Abortion – Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information

“What scares me the most … is that there’s just this palpable level of dissension and fear. It almost makes me feel like this is going to happen again.”

Anti-choice activists have tried to distance themselves from violent acts committed by those who oppose abortion rights.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

It’s been three years since a shooter, who would later repeat talking points from an anti-choice propaganda campaign, walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado and killed three people. Dr. Savita Ginde, the clinic’s medical director at the time of the shooting, warns the anti-choice movement’s violent rhetoric still poses a grave threat to providers and patients who seek reproductive health care.

On November 27, 2015, Robert Lewis Dear, Jr. entered the Colorado Springs clinic and began shooting an assault-style rifle. By the time he surrendered after a standoff that lasted several hours, three were killed and nine were wounded.

The attack came just a few months after the anti-choice front group known as the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a string of highly-edited and misleading videos purporting to show abortion providers engaging in nefarious activity. One of the videos included footage showing Dr. Ginde discussing Planned Parenthood’s program that provides fetal tissue, donated by people who have an abortion or miscarriage, for use in medical research. The anti-choice movement held up the videos as evidence that Planned Parenthood was an unethical organization involved in the illegal sale of fetal organs, despite a lack of proof of any lawbreaking.

The anti-choice movement erupted, and their outrage was directed in large part at Dr. Ginde. She was forced to flee her home after protesters descended upon her neighborhood and handed out flyers that said things like “Savita Ginde murders children at Planned Parenthood with your consent.”

Dear used the phrase “no more baby parts” to law enforcement to explain his actions at the time of his arrest. Dear has repeatedly been deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial.

The anti-choice movement has been quick to distance itself from overtly violent acts by those opposed to abortion rights, but Ginde asserts the shooting serves as an example of how the movement’s intentionally inflammatory rhetoric can lead to a deadly result.

“The man who did the shooting was delusional, but he was triggered, and he was triggered by the videos, and he was triggered by the aftermath of the videos that played itself out through social media platforms,” Ginde told Rewire.News. “For me, the thing that should come out of it is people taking ownership that their language and their taking to social media to express their views has a toll and can create a snowball effect.”

“You have to kind of watch out what you wish for,” she said.

Dear isn’t the only one who appears to have been influenced by the heavily edited CMP videos, which prompted Republican-led investigations into Planned Parenthood that turned up nothing. A report from the National Abortion Federation (NAF) revealed that 2015 saw a spike in incidents of anti-choice hate speech, internet harassment, death threats, attempted murder, and murder, incidents that coincided with the Planned Parenthood smear campaign—a campaign coordinated by CMP and GOP lawmakers.

The incidents documented in the NAF report include 94 threats of direct harm against abortion providers in 2015, compared to only one such threat the year prior.

Ginde, for one, is worried that “nothing has changed” since 2015 to de-escalate the violent anti-choice rhetoric that led to the shooting.

“What scares me the most when I take my own pulse of what’s going on is that there’s just this palpable level of dissension and fear. It almost makes me feel like this is going to happen again,” Ginde said. “Right or left, wherever you stand, I would never want what we went through to happen to somebody else. We’ve got to be better than that.”

Ginde hopes to open up discussion about how to combat anti-choice violence with her upcoming book, The Real Cost of Fake News: The Hidden Truth Behind the Planned Parenthood Video Scandal, which comes out this month.

“We have to make sure that people are looking at the facts, and that we’re making decisions based on scientific facts and research and not on rhetoric,” Ginde said. “It’s the dramatic and sensationalized verbiage that gets us into a no-win situation, and if no one wins, then what’s the point?”

One way to move forward, she says, is to work toward a shared goal of reducing the abortion rate by making birth control more accessible.

In Colorado, for example, a state-run program that provided IUDs at little or no cost to teens was highly successful at reducing teen pregnancy—and cut the state’s teen abortion rate nearly in half. Still, some Republican state lawmakers opposed the program and attempted to slash funding.

“We have to find a solution, and there are solutions, and so the question is, why aren’t we embracing those solutions?” Ginde said. “If someone is against birth control, they can have that belief and carry that through, but I don’t understand why they would want someone who has a different belief to have to abide by theirs.”

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/11/27/nothing-has-changed-violent-anti-choice-rhetoric-remains-three-years-after-colorado-planned-parenthood-shooting/

A 15-week abortion ban struck down in Mississippi is just one of several recent efforts to challenge Roe v. Wade.

