancy, they amount to total abortion bans. They’re wildly misleading and, like many anti-choice bills, based on junk science.

“When you’re talking about a fetus, the term ‘heartbeat’ isn’t even really accurate,” HuffPost‘s Erin Schumaker reported.

A fetal heartbeat is typically detectable at around five or six weeks into a pregnancy, according to Dr. Rebecca Cohen, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado.

“It’s not a fully formed heart like you would understand from looking at an adult or even a young child,” Cohen said. “It’s a very early structure. We can see it on the ultrasound, but it’s not a heart, a fully developed organ, by any means.”

Moreover, cardiac activity isn’t a credible measure of fetal viability. This preliminary activity starts at a point in the pregnancy where there’s still a significant risk of miscarriage, and no real guarantee that the pregnancy will continue to be a healthy, uncomplicated one.

Total abortion bans are among the nation’s most extreme anti-choice measures, and federal courts have generally agreed, declaring them unconstitutional. That hasn’t stopped King from pursuing the ban from his position of power in Congress.

King admitted at a Capitol Hill press conference alongside Porter, herself considered too extreme for Christian talk radio, that his bill serves the same function as a total abortion ban. Porter persuaded King to act while both attended the funeral of Phyllis Schlafly, the notorious Equal Rights Amendment opponent, as People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch first reported.

2. The hearing could get ugly.

The total abortion ban will play out in House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, a forum for conservative and often racially biased anti-abortion myths. The hearing marks the debut of King, an unabashed white nationalist, as the subcommittee’s chair, and Rep. Karen Handel (R-GA), a longtime Planned Parenthood antagonist, as a potentially potent new voice on the panel.

As a member of the subcommittee, King in 2016 interrogated a reproductive justice advocate over whether killing “partially delivered” puppies would amount to a crime, in an apparent attempt to draw a parallel between dogs and Black babies. He subsequently rebuked Black people for exercising their constitutional right to abortion care in a post-hearing interview with Rewire. Another contentious hearinglast year uplifted legislation to ban sex- and race-selective abortion care—a bill that would have, in the words of reproductive justice advocate Miriam Yeung, perpetuated “the offensive stereotype that Black women are unable to make reproductive health decisions for their own families.”

Wednesday’s hearing will feature three GOP witnesses, one of whom is known for particularly inflammatory takes on abortion rights and LGBTQ rights, according to Right Wing Watch. Another witness, Kathi Aultman, bills herself as an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists fellow, even though the College’s companion organization, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), condemned the total abortion ban upon its introduction. A spokesperson for the College confirmed Aultman’s affiliation but said she’s not ACOG’s representative at the hearing.

For their sole witness, Democrats selected Priscilla Smith, a clinical lecturer with Yale University’s Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice, in keeping with the fact-based counterstrategy they described to fight the subcommittee’s bluster.

3. Congressional Republicans are following Ohio’s bait-and-switch anti-choice playbook.

State-level tactics to make onerous abortion restrictions seem more politically palatable in the face of a total abortion ban are now in play on Capitol Hill.

Standing next to Trump in the White House Rose Garden, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in mid-October pledged to schedule a vote on a 20-week abortion ban identical to the House’s cleared version, even though Democrats’ legislative firewall will likely shut it down. McConnell as of October 30had not yet cued up the 20-week ban, according to a senior spokesperson who spoke with Rewire in a Senate hallway.

What will happen if and when McConnell follows through? Will Republicans paint the 20-week ban as a more middle-of-the-road option than the total abortion ban? Ohio Gov. John Kasich certainly did so. The former Republican presidential candidate, often erroneously portrayed as a moderate, in 2016 vetoed the total abortion ban the same day he signed a 20-week ban into law, reasoning that the 20-week ban would be more constitutionally prudent. It’s not.

Despite Kasich’s veto, anti-choice lawmakers keep reviving the total abortion ban. The Ohio House Health Committee scheduled a hearing Wednesday morning on the latest state-level version hours before the federal version was set to go before King’s subcommittee. And David Forte, one of the GOP witnesses to testify on Capitol Hill, helped draft state-level heartbeat bans, including Ohio’s.

Reproductive rights advocates smell strategy, not coincidence.

“It feels like it’s ripped from the Ohio playbook,” NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio Executive Director Kellie Copeland told Rewire in a phone interview. “That doesn’t mean that I think that the people behind the six-week bans are knowingly being utilized this way.”

“I think they sincerely want to pass their legislation. They want to outlaw all abortions for everyone, period. But so do the people behind the 20-week ban, or in Ohio’s case, now the Down syndrome ban. These are all pre-viability bans, they are all unconstitutional, they are all designed to be challenges to Roe v. Wade. Our opponents are trying to offer the U.S. Supreme Court, which they hope will be further influenced by another Trump appointee—they’re trying to provide that future court with a variety, like a buffet of options to say, ‘Well, you could use this one or this one or this one to overturn or to gut Roe v. Wade.’ That’s what this is really about.”

King is confident the total abortion ban would prevail in the nation’s highest court because, as he falsely claimed, “There’s nothing more precise in its medical definition than a heartbeat …. I don’t know how a court can rationalize their way around that.”

“People down the line, they’re going to say, ‘But it would go before the Supreme Court.’ And I expect it would. And I hope it does,” King told Rewire last week after a separate Judiciary subcommittee hearing.

4. But GOP leaders are following the momentum of the 20-week ban.

King wouldn’t comment on any commitments from GOP leaders to advance the total abortion ban in the House.

“We have a tremendous amount of momentum,” King told Rewire last week after a separate Judiciary subcommittee hearing. “A lot of people thought at the beginning of this Congress that getting that many co-sponsors”—169—”on a heartbeat bill would be impossible …. I expect that number to go up, maybe before the hearing and more likely after the hearing.”

King described the hearing as laying the foundation for a potential committee markup, another next step in increasingly rare regular order on Capitol Hill. “There’s nobody in leadership that has expressed resistance to it,” King said. “They’re philosophically supportive of it, and so I think we have a little ways to go yet to make the case, but I think we can make the case.”

A spokesperson for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) deferred comment on the total abortion ban to the chair of the full House Judiciary Committee, immigration foe Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and on the prospect for a vote to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

Ryan’s spokesperson, AshLee Strong, would not say whether Ryan was “philosophically supportive” of the bill despite the speaker’s anti-choice credentials.

Two spokespeople for McCarthy, who sets the House floor schedule and has led 20-week ban rallying cries, did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Across the Capitol, the total abortion ban doesn’t seem to be on the Senate’s radar either.

