Abortion – Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information

Australia has turned up empty handed to a major international conference which has pledged more than a quarter of a billion of dollars for women affected by President Donald Trump’s reinstatement of the “global gag rule”, which has stripped international non-government organisations that provide abortion services, advice or referrals of US funding.

The order was one of Mr Trump’s first actions as President and restricts US funding not only for family planning organisations but to other health service providers. It is estimated it will leave aid organisations short of $US600 million (or around $790 million), which campaigners say will put millions of women’s lives at risk.

To make up for the shortfall, the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Lilianne Ploumen, established the She Decides movement to raise money from both through private sources and other governments.

Ministers from Belguim, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark organised today’s pledging conference. It raised ???181 million or around $251 million.

“When I launched the idea of gathering in Brussels four weeks ago, I never had hoped so many would come to voice their support,” Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said.

“It is a very powerful signal to the rest of the world that the fundamental right of women and girls to decide over their own lives must be respected,” said the Dutch Minister Lilianne Ploumen.

“Investing in women’s rights is not only the right thing to do, it’s a rational thing to do,” said Ulla T??rn??s minister for development cooperation of Denmark.

Australia’s Ambassador for Women and Girls Sharman Stone attended the She Decides conference in Brussels and said Australia was a “strong champion” of sexual health services.

“Empowering women and girls is a central objective of our foreign policy focus,” Dr Stone, a former Liberal MP, said.

“Access to sexual health and reproductive services, particularly family planning remains critical to women’s empowerment – we’ve all been saying this,” the Ambassador said.

But she did not commit any funding on Australia’s behalf.

She was was applauded though when she read out details of previously announced $9.5 million in funding Australia has committed to respond to sexual health needs during humanitarian disasters in the region.

By contrast, Canada pledged $26 million, as did the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One anonymous donor contributed $66 million.

Opposition MPs in Australia had called on Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to contribute on Australia’s behalf.

Labor Senator Lisa Singh wrote to the Foreign Minister two weeks ago urging Australia support the movement.

“Pledging of funds to the initiative is in line with Australia’s ongoing support to the Sustainable Development Goals,” Senator Singh wrote in the letter dated 14 February.

The Minister did not respond. Fairfax Media has confirmed the government will not be committing any funding.

Senator Singh called on Ms Bishop to rethink her decision.???

“Women’s lives are at stake,” Senator Singh said.

“This is a missed opportunity. It is critical that donor countries like Australia support the She Decides Fund.

“This was an opportunity to stand by women and girls in some of the poorest countries to safeguard them from losing access to contraception, HIV prevention and vital maternal healthcare to prevent maternal deaths.

“It is short-sighted and places gains we have made in reducing maternal mortality at risk,” she said.

Michael Sheldrick from the global social impact organisation Global Citizen says Australia’s attendance at the conference was nevertheless “critical” and had been keenly noted.

“While there were many governments represented, many also chose not to participate out of a fear of being perceived as anti-the US. Therefore having Australia, a close US ally, present sent a powerful message around the seriousness and importance of funding women’s health and family planning.”

“Julie Bishop’s name was mentioned to me several times as someone known internationally for her strong support of family planning. So it’s good this support was made public, even if there were was no new funding accompanying it,” he said.

At the She Decides conference, Mr Sheldrick presented Ambassador Stone with a petition of 20,000 signatures calling for leadership and funding to plug the funding gap created by President Trump’s order.

Source: New Castle Herald

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4505199/australia-pledges-nothing-to-counter-trumps-abortion-order/?cs=4219

BRUSSELS (AP) – Nations started pledging tens of millions of dollars Thursday at an international family planning conference in Brussels aimed at making up for a gap left by President Donald Trump’s ban on U.S. funding to groups linked to abortion.

Some 50 governments are attending the hastily convened one-day conference. Early on, total pledges were already closing in on 100 million dollars, with Sweden and Finland each promising some 20 million euros ($21 million dollars.)

One of Trump’s first acts as president was to withhold an estimated half billion dollars a year in funding from international groups that perform abortions or provide information about them. The Trump administration said the ban is necessary because it doesn’t want to provide funds for something it considers morally wrong. Officials in many European nations and around the world say the move will hurt women and girls who need family planning most.

Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Development and Cooperation Alexander De Croo, right, and Dutch Minister for Trade and Development Cooperation Lilianne Plouman, left, address a media conference, She Decides, at the Egmont Palace in Brussels on Thursday, March 2, 2017. Nations are pledging tens of millions of dollars at an international family planning conference in Brussels aimed at making up for the gap left by President Donald Trump’s ban on U.S. funding to groups linked to abortion. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

“The purely ideological decision of one country” can push women and girls back “into the dark Ages,” said conference host and Belgian Deputy Premier Alexander De Croos.