An anti-abortion activist rallies outside of the Supreme Court during the March for Life, January 27, 2017. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Donald Trump promised during his presidential campaign that he would appoint anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court and that Roe v. Wade would be overturned “automatically.”

It won’t be “automatic,” but with Justice Brett Kavanaugh now serving on the Court, a reversal of that landmark abortion decision looks increasingly likely. And regardless of what happens on the Supreme Court, Trump’s presidency has already begun shaping abortion law around the country. Perhaps emboldened by his judicial appointments, legislators are introducing new abortion bans that directly challenge the tenets of Roe.

One such law, a ban on abortions after 15 weeks, was signed by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, in March. More states have moved to restrict abortion since: On May 4, Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill banning abortions after a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat, or as early as six weeks. The Ohio House of Representatives passed a similar bill in November.

The Mississippi law, which contains exceptions for medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormalities, but none for rape or incest, was immediately challenged in court by the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s last abortion clinic. On November 20, a federal judge struck down the law, arguing that it “unequivocally” infringes on women’s rights. It’s not clear whether the state will appeal.

Anti-abortion groups for years have been trying to close Jackson Women’s Health, also known as “the pink house” for the building’s bright paint. But the Mississippi law may also be part of a broader effort by anti-abortion advocates to bring a challenge to Roe v. Wade before what they hope will be a friendly Supreme Court. The ultimate goal is to open the door for nationwide restrictions on abortion rights. And with Trump in the White House, that goal might be more achievable than ever.

The Mississippi ban is in clear conflict with Roe v. Wade

Mississippi’s ban was in effect for less than an hour before Jackson Women’s Health filed suit. “The law is blatantly unconstitutional,” said Hillary Schneller, a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights who is representing the clinic.

The Supreme Court has said in Roe v. Wade and elsewhere that states cannot ban abortion before viability, when a fetus can survive outside the womb. Viability varies from pregnancy to pregnancy, but doctors today typically put it around 24 weeks. No fetus is viable at just 15 weeks, as the clinic’s lawsuit points out.

The ban could have had an impact almost immediately. According to court documents, one patient who was more than 15 weeks pregnant was scheduled for an abortion on March 20. The ban would have forced the clinic to turn her away.

That afternoon, however, a judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking the ban from taking effect for 10 days. That allowed the clinic to perform the procedure on the patient who was scheduled for March 20, Schneller told Vox, as well as performing abortions for patients who have already scheduled abortion counseling appointments with the clinic. Mississippi law requires that patients receive counseling at least 24 hours before an abortion.

On November 20, US District Judge Carlton Reeves struck down the 15-week ban and issued a sharp criticism of its supporters in the Mississippi legislature, as CNN reports. “The state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” he wrote. He also said that the state’s “professed interest in ‘women’s health’ is pure gaslighting.”

It’s not yet clear if the state will appeal the ruling, but a spokesperson for Gov. Bryant said in a statement that the governor “fully supports the defense of this law moving forward.”

In the long term, Schneller is optimistic about her clients’ chances. “The Supreme Court has said for over 40 years that a state cannot ban abortion prior to viability,” she told Vox.

“Every time in the recent past,” she added, “when the court has been asked to review court decisions striking down previability bans at six weeks, at 12 weeks, at 20 weeks, the court has refused to hear those challenges. In that way, again, they are saying they are not ready to revisit this very clear line.”

But anti-abortion groups see an opening

Previability bans have been struck down in Arizona, North Dakota, and Arkansas in recent years. But states keep trying. Legislators around the country have introduced a variety of restrictions in recent months:

• On March 19, legislators in Ohio introduced a bill that would ban abortion outright in the state. That bill has yet to come up for a vote, but on November 15, the Ohio House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected — which can happen as early as six weeks. The bill now goes to the state Senate.
• In May, Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, a Democrat, signed a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks; it will only take effect if the Mississippi law is upheld, according to the Associated Press.
• A bill passed by the Iowa state legislature on May 2 and signed by Gov. Reynolds on May 4 requires patients seeking abortions to get an ultrasound. If the scan detects a fetal heartbeat, the patient is banned from getting an abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, a threat to the patient’s life, or severe fetal anomaly. Proponents of the bill say they hope it will make it to the Supreme Court and lead to the overturning of Roe.
• On March 27, the Kentucky House of Representatives passed a bill banning dilation and evacuation, a procedure often used in second-trimester abortions, if a patient is more than about 11 weeks pregnant. The bill, signed into law by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in April, is facing a court challenge.
• Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb of Indiana signed a law on March 25 that will require doctors who treat patients for complications of abortion to report to the state those patients’ age, race, and county of residence, among other information. Critics of the law say it will stigmatize abortion, which has relatively low complication rates compared with other standard medical procedures, according to the Associated Press.