The Senate is focused on the 20-week ban proposal, according to Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), a former Bible camp director behind perennial congressional GOP-led efforts to criminalize a common medical procedure used after miscarriages and during second-trimester abortions.

“I can’t imagine that we would skip to the next thing if we haven’t got this one done,” Lankford told Rewirein an interview near the Senate floor. “I’m not going to speak for the leader and what he’s going to try to bring up and how that would come up, but our first priority is the five-month piece.”

King won’t be stopped.

“My goal is to have the heartbeat bill on the floor of the House of Representatives January 19—that’s March for Life day,” King said.

5. The White House is on board—but it doesn’t want you to know.

The total abortion ban is associated with three prominent anti-choice lobbyists: Porter; Porter’s Faith2Action Legislative Director Rachelle Heidlebaugh, whose subscription LinkedIn page includes work for an anti-choice fake clinic and most recently, the Koch-funded Concerned Vets for America; and Tom DeLay, the former U.S. House of Representatives majority leader convicted on campaign finance violations that were later overturned on appeal.

The trio in September lobbied a top White House official in virulently anti-choice Vice President Mike Pence’s office. White House spokesperson Kelly Love declined to comment via email at the time, as did Marc Lotter, a top Pence spokesperson who has since left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to promote the Trump-Pence agenda on the political circuit, headlining a GOP fundraiser last week in Buffalo, New York.

Neither the president’s nor the vice president’s public schedules at the time indicated that they were in attendance at the September meeting. But Porter subsequently sent an email to supporters with photographic evidence to the contrary, Right Wing Watch reported.

Photo courtesy of Right Wing Watch.

“The Vice President not only stated that he ‘loves’ the pro-life Heartbeat Bill, he promised to put the letter calling for its passage directly on President Trump’s desk,” Porter said in the email.

Reached by phone Tuesday about the discrepancy, Lotter directed Rewire to a spokesperson in Pence’s office. The spokesperson described what occurred as a staff-level meeting with policy aides. “My understanding is the group ran into the Vice President in the West Wing after a different meeting and he said hello,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The spokesperson ignored Rewire‘s repeated inquiries: Did Pence make any commitments to throwing the power of the White House behind the total abortion ban in Congress—or behind executive action from Trump?

The White House’s latest response, or lack thereof, builds on officials’ pattern of obfuscating meetings with anti-choice leaders. Lotter in July flat-out refused to answer questions about a “private meeting” between Pence and anti-choice advocates, even though some of the advocates—Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser and Concerned Women for America CEO and President Penny Young Nance—were clearly identifiable in a photo posted from the vice president’s official Twitter account. A third attendee, March for Life President Jeanne Mancini, retweeted Pence with her gratitude.

Rewire on Tuesday attempted to ask Porter questions about the White House meeting and the politics of the ban, but when reached by phone, she said she couldn’t talk. She agreed to take questions via email but has not yet answered them.

The last word here goes to a person who can comment on the total abortion ban from her lived experiences.

“When the six-week ban was introduced in Ohio, I shared my story of when I had my abortion. I didn’t even know I was pregnant at six weeks,” Mallory McMaster, a storyteller for We Testify project to end abortion stigma, told Rewire.

“I was pretty lucky. There were no barriers keeping me from getting my abortion,” she said. “If we ban abortion at six weeks or when there’s a detectable heartbeat, which might even be before six weeks as ultrasound technology keeps getting better, people are going to lose access to abortion completely, and the impact it’ll have on our lives is disastrous for our society, for our economy, [and] for our economic and educational well-being.”

https://rewire.news/article/2017/11/01/five-things-know-congressional-republicans-total-abortion-ban/

 

November 1, 2017

A Trump administration official may have broken the law in blocking undocumented minors’ access to abortion. Will he face any consequences?

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information
1 Comment 

171026_JUR_scottLloyd
Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement,
arrives for a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

If Scott Lloyd didn’t break the law, he came perilously close to doing so. Since his appointment in March as director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services, Lloyd has prohibitedundocumented minors in federal custody from obtaining abortions. He has instructed subordinates to prevent these minors from meeting with attorneys and from going to court to request permission to terminate their pregnancies. He has personally met with multiple minors to coerce them to carry their unwanted pregnancies to term.

 A federal court ruled on Tuesday that Lloyd violated the Constitution when he refused to let an undocumented minor known as Jane Doe obtain an abortion. This ruling casts serious doubt on the constitutionality of ORR’s broader policy, which bars federally funded shelters from taking “any action that facilitates” abortion without approval from Lloyd (which he will never provide). The Jane Doe case also raised questions about the broader legality of Lloyd’s actions. An ethics watchdog group and two congressional representatives are now looking into whether Lloyd should be charged with abuse of public office.

Lloyd was selected to run ORR precisely because of his culture warrior bona fides. He vigorously opposes abortion and has argued that pregnant women should be legally required to receive consent from their partners before terminating a pregnancy. Lloyd also opposes contraception which, he claims, has an extremely high failure rate. (The science does not back up this allegation.) He helped Terri Schiavo’s parents fight to keep their daughter on artificial life support and co-founded an anti-abortion law firm called LegalWorks Apostolate. This work experience made Lloyd an obvious candidate for the Trump administration, although his specific placement was initially puzzling: As ORR director, Lloyd is tasked with helping new refugees though he has no real experience in refugee resettlement.

It is now quite clear why Lloyd was selected for this position: to halt the Obama administration’s practice of allowing undocumented, unaccompanied minors to obtain abortions upon request. Emails obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show that Lloyd immediately imposed an absolute bar on abortion services and began monitoring pregnant minors at federally funded shelters. Via email, he directed shelters not to let these women meet with attorneys regarding termination—or to go before judges to receive judicial bypasses, as required under Texas law. Instead, he provided them with a list of approved “crisis pregnancy centers” to which minors could be brought for anti-abortion “counseling.”

Lloyd also repeatedly met with pregnant minors to urge them not to terminate and called their parents—without their consent—to inform them that their daughters were pregnant. He prioritizedplacing these teenagers with sponsors who opposed abortion. And although Lloyd took keen interest in these minors’ fetuses, his emails reflect a blasé attitude toward the women themselves. In one email, he noted that a pregnant minor denied abortion access had “mentioned suicide”; in response, he urged more anti-abortion counseling. In another email, he advised that a shelter staffer should “keep a close eye” on a pregnant teen in case she began to demand an abortion, which “these girls” often “regret.”