“We will start with making something great again,” he said of the drive to boost family planning policies in developing nations, riffing off Trump’s “make America great again” campaign slogan.

Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands had already committed to contributions of at least 10 million euros each. Canada, African and Asian countries will also be at the conference, as well as officials from the European Union and the United Nations. Philanthropists and private donors will be asked to contribute as well.

Finnish Development Minister Kai Mykkanen said the U.S moves “threaten to suspend a large number of projects helping to defend the health of millions of girls, even helping to save their lives. We respond to the situation fraught with distress by investing in the improvement of women’s and girls’ rights even more than before.”

U.S. bans on funding international groups that perform or even talk about abortions have been instituted by Republican administrations and rescinded by Democratic ones since 1984. Former President Barack Obama last lifted it in 2009. But under Trump, the ban has been massively expanded.

Participants said that instead of decreasing abortions, the move would increase dangerous pregnancy terminations. They said that when bans were in place, the number of involuntarily pregnancies and abortions increased.

“The number of abortions will not fall, they will rise,” because of an increase in unwanted pregnancies, said Dutch Development Minister Lilianne Ploumen.

De Croo insisted that he was not defending abortion.

“To be clear, any abortion that takes place is one too many.” he said. “But if it has to take place then I think it should be available and it should be available in a safe way.”

Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Development and Cooperation Alexander De Croo, right, and Dutch Minister for Trade and Development Cooperation Lilianne Plouman, left, address a media conference, She Decides, at the Egmont Palace in Brussels on Thursday, March 2, 2017. Nations are pledging tens of millions of dollars at an international family planning conference in Brussels aimed at making up for the gap left by President Donald Trump’s ban on U.S. funding to groups linked to abortion. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Cuba’s Ambassador Norma Goicochea Estenoz, sitting right, attends a conference, She Decides, at the Egmont Palace in Brussels on Thursday, March 2, 2017. Nations are pledging tens of millions of dollars at an international family planning conference in Brussels aimed at making up for the gap left by President Donald Trump’s ban on U.S. funding to groups linked to abortion. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Source: Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-4274348/Nations-pledge-millions-counter-US-family-planning-ban.html#ixzz4aARmAGIQ

Dona Wells walked through what’s left of the EMW Women’s Clinic in Lexington, Kentucky. Boxes fill what use to be offices. Sterilized medical supplies are in disarray. A light flickers on and off in the back hallway. She doesn’t see a point in fixing it. At 75, she still runs 25 miles a week, but Wells is tired.

“I was going to retire anyway, probably this year,” she said. But I wanted to do it on my terms, not Gov. Bevin’s terms.”

That would be Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who recently signed two bills into law further restricting abortion services: one requiring an ultrasound as part of abortions and another prohibiting the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The final straw for Wells came in the form of a new license requirement from the state. Wells has been battling restrictive rules for most of the clinic’s 28 years, but the battle is over now. She’s closing the clinic.

That leaves Kentucky with a single abortion clinic. A few weeks later, a clinic closed in West Virginia, leaving that state, too, with a single clinic. In Ohio, there are now 9 abortion clinics, down from 18 in 2011, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research center that gathers reproductive health data.

  Explore the interactive maps >>

For all the talk of potential changes in the Supreme Court’s view of the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion, Wells said an effective erosion of the rights that decision established is already underway at the state and local level.

“Roe v. Wade — it doesn’t matter if they overturn it or not, if they have enough restrictions on abortions that people are unwilling or unable to meet,” she asked, “what’s a right if you can’t access it?” Then she went back to packing up her office.

State Restrictions

The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 established abortion rights. By the 80s, Wells said, abortion was widely viewed as a medical option, one performed by many private doctors. Health departments made referrals. There were a half dozen clinics in Lexington and Louisville.

But the public protests, going back to the mid-80s when protesters routinely chained themselves to clinic doors, had an impact.

Slowly, Wells said, the number of doctors who were willing to perform abortions shrank. There were in turn fewer doctors who were being trained to perform abortions. Changes in available medicines had an effect as well. The “morning after” pill became available, and more women had access to longer-lasting contraceptives.

While the medical landscaped broadened, the political landscaped narrowed. Over the same stretch of time, legislatures across the country enacted laws restricting abortion.

In Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, there is a 24 hour waiting period between making contact with an abortion provider and having the procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute. A woman must also receive information discouraging her from abortion.