Of course, abortion restrictions at the state level are nothing new. In 2012, Jackson Women’s Health filed suit against a Mississippi law requiring that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a local hospital. That law was blocked in 2013.

But recently, anti-abortion groups and legislators may be focusing more attention on previability bans like Mississippi’s. One possible reason, said Heather Shumaker, senior counsel for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center, is that the Supreme Court decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt makes it harder for anti-abortion advocates to pursue a previous strategy of passing laws that restrict clinic operations, sometimes severely enough to drive them out of business.

In Whole Woman’s Health, the Court found that several such laws, including one requiring doctors to have admitting privileges, imposed an undue burden on patients seeking abortions and were unconstitutional.

Another reason for the new bans might be the Trump administration. In addition to two Supreme Court justices widely seen as anti-abortion, Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, Trump has also nominated — and the Senate has confirmed — more than a dozen federal district court and appeals court judges considered to be friendly to anti-abortion causes, as NPR reports.

“The anti-abortion movement is feeling emboldened to really kind of take the next step,” Shumaker said. That explains “this approach to push a clearly unconstitutional ban on abortion in states where they think that it could be successful.”

The ultimate goal, she said, is to get one of the bans to the Supreme Court, where a favorable decision would pave the way for previability bans around the country.

Some dispute whether the actions of the Trump administration had anything to do with Mississippi’s 15-week ban. The Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a think tank that helped draft the law, was inspired by other countries around the world that limit abortion after the first trimester, said Jameson Taylor, the group’s acting president.

“We’re proud that we can take the lead in making that the standard for the state of Mississippi, and hopefully that can become the standard for the rest of the country,” Taylor added.

He believes the Supreme Court has already abandoned the viability standard for judging state abortion restrictions, arguing that the Court’s 2007 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld a law banning certain types of late-term abortions, also upheld the legality of imposing previability restrictions on the procedure.

“We’re confident that the Supreme Court will ultimately uphold this law,” he said.

It’s far from clear that Mississippi’s ban will get to that point. But regardless of what happens in Mississippi, more such cases are likely to follow, whether they come from Ohio, Louisiana, or elsewhere. And the more anti-abortion judges Trump adds to the federal bench, the better chance each case has of succeeding.

Source: https://www.vox.com/2018/3/22/17143454/trump-ohio-heartbeat-bill-abortion-ban-mississippi?fbclid=IwAR1SnDR5eYCU-PG3_TW8SPwFHJU9HRdXnDjurJbodOHep0_BBTOgrxSyktY

Mississippi’s attorney general said Friday he will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that struck down one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled Tuesday that a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks “unequivocally” violates women’s constitutional rights. On Friday, the state’s Democratic attorney general, Jim Hood, said that other federal circuits have reviewed laws banning abortion at 15 to 20 weeks, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has not yet reviewed such a case.

“Because there is no controlling decision from our Fifth Circuit, it is our duty to appeal this ruling,” Hood said in a statement.

The 5th Circuit handles cases from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. It is generally considered one of the most conservative federal appellate courts.

The only abortion clinic in Mississippi says it provides abortions until 16 weeks, and it sued when Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed the 15-week ban on March 19. Reeves issued a temporary restraining order the next day to keep the state from enforcing the law.

Bryant indicated Wednesday that he was interested in an appeal of Reeves’ ruling. As attorney general, Hood is in charge of deciding whether the state will appeal.

Hood has already announced he’s running for governor in 2019, when a term-limited Bryant may not seek re-election.

The Mississippi law and the responding lawsuit set up a confrontation sought by abortion opponents, who are hoping federal courts will ultimately prohibit abortions before a fetus is viable outside the womb, the dividing line that the U.S. Supreme Court set in its 1973 ruling saying that women have the right to terminate pregnancies.

An Iowa law, also challenged in court, bans most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected.