Does Lloyd have the authority to micromanage these minors’ medical decisions and deprive them of legal representation? He does not, argues the Campaign for Accountability, which has called on the Virginia State Bar to investigate whether Lloyd’s actions violated rules of professional conduct. (Lloyd is a member of the Virginia bar.) CFA alleges Lloyd may have engaged in interference with the administration of justice by preventing minors from attending court hearings. Moreover, he may have “misused his position” by “personally visiting unaccompanied immigrant minors, pressuring them regarding personal healthcare decisions, and providing individualized, detailed, and at times illegal direction to grantee shelters regarding their care.” Lloyd is not authorized to perform any of these tasks under federal law.

In a letter to the HHS inspector general, CFA also claims Lloyd may have committed contempt of court by violating state confidentiality rules regarding judicial bypass. Under Texas law, court records of bypass proceedings are confidential, and the court is authorized to enforce this confidentiality. Lloyd plainly violated those rules by calling at least one minor’s parents following her bypass hearing and divulging information regarding her pregnancy.

Perhaps most damningly, Lloyd may have flouted the terms of a long-standing federal settlement agreement—behavior that could put him in contempt of federal court. In 1997, the federal government entered a settlement in the long-running Flores v. Reno lawsuit, which involved the rights of undocumented, unaccompanied minors. Under the agreement, the government is legally obligated to provide these minors with emergency health care, family planning services, “a reasonable right to privacy,” and “legal services.” As CFA explains:

Mr. Lloyd appears to have violated the Flores settlement in a number of ways. He withheld family planning services from [Jane Doe], who was blocked from obtaining an abortion for weeks as Mr. Lloyd directed the grantee shelter to refuse to let her leave for her scheduled appointments. He has blocked at least one unaccompanied immigrant minor from seeking and receiving legal assistance. He has suggested circumventing the placement priorities of the Flores agreement in an apparent attempt to prioritize ideological opposition to abortion over the goal of placing unaccompanied immigrant minors with their family members. He has also potentially deprived unaccompanied immigrant minors of their reasonable right to privacy by notifying their parents or sponsors of their pregnancies, and has forced them to undergo “counseling” at crisis pregnancy centers.

Join Dahlia Lithwick and her stable of standout guests for a discussion about the high court and the country’s most important cases.

On Oct. 16, Reps. Beto O’Rourke and Zoe Lofgren sent a letter to Acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan expressing concern about many of these issues. O’Rourke and Lofgren asked Hargan to clarify HHS policy regarding its compliance with Flores as well as Lloyd’s possible abuse of office. The letter requested a “prompt response to this urgent matter.” As of Friday afternoon, HHS has not responded. O’Rourke’s office informed me that the congressman has sent a follow-up note “communicating the urgency of their expected response.”

CFA’s complaints to the Virginia State Bar and the HHS inspector general are not likely to spur immediate repercussions for Lloyd. If the bar does move to sanction Lloyd—which is no sure thing, as state bars are hesitant to punish powerful members for their official actions—those proceedings will take quite a while. And while HHS Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson is fairly independent, his office typically focuses on combating fraud and waste of federal funds. Lloyd’s behavior does technically fall under Levinson’s purview, but he may view it as a fundamentally political matter. And even if Levinson does launch an investigation, it could drag on for months or even years. In the meantime, Lloyd can continue to impose his unlawful policies on thousands of undocumented minors.

Lloyd should face consequences for his misconduct. He probably won’t. Like so many Trump administration officials, Lloyd behaves as though he is above the law—an attitude that obviously starts at the top. He has imposed his beliefs on those in his care with little regard for their own well-being. He has exceeded the authority of his office and disregarded both state and federal law. He has, in other words, acted exactly as we have come to expect a Trump appointee to act. Lloyd’s ethical breaches should be a scandal. But in this administration, they’re just business as usual.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/will_scott_lloyd_face_any_consequences_for_his_anti_abortion_crusade.html

 

October 31, 2017

This GOP Abortion Bill Would Ban Abortion At 6 Weeks — Before Most Women Know They’re Pregnant

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

lightwavemedia/Fotolia

I didn’t find out I was pregnant until the end of the first trimester. The pregnancy was unplanned, so I attributed my symptoms to polycystic ovary syndrome, which I have. But I learned I was wrong at 12 weeks into my pregnancy. Twelve weeks, by the way, seems to be double the amount of time Republican lawmakers think a person should have to decide if they want to continue with their pregnancy. Case-in-point: A new GOP abortion bill would ban abortion at six weeks — before, as is clear in my case, most women even know they’re pregnant.

According to Teen Vogue, a judiciary committee will hold a hearing on November 1 to discuss  H.R. 490, anti-choice legislation introduced in January by notorious abortion opponent Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa. The proposed bill, entitled the “Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017,” would ban abortions “in cases where a fetal heartbeat is detectable.” It would also make it a federal crime if a health care provider knowingly performs an abortion procedure without first determining “whether the fetus has a detectable heartbeat,” “without informing the mother of the results,” or “after determining that a fetus has a detectable heartbeat.” Teen Vogue reported.

H.R. 490 is the first so-called heartbeat bill to be introduced into Congress, according to Rewire, although it’s certainly not the first of its kind. King’s anti-abortion legislation is modeled after a similar extreme anti-choice bill that failed in Ohio last year. Ohio’s “heartbeat bill” would have also made abortions illegal after six weeks of gestation, which many pro-choice advocates say amount to total abortion bans. Federal courts have declared such bills unconstitutional, Rewire reported.

What happened in Ohio does provide insight into what could happen at the federal level, though. According to the Cut, the same week Republican Gov. John Kasich vetoed the six-week abortion ban, he signed a 20-week abortion ban into law. How does that apply here? Earlier this month, the U.S. House passed its own 20-week abortion ban, titled the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” that uses junk science to promote debunked claims about fetal pain, Vox reported.

As seen in Ohio, and in other states such as Arkansas, six-week abortion bans have little to no chance of actually becoming law. But legislation prohibiting the procedure at 20 weeks of gestation are far more passable — despite still being unconstitutional and unnecessary. (Abortions after 20 weeks are highly uncommon; according to Planned Parenthood, 99 percent of abortions occur before 21 weeks.) That’s why many abortion advocates view King’s draconian H.R. 490 as a distraction from a more immediate threat to reproductive rights.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t be outraged over H.R. 490. There is, of course, a sliver of a chance that King’s bill will buck the trend of extremely restrictive — and wholly unconstitutional — abortion bans being shot down by more moderate lawmakers. But history has shown that six-week bans and similarly draconian legislation are smokescreens in order for the GOP to pass equally dangerous and life-threatening bills without much fanfare.

According to Vox, abortion activists believe the proposed 20-week ban is unlikely to pass the U.S. Senate. Still, it’s far more palatable to more moderate conservative lawmakers (after all, several states have made such legislation law). That’s why it’s important to not let it fall under your radar.