Wells said that in 2016 the state asked that her clinic obtain a license to perform abortions. The clinic had previously acted as an independent doctor’s office that doesn’t require such a license.

Wells said she tried to comply with the state request. But, she said, “there was always something wrong with the paperwork.”

For much of the last year, she has not been able to provide surgeries. In January, the Kentucky Attorney General denied her license application. At the same time EMW also lost the lease it had held since 1989.

Wells said fighting back didn’t make sense.

Celebrating Closures

Pastor Jared Henry leads a congregation of 200 at Lafayette Church of the Nazarene, less than 2 miles from the EMW clinic.

When Wells lost her fight, Henry celebrated.

“All that they did was kill babies there,” he said. “I think that our city, our state, our world is better off even if it is one less (clinic), praise be to God.”

Soon after he became pastor, Henry discovered the protesters gathered at EMW each Thursday and Friday. Henry said he often prayed with women who were willing to pray with him and prayed for those women who were not. Members of his small congregation gave money to the cause and contacted lawmakers to express their views.

An anti-abortion display at the Lafayette Church of the Nazarene.

Henry said supporting life is crucial to the mission of the church, including ending abortion but also supporting adoption and foster care. That, he said, is critical.

“It’s not just saying, ‘this is wrong.’ That’s kind of like a doctor saying, ‘you’re sick.’ I want him to tell me what to do about it,” he said.

Although he said he and his congregation have contacted political leaders about abortion, he thinks the issue has gotten too politically charged.

“My biggest problem it that sometimes politicians use it to garner votes on one end of the spectrum or the other. Politicians very rarely ease anything, it usually gets it more fired up,” he said.

Limiting Access

Wells declined to talk about the protesters at her clinic. But, she said, the tone of the debate has become more vicious over the years. The language has become more graphic. And, she said, “alternative facts” more rampant.

“I just don’t have time to dispute all the misinformation the, quote, government, unquote, comes up with,” she said.

Sharon Lewis is executive director of Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, that state’s sole abortion clinic. She said as a provider she will find a way to comply with new rules. But she said limiting access — making people have to find transportation to go farther, to find money to pay for child care and possibly two days in a hotel — that makes a legal medical service too expensive for many.

“What it could do is send us back to the days when women died because they had unintended pregnancies,” she said.

Long Term Impact

Earlier this year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a reportshowing a leap in maternal mortality. Dr. Caitlin Gerdts is Vice President for Research at Ibis Reproductive Health, a nonprofit group that advocates for reproductive rights. She said it’s difficult to find a firm cause and effect between that maternal mortality data and the decreased access to abortion.

For example, she said, the CDC points to the effects of chronic diseases such as heart disease. But, she said, research has shown that restricting abortion does have health effects.

“There is a substantial physical health, mental and economic health of being denied a wanted abortion,” she said.

Pastor Henry said in his experience the women he counsels suffer from emotional pain. He said the closing of the Lexington clinic allows for a shift in focus of his church’s pro-life ministry.

“Maybe this will allow us to focus more on issues of adoption and foster care,” he said.

“We are not hear to beat people up,” he said. “You did wrong and it was a serious wrong, but God can forgive, so let’s move forward.”

However, members of his congregation also took a recent road trip to Louisville. There they demonstrated in front of Kentucky’s sole remaining clinic.

Kara Lofton, Appalachia Health News Coordinator for West Virginia Public Broadcasting, contributed to this report.

Source: http://wvpublic.org/post/closing-clinics-abortion-rights-increasingly-out-reach#stream/0

Abortion clinics are facing more violent threats than they have in 20 years, NBC News reports, as anti-abortion legislators are appointed to cabinet positions in Washington and some states continue to introduce restrictive abortion bills.

The number of abortion providers who reported being targeted for “severe violence or threats of violence” nearly doubled from 19.7% in the first half of 2014 to 34.2% in the first half of 2016, according to a study published by the Feminist Majority Foundation.

The organization conducted the survey via mail and online in July last year, with 319 providers responding to questions about anti-abortion activity and violence targeting their facilities.

“The most commonly reported types of severe violence and threats of violence in 2016 included blocking clinic access, bomb threats, facility invasions, stalking, and death threats,” the report reads.