The Mississippi law would allow exceptions to the 15-week ban in cases of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormality. Doctors found in violation of the ban would face mandatory suspension or revocation of their medical license.

In his ruling Tuesday, Reeves cited Supreme Court rulings and wrote that states may not ban abortions before viability. He wrote that viability must be determined by trained medical professionals, and the “established medical consensus” is that viability typically begins at 23 to 24 weeks after the pregnant woman’s last menstrual period.

“The fact that men, myself included, are determining how women may choose to manage their reproductive health is a sad irony not lost on the Court,” Reeves wrote. “… As a man who cannot get pregnant or seek an abortion, I can only imagine the anxiety and turmoil a woman might experience when she decides whether to terminate her pregnancy through an abortion. Respecting her autonomy demands that this statute be enjoined.”

Because of Reeves’ ruling on the Mississippi law, a similar law in Louisiana is on hold. The 15-week abortion ban signed by Louisiana Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards earlier this year contains language saying the law will take effect only if a federal court upholds the law in Mississippi.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mississippi-will-seek-to-revive-law-on-15-week-abortion-ban/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=60107219

The battle over a new law in Idaho that creates a list of what lawmakers deem to be complications of abortion and requires health professionals to report when they occurred now awaits a judgment from a federal appeals court.

A federal lawsuit against the state of Idaho over the law, which went into effect on July 1, has been put on hold while the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals considers a judge’s ruling rejecting a preliminary injunction against the legislation.

U.S. District Court Judge David C. Nye on Wednesday granted the stay at the request of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands and Idaho officials.

Planned Parenthood filed the lawsuit in July against the Abortion Complications Reporting Act contending the reporting rules are unconstitutional and intended to stigmatize women seeking medical care. The lawsuit contends that Idaho’s law arbitrarily singles out just one medical procedure for the reporting requirement and that the law doesn’t do enough to protect women’s private medical information from being released to the public.

Supporters, which include Idaho Choose Life and Family Policy Alliance of Idaho, say the measure is necessary to ensure abortions are provided safely. The law requires details such as woman’s age, race, how many children she has, if any of their children have died and how many abortions they’ve had in the past. The abortion provider and facility where the abortion was performed must also be disclosed.

The state would aggregate the information for an annual report and make it available to the Legislature and the public, but individual identifying information would not be disclosed.

Planned Parenthood in August asked the court to prevent the enforcement of the Idaho law. Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden later in August responded that the state needed the information to get an “understanding about the frequency and nature of abortion complications in Idaho.”

Wasden’s spokesman, Scott Graf, in an email on Friday said the office had no comment. Planned Parenthood didn’t respond to inquiries from The Associated Press on Friday.

Idaho’s reporting law aligns with a national trend among Republican-dominant statehouses seeking new ways to test the legal ability to restrict a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. At least 20 states have reporting laws on the books, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which opposes abortion restrictions.

It’s not clear when the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will make a ruling about Nye’s decision rejecting Planned Parenthood’s request for the preliminary injunction on Idaho’s abortion reporting law.

President Trump has railed against the Ninth Circuit, particularly since a judge in the circuit ruled against administration regulations refusing asylum to immigrants who cross the border illegally. Chief Justice John Roberts then pushed back against Mr. Trump’s description of the judge who ruled against Mr. Trump’s new migrant asylum policy as an “Obama judge.”

Roberts said Wednesday the U.S. doesn’t have “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”  Mr. Trump then responded on Twitter: “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have “Obama judges,” and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country. It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an “independent judiciary.”

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/battle-over-idahos-abortion-reporting-law-awaits-ruling/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6j&linkId=60107608

This is the stuff of Handmaid’s Tale nightmares: the rights granted to the foetus would be greater than ever before, and women would effectively have no choice over their own bodies

The US was once seen as the New World, and in many ways it still enjoys that status. It’s home to Silicon Valley, the hub of technological advances, and the American Dream is still beckoning millions of immigrants each year.

However, in other ways, many parts of the US remain stuck in the past – or are at least determined to return there.

Legislation that would criminalise performing abortions after a foetal heartbeat is detected – usually around the six-week mark – is one step closer to being introduced in Ohio, after the state’s House of Representatives passed the so-called ‘heartbeat bill’ last week. The proposed legislation makes no exception for cases of rape or incest.