So, while keeping your eye on H.R. 490, make sure you to protest “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.” And there are many ways you can help stop the proposed 20-week abortion ban from becoming a nationwide law. You can call your representatives or write them an email, talk to your peers and share accurate evidence on abortions, debunk junk fetal pain research any chance you get, join or organize an in-person protest, or start a social media campaign across multiple platforms.

https://www.romper.com/p/this-gop-abortion-bill-would-ban-abortion-at-6-weeks-before-most-women-know-theyre-pregnant-3005255

 

October 31, 2017

Trump Administration’s Anti-Abortion Refugee Policy Under Review After Legal Battle

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
Leave a Comment 

The Trump administration in March implemented a revised policy “that allows [shelters] to wield an unconstitutional veto power over unaccompanied immigrant minors’ access to abortion.

The Trump administration in March implemented a revised policy “that allows [shelters] to wield an unconstitutional veto power over unaccompanied immigrant minors’ access to abortion,” according to court documents.
 Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Abortion is among the safest medical procedures in the United States. Yet, myths about its safety abound. False Witnesses reveals the individuals behind these lies.

Three days after Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Director Scott Lloyd confirmed he personally visited pregnant minors in his agency’s care to dissuade them from seeking abortion care, he has confirmed that ORR’s anti-abortion policy is “under review.”

“We’re taking a look at our policy to see if any changes are needed,” Lloyd told the Christian Broadcasting Network on Monday.

Lloyd, considered by immigrant advocates as one of President Trump’s many religiously ideological appointees, is said to lack the experience and qualificationsnecessary to handle the oversight of some of the world’s most vulnerable children, including young people like Jane Doe, the teen his agency “held hostage” and blocked from accessing abortion care.

Jane Doe fled gender-based violence in Central America and was being held in a Brownsville, Texas, shelter when she obtained the judicial bypass Texas required for her to access abortion care without her parents’ consent, but her care was postponed for weeks because of court proceedings. Jane Doe was finally able to access abortion care this month, but her procedure was delayed because of a controversial—and unconstitutional, as argued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—policy put into place by the Trump administration.

 The Trump administration in March implemented a revised policy “that allows [shelters] to wield an unconstitutional veto power over unaccompanied immigrant minors’ access to abortion,” according to court documents. This directive prevents unaccompanied immigrant minors in the government’s care from obtaining abortions by prohibiting federally funded shelters from taking “‘any action that facilitates’ abortion access for unaccompanied minors in their care without ‘direction and approval’” from Lloyd.

The federal government has until November 20 to address the larger class action lawsuit on its anti-abortion policy.

Filed in June 2016, the ACLU lawsuit against the federal government addresses the government’s funding of religious organizations tasked with providing care, including access to medical care for unaccompanied immigrant minors. The government allows these organizations “to refuse on religious grounds to follow the law that requires them to provide these young people with access to contraception and abortion, even if the minor has been raped,” the ACLU reported. This includes organizations such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has been awarded upwards of $10 million to care for immigrant minors, despite the religious institution’s refusal to allow young people to access abortion services.

https://rewire.news/article/2017/10/31/trump-administrations-anti-abortion-refugee-policy-review-legal-battle/

 

October 30, 2017

TRUMP WANTS TO REPLACE BIRTH CONTROL WITH THE DUBIOUS ‘CALENDAR METHOD’

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

The Trump administration wants to replace reliable birth control methods with “fertility awareness,” a dubious family-planning technique that fails nearly a quarterof women every year.

In a leaked memo obtained by Crooked, White House officials wrote that they intend to slash federal funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s family-planning budget and require “equal funding” for fertility awareness. The memo further specifies that fertility planning should be the sole birth control method made available to young girls.

Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment on the memo and hasn’t heard back. Newsweek couldn’t independently verify the veracity of the memo.

Fertility planning, also known as the “calendar method” or “rhythm method,” requires women to diligently track their menstrual cycles, pinpoint the days when they’re ovulating and avoid sex during that time in order to be effective. Because about 30 percent of women experience irregular periods, fertility planning has one of the highest rates of failure of any family-planning method. The calendar method also asks a lot of young girls, who often learn little about sex and reproduction thanks to abstinence-only education across the country.

“I’m quite concerned it could lead to more unintended pregnancy,” Dr. Kristyn Brandi, an OB/GYN based in Los Angeles and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, tells Newsweek. “It would be especially harmful to girls who don’t have an awareness of their bodies or of other evidence-based methods to prevent pregnancy.”

Rates of unintended pregnancy and teen births have hit record lows over the last two years, as has the abortion rate. Experts agree that access to birth control and more information about effective ways to prevent pregnancy have contributed to this downward trend. Brandi worries the Trump administration’s endorsement of calendar planning could send those rates soaring again.

“If we’re limiting women’s contraceptive choices or not informing them of all of their choices, women could become pregnant more often, which could lead to more abortions,” Brandi says. “If [the Trump White House’s] goal is to decrease abortion, they’re doing exactly the opposite.”

The Trump administration may not have given much thought to the logical outcomes of limiting women’s access to effective birth control. In the section discussing fertility planning, the White House’s leaked memo names Katy Talento, a Domestic Policy Council member who has written about the supposed side effects of hormonal birth control methods, as a point of contact. In a January 2015 column for The Federalist, Talento argued that birth control pills could be “breaking your uterus for good.”

That kind of propaganda only promises disaster for women’s health, Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, wrote in a press release provided to Newsweek.

“This memo reveals not only a disdain for women’s health and lives, but a lack of understanding of the basics of sexual and reproductive health,” she wrote. “This is the Trump Administration’s true agenda laid bare: eliminate women’s basic health care for the sake of an extreme political agenda, no matter how many get hurt along the way.”

President Donald Trump seems largely unconcerned with the consequences of his party’s war on women’s reproductive health. Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services rolled back the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers include birth control coverage in their employees’ health insurance plans, a decision that restricts low-income women’s access to contraception, among others. And in the past, Trump’s moves to dismantle women’s access to birth control and abortion have had dire consequences for other basic preventative health care services, like cervical and breast cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment and well-woman exams.

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-replace-birth-control-fertility-awareness-leaked-document-689840

 

October 30, 2017

Trump’s official behind the Jane Doe case urged ‘savvy’ lawmakers to make women get men’s permission before getting abortions

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
Leave a Comment 

jane doe abortion

Activists demonstrate outside of the Department of Health and Human Services in support of a pregnant 17-year-old being held in a Texas facility for unaccompanied immigrant children to obtain an abortion on Oct. 20, 2017.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was the Trump administration official behind the Jane Doe case, in which the government refused to let an undocumented teen get an abortion.
  • Lloyd has written op-eds calling for “savvy state legislators” to pass laws requiring women to get permission from the father before they get an abortion.
  • He faced hard questions from Democrats when he appeared before the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on Thursday.