The report connects the uptick in violence at the beginning of last year to the release of anti-Planned Parenthood videos purporting to show providers talking callously about trading fetal body parts. The videos, released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), were found to have been heavily edited and in at least one case fraudulently tried to pass off photos of a stillborn baby as fetal remains. The study authors write:

This incident and countless anecdotes of increasing levels of violence against providers across the country in the fall of 2015 led us to fear that anti-abortion extremists had been emboldened by the release of these videos. The results of the 2016 National Clinic Violence Survey, the first quantitative measure of nationwide violence recorded since the release of the CMP videos, corroborate these fears.

The report found that clinics have not experienced this level of violence since the early to mid-90s–a time when anti-abortion shooters targeted and killed providers, including Dr. David Gunn in 1993, Dr. John Bayard Britton and James H. Barrett in 1994, and more around the country in the following years. The National Abortion Federation writes of that time:

In the early 1990s, anti-abortion extremists concluded that murdering providers was the only way to stop abortion. The first provider was murdered in 1993. Including the recent attack in Colorado, there have been 11 murders and 26 attempted murders due to anti-abortion violence. Several of the doctors were attacked in their own homes. In 2009, NAF member Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in his church in Wichita, Kansas. In 2015, a police officer and two people at a clinic were killed when a gunman entered a clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Most recently, in November 2015, a shooter killed three people outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. The shooter, Robert L. Dear Jr., told police officers, “No more baby parts” as an explanation for his actions, an apparent reference to the doctored CMP videos.

Providers can expect the antagonistic rhetoric to continue to intensify from Washington. Last week, the Senate confirmed Tom Price, a vocally anti-choice candidate, as Secretary of Health and Human Services. That came days after the confirmation of another openly anti-abortion legislator: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose Justice Department could be responsible for overseeing investigations into violence against providers.

Source: Fusion

http://fusion.net/story/386735/abortion-clinics-violence-study/

The Guatemalan authorities say they are expelling members of a non-profit “abortion boat” docked on its shores.

Officials said they had lied when they applied for tourist visas and would not be allowed to work in Guatemala.

The Dutch group, Women on Waves, offers free abortion services to women in countries where the procedure is banned.

It takes women in the early stages of pregnancy out to international waters, where the abortion is performed.

Abortion is only allowed in Guatemala when the mother’s life is at risk.

A spokeswoman for Women on Waves confirmed that they had been told to leave the country immediately, but she said its lawyers had appealed against the decision.

La Prensa Libre newspaper said the four crew members being expelled were US citizens.

It is not clear if other members of the group have also been ordered to leave the country.

‘Fundamental right’

The Army said on Thursday it had been instructed by President Jimmy Morales to act, and would defend “human life and the laws of our country” by preventing the group from carrying out abortions.

The Women on Waves’ boat docked on the Pacific Ocean port of Quetzal, in the city of San Jose, on Wednesday.

The group says it had a legal permit to sail in Guatemalan waters and the boat was being illegally “detained” by the authorities.

The group says more than 60,000 illegal abortions are performed in Guatemala every year, and most of the women who put their lives at risk at the hands of untrained professionals are poor.

“We respect religious beliefs but this [abortion] is a fundamental right in a democracy,” spokeswoman Leticia Zevich told La Hora Newspaper.

However, Guatemala’s Catholic Church, other religious leaders and politicians protested against the presence of the boat.

In most Latin American countries, abortion is either illegal or only allowed to save the life of the woman.

Source: BBC

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39084503

A bill introduced in Montana on Monday would effectively make abortionsillegal after 24 weeks, with no exceptions for cases in which the pregnant woman’s life is at risk.

Senate Bill 282 sets fetus viability, the ability of the fetus to survive outside of the uterus, at 24 weeks. If the woman’s life is at risk, her doctor would need to induce labor or deliver the fetus by caesarean section, and do “everything medically possibly to support the fetus,” according toMissoulian. Abortions after 24 weeks would be a felony.

Republican Sen. Albert Olszewski, the sponsor of the bill, said its intent was to ensure a woman whose pregnancy puts her life is at risk terminates the pregnancy “with the safest medical procedures available,” according to Great Falls Tribune.

Other supporters said the bill avoids debate by focusing on only viable fetuses and said new medical technology is capable of supporting fetuses sooner than Roe v. Wade‘s accepted viability between 24 and 28 weeks. According to Slate, however, fetuses born in the 24th week of pregnancy only have a 42 percent chance of survival, whereas a fetus born at 30 weeks has a 90 percent chance of survival.

At the bill’s hearing, opponents cited cases that make the bill unconstitutional. SK Rossi, director of advocacy and public policy at ACLU Montana, said Planned Parenthood v. Danforth and Colautti v. Franklin prohibited states from establishing a standard for fetal viability.