If the bill becomes law, this would severely restrict the rights afforded to women. At the moment, abortion is legal in the state – but a viability test is required after 20 weeks.

Ohio legalised same-sex marriage in 2015, albeit only after the Supreme Court overturned previous court rulings that upheld a ban.

This hard-won victory was not, as some may have hoped, an indication that the state had become a champion of equality.

This is starkly evident due to the fact that the progress of the heartbeat bill has renewed interest in another proposed abortion law in Ohio: House Bill 565.

Under this proposal, a foetus would be considered a person from conception to birth, leaving those who perform or undergo abortions open to severe punishment – and even the death penalty.

This is the stuff of Handmaid’s Tale-esque nightmares: under the proposals, the rights granted to the foetus would be given greater weight than ever before, and women would effectively have no choice over what to do with their own bodies.

The proposals in Ohio show just how draconian lawmakers can be when it comes to women’s reproductive rights.

Furthermore, they serve as a reminder that just because a state has liberalised its laws in one area, it doesn’t necessarily follow that other legislation will go the same way, and it certainly doesn’t indicate that attitudes are generally becoming more liberal.

And this problem is not just restricted to the US.

The huge success of two recent referendum campaigns in Ireland, which saw same-sex marriage legalised and a constitutional ban on abortion overturned, signalled a refreshing sea change in a country that was so modern in some ways, and positively backwards in others.

But it also served to highlight the hideous hypocrisy of British politicians, who have allowed antediluvian abortion laws to persist in Northern Ireland. It’s the only part of the UK where a woman can still face a prison sentence for terminating a pregnancy, and where gay couples still cannot marry.

This sorry state of affairs only became harder to change when Theresa May entered into her toxic relationship with the DUP, which takes a hardline stance against abortion and equal marriage, on religious grounds. (Like many of the DUP’s other policies, this stance goes against what evidence suggests most Northern Irish people actually want.)

Of course, this disparity between Great Britain and Northern Ireland has existed for years in relation to same-sex marriage, and decades when it comes to abortion. People have long been railing against these bigoted, sexist and old-fashioned laws.

What’s different now is that the successful campaign to repeal the eighth amendment in Ireland – which effectively bans abortions – has made the problem harder to ignore. The movement lit a fire under campaigners in Northern Ireland. It showed that change can be achieved but it requires a sustained, vocal, organised and resilient movement.

And as the potential new laws in Ohio show, it’s best not to assume that a battle won means the fight is over.

There will always be those who see progress as the enemy, and recent global events have shown how easy it is for societies to regress. Defending equality requires constant vigilance.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/women-death-penalty-abortion-ohio-same-sex-marriage-equality-a8645071.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2PtCuyz1820cuHdtXNTJbxP2NEDQlExhu3Zk706OXuaGf98Xz5WvCUPJg#Echobox=1542819016

PHOTO: COURTESY OF CALLA HALES

Calla Hales oversees four abortion clinics in North Carolina and Georgia. For the past 40 Saturdays, she’s been facing the front lines of an anti-abortion protest that drew thousands of pro-life activists. This is her story as told toGlamour’s Macaela MacKenzie.

My typical Saturday commute to work feels a little like driving straight into a festival. There are tour buses, music blasting over loudspeakers, hundreds of people congregated in brightly colored shirts. Except this isn’t a festival or a fun town parade—I run four abortion clinics in North Carolina and Georgia, and this is the anti-abortion protest we face every week.

For the past 40 weeks straight, the clinic where I work in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been facing hundreds of pro-life protesters that make getting to the clinic a traumatic experience. They call it the 40 Weeks of Life campaign—I call it the 40-Week Siege.

Every Saturday I drive out and count the protesters congregated in the street outside the clinic—394, 560, 2,000—past posters of babies and aborted fetuses. The protesters will call me by name and tell me I need to repent. They’ll yell about the blood of babies on my hands as I park my car and walk into work. They’ll tell me I can’t be a mother as long as I work here. They’ll say if I leave my life of sin, maybe God will still save me.

All of it is an effort to guilt me into feeling shame over something that I should never feel shame about. Abortion care isn’t about religion or faith—it’s about a woman’s right to choose what medical care she receives for her body.