The man behind the Trump administration’s legal battle to keep an undocumented teen from getting an abortion has a long history of campaigning against reproductive rights.

On Thursday morning, Scott Lloyd testified before the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security. As the director of the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, he oversees the agency responsible for the children’s center in Texas where the 17-year-old Jane Doe was detained after she entered the US illegally from Central America.

Lloyd sent an email directing government detention centers under his purview not to let minors access abortion services, but instead take them to “pregnancy services and life-affirming options counseling”, according to The Washington Post. Lloyd wrote that the ORR “should not be supporting abortion services pre or post-release.”

‘They put this guy in charge?’

At the hearing, Democratic representatives had hard questions for him — few of which he answered — while the Republicans largely praised him and the other officials present for the Trump administration’s stricter refugee vetting protocols.

Many of those questions were about Lloyd’s hand in the Jane Doe case. After a month-long legal battle, she was finally able to get her abortion on Wednesday.

scott lloyd jane doe orr

Scott Lloyd testifying before the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on October 26, 2017. House Judiciary Committee Hearings

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas asked Lloyd if he had any direct contact with Doe, or any of the other pregnant minors his agency is responsible for, and he wouldn’t answer, saying he couldn’t comment on individual cases.

When she asked him if he was aware that 60% of female refugees crossing the US border from Central America are raped, and would likely need medical attention including abortions, Lloyd said he “wasn’t aware” of that statistic. It comes from an Amnesty International report, and other investigations have found the number may be even higher.

“It’s disturbing that Director Lloyd didn’t seem to understand the US Constitution and was unable to answer simple questions from members of the committee,” Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, said in a statement to Business Insider after the hearing. “And they put this guy in charge?”

In another case from March, according to reports from The New York Times and Buzzfeed News, Lloyd directed shelter officials to stop another pregnant minor under ORR care from taking the second pill for a medication abortion.

The American Civil Liberties Union also alleges that Lloyd “personally visited a young woman who was seeking an abortion to attempt to dissuade her from her decision.” HHS did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

Jackson Lee told Business Insider that she planned to draft a letter to President Donald Trump asking him to clarify how immigrant women are treated, how pregnant minors like Doe are treated, and how he thinks they should be treated under his policies. Asked about Lloyd’s views on abortion and his actions, Jackson Lee said he was an “example of the leadership of President Trump.”

“The public servants who welcome the offer to serve, they serve,” she said. “It is the policies of this administration that I oppose vigorously, and his persons whom he has selected are in fact representative of what I believe is a truly inhumane policy. It is President Trump who has to change those policies.”

Sheila Jackson Lee women congress

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

At the hearing, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington asked Lloyd if he was trained to provide counseling or medical services, and what expertise he had to make him qualified to decide whether Doe should end her pregnancy. Lloyd’s agency bio says he is an attorney licensed in Virginia.

“It’s extremely troubling to me, Mr. Lloyd, what’s happening,” she concluded at the hearing. “I think you’re far overreaching over your expertise or your jurisdiction.”

A history of anti-abortion efforts

As right-leaning Breitbart News wrote in April, “Lloyd’s appointment came with little fanfare and almost went unnoticed.”

He came to the Trump administration from the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization where he served as an attorney in public policy.

Before that, Lloyd served on the board of directors for a crisis pregnancy center, which offer ultrasounds and counsels women to consider adoptions or becoming a mother, often actively discouraging them from getting abortions. The center in Virginia that Lloyd was involved with mentions a “medical director” and employs a registered nurse, but doesn’t list any doctors or OB/GYNs on staff.

He also co-founded the WitnessWorks Foundation for a Culture of Life, an anti-abortion religious organization that even has its own “pro-life, pro-faith search engine.”

scott lloyd refugee resettlement

Edward Scott Lloyd, who goes by Scott. HHS

Lloyd worked on Capitol Hill and as an HHS lawyer for the Bush administration, when he co-authored the controversial “conscience rule” in 2008 that allowed healthcare providers to refuse to provide abortions, contraception, end-of-life care, infertility treatments, or family planning care.

When they learned of Lloyd’s interference with women’s decisions to get abortions as ORR directors, Democratic Sens. Patty Murray, Diane Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal, and Bob Menendez sent a letter to the acting HHS secretary on October 20 calling “to immediately cease all undue and improper interference in the health care decisions of young women” under HHS care.

Over 100 organizations, including the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, sent a letter on October 25 denouncing Lloyd’s actions.

“By blocking Jane and others from accessing abortion care, ORR has openly disregarded its legal duty to provide prompt access to safe medical care to those within its charge,” the letter read.

Rep. Lofgren and Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas sent HHS a letter on October 16 demanding that ORR stop preventing women from getting abortions and requesting more information about Lloyd’s direct involvement in the reported cases.

“Regardless of the administration’s views on abortion,” they wrote, “the Constitution protects abortion access and it remains the law of the land.”

‘Women must notify the men of their decision to abort’

Lloyd has written extensively on abortion, contraception, and other reproductive healthcare that he opposes on religious grounds.

In a blog post from 2011, which Buzzfeed noted, Lloyd called for “savvy state legislators” to require women to get the father’s permission before getting an abortion, thus restoring “men’s rights” as long as the women didn’t “lie.”

“They could do this by writing a law that says essentially that women must notify the men of their decision to abort, and gain their consent, except in situations where their reasons for aborting relate to the physical realities of pregnancy,” he wrote.

march for life mike pence abortion

Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC on January 27, 2017.REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

This type of statute isn’t law anywhere yet, but lawmakers in Oklahoma proposed a bill this year that would require the father’s permission for a woman to get an abortion. Non-invasive paternity tests are only available after eight weeks into pregnancy, which would be the earliest women could scientifically confirm who they would need to get permission from before aborting.

In 2011, Lloyd wrote another blog post outlining what constituted as an abortion, including birth control in his definition.

“Our tax dollars are being used to help trick people into aborting their own children, when they would not do so if someone was not lying to them,” he wrote.

Writing about embryonic stem cell research in 2006, Lloyd wrote, “This is just the latest manifestation of a process that began when the medical field sold its healing soul for a new, abortive reality, when medicine taught women to rely on chemicals rather than their wills to avoid pregnancy, and men learned to expect (or even demand) them to do so, and when medicine invited us to trade sex and adoption for the Petri dish.”