Rossi also cited the decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot use the argument of “protecting the health of a woman” to shut down abortion clinics without evidence.

Martha Stahl, president of Planned Parenthood of Montana, said the bill “replaces physician’s judgment with political ideology” and is dangerous for women.

The Senate committee is expected to vote on the bill soon, possibly this week.

Source: The Daily Dot

Montana bill banning abortion after 24 weeks would make no exceptions for a woman’s life

Laura found out she was pregnant in December.

Liz Marmo/Supplied

“I have a three-year-old son who I have raised essentially as a single parent, and I wasn’t in a position to be a single parent to another child,” the 26-year-old, who lives in Albury on the NSW-Victoria border, told BuzzFeed News.

“I was in the process of getting ready to leave the relationship and the pregnancy didn’t change that.”

There is only one abortion provider in Albury, a fertility clinic that is only open on Thursdays.

Each Thursday morning anti-abortion protesters gather outside with signs and plastic foetus dolls. The dolls are handed to women coming in to the clinic in a bid to dissuade them from having an abortion.

One of the regular picketers also sprays “holy water” along the footpath outside the clinic.

Liz Marmo/Supplied

Laura knew she wanted a surgical abortion.

“Termination was definitely the only option because I am a very maternal person and I knew that if I went down the adoption route I would keep the child and I am not in a position to do that.”

But a member of Laura’s extended family is one of the regular protesters outside the clinic.

“I knew I couldn’t go there when a relative of mine was going to be standing out the front of the clinic hassling me not to go in,” she said.

“I knew I couldn’t face that.”

Laura feared the man would tell other people in her extended family and friends that she had visited the centre.

We Need A Bigot Exclusion Zone Right Here Right Now/Facebook

“No one is stopping [the protesters] from telling other people who they saw there that day, and at the time I was really concerned with people knowing that I was making that decision,” she said.

“I felt like my privacy would be taken away from me.”

Because Laura was still at an early enough stage of her pregnancy, she was able to opt for a medical abortion instead. Last month she went to the GP to get abortion drug RU486.

“Now that I have had a medical [abortion] I would have definitely preferred to go the surgical route, because you have to see it happen and I didn’t want that.”

Abortion is still a crime for women and doctors in NSW and is only lawful if a doctor believes a woman’s physical and/or mental health are in serious danger. Social and economic factors may also be taken into account.

Laura has always been pro-choice but said the experience gave her a “different perspective” on the barriers women in NSW face when making decisions about their own bodies.

“It seemed really unfair to me because [the clinic] should be a safe place for women,” she said.

“No one should be able to take that right away from you.”

A bill to decriminalise abortion and enact 150 metre exclusion or “safe access” zones around abortion providers to protect patients against “ongoing harassment, abuse and intimidation” was introduced to NSW parliament by Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi in August.

NSW Labor MP Penny Sharpe has also initiated a private member’s bill for safe access zones.

Laura supports the move to decriminalise abortion but believes safe access zones don’t go far enough, and that religious protesters should be banned from clinics altogether.

Liz Marmo/Supplied

“Every woman who faces the same choice has to be handed plastic [foetal] dolls and pamphlets,” she said.

“I don’t think women go in there making a decision lightly and these people are making what is a hard decision even harder.”

About 500 metres south of the clinic, across the NSW border into Victoria, women seeking abortions and staff at fertility clinics no longer have to navigate through protesters to the front door.

In 2015 Victoria followed Tasmania and the ACT in passing legislation to establish safe access zones.

Source: Buzzfeed

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ginarushton/this-woman-couldnt-go-to-a-clinic-for-an-abortion-because-he?utm_term=.ohjn2P5LG#.haEW8QqbM

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich

Norway has joined an international initiative to raise millions of dollars to replace shortfalls left by U.S. President Donald Trump’s ban on U.S.-funded groups worldwide providing information on abortion.

In January, the Netherlands started a global fund to help women access abortion services, saying Trump’s “global gag rule” meant a funding gap of $600 million over the next four years, and has pledged $10 million to the initiative to replace that.

Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland, Canada and Cape Verde have all also lent their support.

“The government is increasing its support for family planning and safe abortion by 85 million Norwegian crowns ($10 million) compared with 2016,” Prime Minister Erna Solberg said.

“At a time when this agenda has come under pressure, a joint effort is particularly important,” she said in a statement.

Last month, Trump reinstated a policy requiring overseas organizations that receive U.S. family-planning funds to certify they do not perform abortions or provide abortion advice as a method of family planning.

Source: Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-norway-abortion-idUSKBN15Z1KL?il=0