As patients drive down the street to the clinic, it’s common to see men and women trying to wave down cars and give out pamphlets of information meant to guilt women about their choice and convince them to turn back. One patient’s young daughter was so traumatized by the protesters that she ran off—it took almost an hour to find her. Some weeks pro-life protesters have even tried to deliberately misdirect patients from the clinic, chalking arrows on the street that lead patients away from the clinic and promising “free ultrasounds,” adding chaos to an already stressful situation. If a black patient is walking in, there are often comments about abortion being “black genocide” in a weird twisting of the Black Lives Matter movement. Unfortunately, that tactic is not uncommon at many anti-abortion protests, which can be incredibly upsetting to patients and staff.

No one should have to go through this traumatic tunnel of protesters just to access health care they are legally entitled to. Can you imagine that happening at any other medical center?

Thankfully, we have a private parking lot. Once patients reach our property, they’re greeted by a group of volunteers who are willing and happy to be there supporting patients, asking if they need a welcome shoulder or support going into the clinic.

The thing I want people to know is patients seeking abortion care aren’t this strange population. They’re average, regular women. We have a whole range of patients including 15- to 16-year-old minors coming in with parental guidance or judicial bypasses, and 40-something women who have two kids and are just fine not having another. I’ve seen students, mothers, teachers, preachers—there’s a whole gamut of patients.

It bothers me that there’s no chance to have a real dialogue with the people who protest outside our clinic every week. If someone has it in their head that what you are doing is fundamentally wrong, they’re not going to want to listen to you say something different. I often ask why, if they are so concerned about ending abortions, they don’t dedicate their time and energy to better access to contraception and sex education. Often, they say it’s against their belief systems.

I am a huge supporter of the ability to have free speech. I’ve been to my fair share of protests in my life (and am an organizer with the Women’s March in Charlotte), but there’s a sincere difference between protests and harassment. The latter terrorizes not just our staff but the patients coming to us for care. Harassment is not help.

A part of me wants to say that the protests plaguing the women coming to our clinic for care don’t bother me at all—I don’t want to give those that have put our work under siege for the past 40 straight weeks the satisfaction. But that would be disingenuous and simply not the truth. It’s incredibly upsetting to have to deal with this on a daily basis, especially on the weekends when it reaches a radical level. At this point, my fiancé asks me to wear a ballistic vest when I’m going to be around a lot of protesters.

This isn’t just happening to patients here at my own clinic—it’s happening to patients across the nation. This issue has been happening under the radar for a long time and it’s just going to continue to get worse. Protestors are getting increasingly emboldened, feeling like they’re on the right side of the debate as policies continue to restrict access to abortion care and contraceptives. By the end of the 40-Week Siege, protesters were literally coming in by the busload.

The crazy thing is, many abortion activists like myself are told we’re being hysterical—that Roe v. Wade will never be overturned. But that’s already becoming a reality in places like Alabama, West Virginia, and Ohio, where abortion access is slowly but surely being banned. It’s a scary time to have a uterus.

No matter how many protesters come or how many of my weekends they ruin, we’re still fighting every day. We’re still organizing. We’re still growing and trying to think of new things every time something like this happens. Every time we fail, it’s back to the drawing board. We’re not just giving up.

Source: https://www.glamour.com/story/this-is-what-women-have-to-go-through-to-get-an-abortion-in-north-carolina?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=glm&mbid=social_facebook_fanpage&fbclid=IwAR20t9kWRaA1K0y8Ou7NuZ7RmlP7gXxh4U0FuFUmAkt8YGWK0hPmkJKVw4k

Abortion is illegal in the central American nation.

Salvadoran women march claiming for the decriminalization of abortion in San Salvador, on September 28, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / MARVIN RECINOS (Photo credit should read MARVIN RECINOS/AFP/Getty Images)

A rape victim jailed for allegedly attempting to abort her unborn child is facing 20 years behind bars in El Salvador.

Imelda Cortez, who became pregnant aged 18 after being raped by her stepfather, denies trying to abort her baby, which is a crime under any circumstances in the central American nation.

Judges will consider medical evidence presented by doctors to determine if Cortez intentionally tried to induce an abortion and either convict her on attempted murder charges, or decide to set her free. Her daughter is now nearly two years old.

“Imelda is despondent. Her case could go either way,” her lawyer Alejandra Romero said.

“But if the judge is objective and looks at the evidence, which doesn’t show she harmed her child and committed a crime, Imelda should be set free,” she said.