That post identified him as the co-founder of “Americans On Call,” a now seemingly defunct grassroots organization with the stated goal of convincing women not to get abortions across the country.

The website is no longer available, but archived web pages show Lloyd likely founded it with other law students in 2006 who “were enjoying a couple beers at a bar and we had an idea.” They wrote that “the end of abortion depends on YOU,” and sold pins and T-shirts to fund their efforts and spread their message.

http://www.businessinsider.com/scott-lloyd-jane-doe-abortion-case-controversial-past-2017-10

 

October 29, 2017

Argentina bans abortion in most cases. So why is its abortion rate far higher than that of the U.S.?

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

The woman stumbled into a public hospital late one night, her stomach turning as she approached the lobby. She was bleeding.

Dr. Damian Levy ushered her into a room. Like many of his patients at Hospital Alvarez in Buenos Aires, she was young and poor. At first, she refused to tell him why she was there.

Then she burst into a tearful confession. She had tried to perform her own abortion at home and used 40 tablets of the drug misoprostol — nearly three times the suggested dosage for inducing a miscarriage. She was worried that the hospital would report her to police.

In Argentina, and across much of Latin America, where edicts of the Catholic Church are often enshrined in law, elective abortion in cases of unwanted pregnancy is illegal.

Yet the laws are widely circumvented, and researchers are finding that the abortion rate in Latin America is far higher than it is in the U.S. and other places where the procedure is legal. In Argentina, where tensions between the church and secular society run especially high, the government estimates that between 370,000 and 522,000 abortions are performed every year, most of them illegal, very few of them prosecuted.

Driving the numbers are a growing group of activists dedicated to making abortion drugs accessible to the poor and doctors willing to stretch the rules. None of that is a secret to authorities or politicians, who rarely discuss the issue publicly.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2014 asked adults in Argentina about their views on “abortion in all or most cases” and found that about 60% oppose legalization while 37% support it.

Argentina tries to appease both sides. It keeps abortion illegal — except in cases of rape or when a pregnancy poses a health risk — but allows it to continue anyway to meet the significant demand.

This tightrope act has made complications from abortion the leading cause of maternal death. The procedure is often performed without medical expertise, and the stigma and fear around it means many women wait longer into their pregnancies, when the risks are higher.

That leads to emergencies like the misoprostol overdose that Levy found himself dealing with.

“I have seen women take two, eight, 12 pills,” the doctor said. “Never 40.”

Levy immediately performed a surgical abortion. The woman survived.

In the twisted logic often employed to navigate the abortion law, he explained that she was in no danger of being turned into police for an illegal abortion, because using so many pills had put her health at risk.

Women hold signs reading "Legal abortion, global outbreak" (L) and "Take your crucifixes from our wombs" during a September protest demanding the decriminalization of abortion in Buenos Aires.
Women hold signs reading “Legal abortion, global outbreak” (L) and “Take your crucifixes from our wombs” during a September protest demanding the decriminalization of abortion in Buenos Aires. Jualn Mabromata / AFP/Getty Images

On the front lines of expanding access to abortion are women like Maria Victoria Mateu.

Her own experience with abortion — a legal one in 2002, after an ectopic pregnancy put her health at risk — turned her into an activist on the issue.

The 34-year-old started protesting for gender equality and working with a national campaign to overturn Argentina’s 1922 ban on abortion. She eventually became a socorrista, or first responder, in a national network that helps women get misoprostol.

The drug, which was developed in the 1970s to treat stomach ulcers, can also be taken orally or inserted in the vagina to induce labor and abortion up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy. Relatively cheap and widely available, it has become a go-to method for abortions in countries that forbid them.

Mateu sees it as blessing for poorer women, whose only other options for abortion are crude techniques such as inserting knitting needles, or drinking herbal concoctions.

Many women who seek her out live in villas miserias, urban shantytowns where access to public hospitals is limited. Some are victims of domestic abuse who can’t tell their spouses that they want to end their pregnancies.

As a socorrista, or first responder, Maria Victoria Mateu is part of a national network that helps women get the abortion pill misoprostol.
As a socorrista, or first responder, Maria Victoria Mateu is part of a national network that helps women get the abortion pill misoprostol. Benjamin Gottlieb / For the Times

Mateu gives a pamphlet on misoprostol to each woman and answers their questions.

Misoprostol is sold in pharmacies for around $100 with a prescription and twice that without one. Some women will conscript an older relative to fake an ulcer and ask for it over the counter.

After an abortion, Mateu makes sure the woman sees a doctor for an ultrasound. This is the most important part of the process because it catches infections so they can be treated, she said.

Since she started two years ago, Mateu has instructed more than 100 women on how to induce abortions.

“What socorristas do is deal with the right to information,” she said. “And information is legal.”

Still, she takes some precautions. She insists on meeting women face-to-face, often at La Dignidad, the leftist coffee shop at the end of her street. They text in code — substituting zapatillas (sneakers) for pastillas (pills), for example.

In extremely rare instances, women in Argentina have been prosecuted for having illegal abortions — most famously the case of a 27-year-old that the media referred to only as Belen to protect her privacy.

She went to a public hospital in the conservative city of Tucuman while having a miscarriage only to be accused by hospital staff of inducing it herself and convicted of murdering her unborn child. The case sparked rallies in her defense.

Sentenced to eight years in prison, she served two before being acquitted last March.

German Cardoso grew up in a devout Catholic home. His father was a doctor and his mother taught classes on the catechism. He never thought much about the church’s prohibition on abortion.

Then about 15 years ago, well into his own career in medicine, an older woman knocked on his clinic door. She said that years ago, his late father had performed an abortion for her. Now, she needed his help with ending her granddaughter’s pregnancy.

Cardoso was shocked to learn about his father’s secret and promised to help.

“It changed me, because from that moment I was always living in conflict,” he said. “The pressures of society, my Catholic family, the law.”

He decided to offer abortions to prevent women from risking their lives by ending their pregnancies on their own. It felt like the right thing to do — and he was relieved to discover that despite the law it was unlikely to land him in legal trouble.

The worst he has faced was a raid on his office in Buenos Aires in 2011. He was arrested and held for two days before the case was dropped and he returned to performing abortions.

He has since moved his clinic five hours southwest to the conservative city of Tandil, where he has withstood occasional ridicule in the press, and once vandalism of his clinic sign, but has never been hassled by authorities.

Dr. German Cardoso performs abortions in Tandil to prevent women from ending their pregnancies on their own.
Dr. German Cardoso performs abortions in Tandil to prevent women from ending their pregnancies on their own. Sarah Parvini / Los Angeles Times

“I knew it was bad for my image as a doctor to do abortions,” he said. “I don’t like being called ‘Dr. Aborto,’ but I wouldn’t change what I do.”

Now 60, he said he performs about 30 abortions a month, charging $1,000 — or nearly twice the monthly minimum wage in Argentina — for women who can afford it and less for those who can’t. Lately his business has seen a downturn due to competition from the local hospital, which has been increasingly willing to provide misoprostol.

The law itself provides wiggle room for doctors who perform abortions — in that it allows abortions when a woman’s health is at risk, but fails to define “health.”

That allows abortion providers to use the World Health Organization’s definition: “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

If a woman is depressed over her pregnancy, or if having a child puts her socioeconomic well-being at risk, her abortion is legal, Cardoso said.

Still, many doctors at public institutions are reluctant to push the rules.

“There’s a lot of hypocrisy,” said Dr. Eugenia Arroche, one of three doctors who performed the 80 legal abortions at Hospital Alvarez last year. “Doctors say they’re against an abortion, but when someone they know needs one, they will ask another doctor to do it for them.”

The hospital requires women seeking abortions to make the request in writing and list the reason.

One woman, who spoke on the condition that she be identified only by her first name, Maria, decided to seek an abortion after learning that the baby she was carrying had a fatal respiratory defect and would be unlikely to live for more than a few hours.

With no legal exception for birth defects, her gynecologist stalled for weeks, saying he needed to consult the ethics committee at the private hospital where he worked and at one point suggesting she seek out an illegal abortion.

“The system is very cruel,” she said.

She was more than 20 weeks pregnant by the time she wound up at Hospital Alvarez, where Levy performed her abortion last year.

It was legal, he said, because her mental health was threatened by the prospect of giving birth only to watch her baby die.

http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-argentina-abortion-20171029-htmlstory.html

 

October 29, 2017

Anti-abortion Life charity will get cash from UK tampon tax

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

Government confirms group will receive £250,000 despite outcry from MPs and women’s groups

Campaigners against VAT on tampons at a protest outside parliament last year.
 Campaigners against VAT on tampons at a protest outside parliament last year. Photograph: Alamy

The government has confirmed that it is to award a quarter of a million pounds from an unpopular levy on women’s sanitary products to an anti-abortion organisation, despite objections from women’s groups and MPs.

There was an outcry earlier this year after the Observer revealed that £250,000 of the money raised from the so-called tampon tax – the 5% rate of VAT that is levied on sanitary products – would go to Life, a charity that campaigns against abortion.

The organisation also opposes plans for the expansion of sex education in primary schools and has been at the centre of controversy over the information provided by a network of unregulated pregnancy counselling centres.

Petitions opposing the grant gathered half a million signatures, while under-pressure ministers subsequently said that the specifics of the grant agreements had yet to be finalised.

However, a reply by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to a Freedom of Information request has now revealed that the award from a £12m pot will be made, though Life will be “prohibited” from spending the money on publicity or on its controversial pregnancy counselling and education services.

Diana Johnson, one of a number of Labour MPs who had pressed the government to review the grant decision, said: “This decision is not in keeping with the spirit of the tampon tax fund, which was intended to improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls.

“This money would be much better spent on women’s organisations which truly reflect the values of this fund to empower and support women to make decisions about their lives, rather than an organisation that actively promotes restricting women’s choices.

“Many excellent women’s organisations will have lost funding bids to Life. I am very disappointed that ministers have made this decision in light of the public outcry when this was first put forward.”

The British Pregnancy Advisory Servicesaid: “It is not fitting for what is ultimately a tax on women’s bodies to be spent in this way when there are so many other projects supporting women and their choices which have not benefited .”

The government announced in March that 70 organisations would share £12m from the tampon tax fund, which it said would improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls.

A longlist said Life would receive £250,000 for “housing, practical help, counselling, emotional support and life-skills training for young pregnant women who are homeless”. The sum was among the largest grants on the list.

The tampon tax was the focus of bitter controversy last year. Changes are expected next year that will remove VAT from sanitary products entirely. The government has already reduced the VAT rate from 20% to 5% but says it cannot go further at present because of EU competition rules.

Life said: “There is no need for ‘prohibition’ on how the grant is used. We have been very clear with the government in actually specifying that the grant will not be used for counselling or education. As we have stated before, all funds received from the government will be used to support vulnerable women in crisis.”

The DCMS said: “As set out in the grant agreement, Life will not be able to use the tampon tax grant to fund its counselling service, or its ‘Life Matters Education Service’ and is prohibited from spending the money on publicity or promotion.

“The grant is for a specific project in west London to support vulnerable, homeless or at-risk pregnant women who ask for their help. All payments will be made in arrears and on receipt of a detailed monitoring report.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/28/anti-abortion-life-charity-will-get–tampon-tax-funds?CMP=fb_gu&utm_content=buffere014f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

October 28, 2017

When a Fetus Is a ‘Child’ Who Needs Protection, But a Pregnant Teen Isn’t

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
[3] Comments 

For weeks, a pregnant, undocumented 17-year-old has been held hostage by the government and denied an abortion. She was finally allowed to get one this morning—but that doesn’t change the horrific injustice she endured.

About a month and a half ago, an undocumented 17-year-old girl from Central America, known as Jane Doe in court documents, attempted to cross the US border into Texas by herself. Before she left, according to reports, she allegedly watched her parents beat her older sister after learning she was pregnant, hitting her with cables and firewood until she miscarried. After being apprehended by immigration officials and taken to a refugee shelter, Jane Doe learned she, too, was pregnant.

This morning, after a prolonged, Kafkaesque legal battle that pitted her against the Trump administration, Jane Doe was finally able to get an abortion. For six weeks now, she’s been held in federal custody, forced to carry a pregnancy she does not want. At the start of this ordeal, she was nine weeks pregnant. As of last night, she was 16 weeks along.

“Justice prevailed today for Jane Doe. But make no mistake about it, the administration’s efforts to interfere in women’s decisions won’t stop with Jane,” the ACLU’s Brigitte Amiri, one of the lead lawyers on the case, said in a statement. “With this case we have seen the astounding lengths this administration will go to block women from abortion care.”

The lengths have indeed been astounding: Because Jane is a minor and her parents didn’t know about her condition, she had to petition a judge for the right to get an abortion. On September 25—a full month ago—she obtained the necessary court order. With a court-appointed guardian, she was also able to navigate the cruel and perplexing bureaucracy around abortion access in Texas, arranging for transportation to a clinic and finding someone willing to pay for the procedure, which became increasingly expensive and dangerous as time passed. (At this point in the pregnancy, it would have cost over $1000.) Once Jane Doe and her guardian had managed to surmount all these legal and financial barriers, there was only one thing left standing in their way: the policies of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which controls the shelter in which Jane is currently being held.