Regardless of Cortez’s guilt or innocence, the harsh penalty she faces has revived debate about El Salvador’s total ban on abortion under any circumstances, even for rape victims.

“Imelda was repeatedly raped by her stepfather from the age of eleven. DNA tests prove her child is the daughter of her stepfather,” said Romero, adding the stepfather has since been imprisoned on charges of raping a minor.

“Yet Imelda is being treated as a criminal, not a victim of sexual violence,” said Romero, who works for the Citizen Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion (CDFA) in El Salvador.

Cortez is one of about 25 women in jail accused of inducing abortions, who say they were wrongfully jailed for murder, when instead they suffered miscarriages, stillbirths or pregnancy complications, according to the CDFA.

Lawyers at CDFA say convictions for such crimes are often based on flimsy medical evidence as it is difficult for doctors to prove if someone has had an abortion, let alone attempts to do so.

Earlier this year, the United Nations called on El Salvador to revise its abortion law and review all such cases in which women have been jailed.

In Cortez’s case, she was taken to a hospital after giving birth where doctors said she intentionally tried to induce an abortion, despite the fact the child was born healthy, according to Romero.

Mariana Ardila, a lawyer at rights group Women’s Link Worldwide, said judges have a duty to consider the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy, even if they find Cortez guilty.

“It is crucial that the judiciary, while dispensing justice in crimes related to pregnancy, take into account the individual circumstances and background of women and girls,” said Ardila.

“In this case, the circumstances related to the sexual violence Imelda faced and the afterward consequences on her life.”

An online petition has so far collected nearly 45,000 signatures calling on authorities to release Cortez from prison.

“While the law remains so restrictive, such cases will only continue,” Romero said.

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/el-salvador-woman-who-had-her-rapists-baby-could-be-jailed-for-20-years_uk_5be95008e4b0e8438899b7a9?ncid=fcbklnkukhpmg00000001&fbclid=IwAR0kbNhH0duuOLjciTnGK4iciKNrI_WBonMYiIblXtJbA7E48985yrjQXls

Thousands of protesters demonstrated in Norwegian cities on Saturday against restricting women’s access to abortion, the subject of talks between the ruling minority coalition and a small party seeking to join the government.

A woman holds a placard during a demonstration against changes of the country’s abortion law in Oslo, Norway November 17, 2018. Sign reads “My body, my rights”. REUTERS/Lefteris Karagiannopoulos

In Norway’s capital Oslo, the demonstrators, some pushing children in strollers, marched through the city center carrying banners with slogans such as “My body my right” and “Defend abortion”.

“The new law that’s proposed is limiting women’s rights,” said Ine Lund, a 22-year-old criminology student. “I feel it should be up to the woman to choose.”

When the Christian Democrats opened talks on teaming up with the opposition Labour Party to bring down the Conservative-led government, Prime Minister Erna Solberg intervened, offering to discuss tightening abortion rules.

The argument helped persuade rank-and-file members of the socially conservative, Lutheran-based party to vote for talks to join the ruling coalition, potentially securing Solberg a majority in parliament until the next election in 2021.

The Christian Democrats want further restrictions or an end to terminations after the twelfth week of pregnancy, potentially reining in exemptions for genetic conditions or injuries.

The party also wants to make it more difficult, or stop altogether, selective abortions in multi-fetal pregnancies.

“It is discriminating to select on the basis of having different skills … Children with Down syndrome should have the same legal rights as other children,” Kjell Ingolf Ropstad, deputy leader of the Christian Democrats, told public broadcaster NRK earlier this month.

Since 1978, a termination after 12 weeks must be authorized by a panel of two hospital doctors. If the panel refuses, the decision can be appealed.

In an effort to quell a backlash within her own party, as well as from the opposition, Solberg said any changes to the abortion law would not undermine women’s rights.

“In practice this will mean that, in future, women who seek an abortion after the twelfth week of pregnancy will as much as before have the right to have an abortion,” she told parliament on Wednesday.

Some 68 percent of Norwegians are against changing the abortion law, while 16 percent are in favor, according to a poll published in daily VG on Nov. 9. The phone survey by Respons Analyse polled 1,000 participants aged 18 and over.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-politics-abortion-idUSKCN1NM0HR?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5bf0352f04d3017287312b7b&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0JeDGMsrtSA0aDimGP1PkqPNrOmmRzjfr8u0Dpk2dDX97fdHWtF8D6CRI