Under the Trump administration, ORR has become the site of “anti-choice fanaticism,” as Rewire puts it. A new policy, instituted in March of this year, prohibits their shelters from taking “any action that facilitates” abortion access for unaccompanied minors without express approval from recently appointed ORR director Scott Lloyd, a prominent and very zealous Catholic attorney with absolutely no experienceresettling refugees. In his new position, Lloyd appears to be on a crusade to prevent unaccompanied, undocumented minors from obtaining abortion care. According to court documents, he has personally contacted other girls in Jane Doe’s position to discuss their decision to terminate their pregnancies. In an email sent earlier this year, he justified his behavior thusly: “The unborn child is a child in our care.”

This is the system working as abortion opponents have designed it to work. The entire point of restricting abortion access is to force women into childbirth.

Jane Doe was originally scheduled for an abortion on September 29, but ORR refused to take her. Instead, she was forced to go to a religiously affiliated “crisis pregnancy center,” where she was discouraged from going through with the procedure. “They made me see a doctor that tried to convince me not to abort and to look at sonograms. People I don’t even know are trying to make me change my mind,” Jane Doe recalled in a statement. “I made my decision and that is between me and God. Through all of this, I have never changed my mind.”

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court vacated a previous order that would have delayed Jane Doe’s abortion until Halloween, ordering that she should be allowed to get an abortion “promptly and without delay.” Thankfully, she was able to do so.

This morning, Jane was able to see a measure of justice. But the fact remains that a vulnerable teenager has been held hostage by the US government for weeks, and denied medical care she had every right to access, because of a purely ideological obsession with protecting fetuses. It’s appalling that she had to endure this; it’s grotesque that government officials would want her to.

Her case has been compared endlessly to The Handmaid’s Tale, but in truth it’s far from the realm of fiction. What happened to Jane Doe is the result of extreme, Trump-era policies as well as a decade of anti-abortion zealotry at the state level. This is the system working as abortion opponents have designed it to work. The entire point of restricting abortion access is to force women into childbirth with no consideration for their autonomy, their constitutional rights, or the complex and painful situations they may find themselves in.

Jane Doe’s case is extreme, and it’s completely unconscionable. It’s sickening that a helpless teenager, who traveled unknown miles seeking safety, has been denied medical treatment because the US government sees her fetus—and not her—as “a child in our care” deserving of full legal protection. But what our government did to Jane is also the logical conclusion of the hundreds of anti-abortion provisions enacted in the past few years by lawmakers who hypocritically claim to be doing noble, moral work “protecting life” while forcing women into desperate situations. By design, this sort of insidious policymaking disproportionately affects the populations that can’t afford to navigate the frustrating and seemingly endless gauntlet of unnecessary regulations around abortion care: poor women, young women, women of color, women who live in rural areas, and undocumented women. It is precisely because Jane Doe is so vulnerable that she was subjected to such horrific treatment by the state.

What our government did to this pregnant, scared teenager lays bare the ugly truth at the heart of anti-abortion arguments, one that anti-choicers try so fervently to obscure: The opposite of reproductive choice is forced motherhood, which bestows full humanity on gestating fetuses at the expense of the women carrying them.

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/d3dvqk/when-a-fetus-is-a-child-who-needs-protection-but-a-pregnant-teen-isnt?utm_source=vicefbus

 

October 28, 2017

Ontario makes it illegal to protest outside and near abortion clinics

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
[4] Comments 

Legislature passes bill to create zones around 8 abortion clinics in the province

The legislature passed a bill Wednesday to create zones around the eight clinics in the province of between 50 and 150 metres in which anti-abortion protests will be banned.

The legislature passed a bill Wednesday to create zones around the eight clinics in the province of between 50 and 150 metres in which anti-abortion protests will be banned. (Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)

It will soon be illegal to protest outside and near abortion clinics in Ontario.

The legislature passed a bill Wednesday to create zones around the eight clinics in the province of between 50 and 150 metres in which anti-abortion protests, advising a person not to get an abortion, and intimidation or interfering with a woman’s ability to access the services will be banned.

The ban will also automatically apply to 150 metres around the homes of abortion staff and health professionals who provide the services.

Attorney General Yasir Naqvi cheered that all three parties worked together to pass the legislation on a sped-up timeline.

“We as legislators have passed a very important piece of legislation ensuring that women have safe access to health-care services like reproductive health and abortion services,” he said. “We worked on this bill on a very short time frame to ensure that we protect women.”

Bill’s timing inflamed tensions between Liberals, PCs

The bill’s timing had inflamed political tensions between the governing Liberals and the Opposition Progressive Conservatives. The Tories had proposed passing the bill immediately after it was introduced, with no debate or committee hearings, and the Liberals declined, which led the PCs to accuse the government of trying to draw it out, hoping it would expose divisions within the PC party.

Opposition Leader Patrick Brown noted his party unanimously voted for the bill’s passage Wednesday, and said it did not cause any divisions within his caucus.

Several of his caucus members — including those who have espoused socially conservative views — however, were absent for the vote. Two were away for health reasons, Brown said, though they are not the members who hold those views.

Brown did not directly address the absence of the social conservative members, but noted many Liberals were away as well. That included two of three Liberals who have been praised by anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition for their views.

The lone politician to vote against the bill was Jack MacLaren, a former Progressive Conservative who now sits as an independent after joining the Trillium Party, which the legislature does not recognize as an official party.

yasir naqvi

Attorney General Yasir Naqvi cheered that all three parties worked together to pass the legislation on a sped-up timeline. (CBC)

CLC threatening legal challenge ‘if necessary’

Campaign Life Coalition released a statement threatening a legal challenge to the bill “if necessary,” saying it attacks freedom of speech.

Naqvi has previously said that going through a proper legislative process — even an expedited one — versus immediate passage helps to ensure the bill can withstand a constitutional challenge.

No changes were made to the bill between its introduction and its passage.

The law will not come into force immediately, however, as the zones need to be set through regulations, Naqvi said.

There will be an application process for other health-care providers or pharmacists, as some Ontario pharmacies recently started offering the abortion pill, Mifegymiso.

Anyone who violates the safe zones will face up to $5,000 in fines and six months in jail for a first offence and fines of $1,000 to $10,000 and up to a year in jail for a second or subsequent offence.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-abortion-protest-bill-1.4372090

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »