Abortion – Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information

“Thanks to the Obama Administration women will still be able to access the birth control they need to plan their families, and cancer screenings they need to stay healthy.”

*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

While the nation was preparing to wax emotionally about the terror attacks on 9/11 and Donald Trump was gaining appreciation for “political correctness” in assailing Hillary Clinton’s “bucket of deplorables” remarks, they missed a very important announcement from the Obama Administration. As has been the case throughout his tenure in the Oval Office, Barack Obama took unilateral action to protect women’s constitutional rights from a rabid and toxic religious Republican attack on Planned Parenthood. It is curious why there has been little to no reporting in the main stream media, because the President’s announcement of a brilliantly simple new rule was actually, as Vice President Joe Biden would say, “a big f*cking deal.”

The “BFD” is a new rule regarding Title X funding that affects the most basic preventive health care and family planning services for over 4 million low-income Americans, 85 percent of whom earn under $23,500 annually. About a third of those patients are served by Planned Parenthood that receives roughly $70 million annually in Title X grants for contraceptives and cancer and sexually transmitted infection screenings. Of course Title X forbids using even one penny for abortion services for any reason.

The Department of Health and Human Services new rule simply says that states are forbidden from withholding Title X family planning money for any reason whatsoever “other than a provider’s ability to deliver services to program beneficiaries in an effective manner.” The bottom line is that theocratic Republican states can no longer even vote to defund Planned Parenthood just because some of its clinics offer abortion services.

Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, said:

“This will make a real difference in so many people’s lives. Thanks to the Obama Administration, [low income] women will still be able to access the birth control they need to plan their families, and the cancer screenings they need to stay healthy.”

The President’s action sent Republican Diane Black (R-TN) into apoplexy, even as she is leading yet another expensive House committee investigation into the fabricated and wildly debunked videos produced by a religious cabal opposed to women’s healthcare and constitutional rights. Black said that the President’s action protecting women’s constitutional rights to choose their reproductive care is a dirty stunt the religious right and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) are not going to stand for. Ms. Black forgets that America is not governed by the Vatican, and that the U.S. Constitution still forbids Congress from enacting religious edicts. She said in a statement:

“We must use the full force of Congress and grassroots strength of the [Catholic] pro-life movement to defeat this absurd rule and prevent the Obama Administration from carrying out political favors and prop up a scandal-ridden abortion provider.”

First, Planned Parenthood is not scandal-ridden like the religious fanatics that fabricated the hoax videos. In fact, two of the theocrats with the evangelical outfit that produced the highly-edited and thoroughly debunked videos, Center for Medical Progress, were indicted by a Texas grand jury that also cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Of course, neither Diane Black nor any other religious Republican will ever mention, much less investigate, the scandal-ridden Center for Medical Progress because religious organizations typically enjoy free reign to lie, cheat and steal; particularly if their motivation is punishing women.

Second, and this is a main reason religious Republicans despise President Barack Obama; defending a woman’s Constitutional right to choose her own reproductive care is not a political favor. It is the President of the United States job and sworn duty to defend and protect the Constitution and by extension the American people, including women, it was created to serve. It is not an exaggeration to claim that without Barack Obama in the White House over the past nearly eight years, what few rights women have earned and fought for as American citizens would have been obliterated by patriarchal Republicans and their USCCB and evangelical masters who made it their duty to destroy one state at a time.

Right now, even as Republicans are attempting to demonize and destroy Planned Parenthood, it is the principal organization “on the front line fight” against the devastating effects of the Zika virus on pregnant women that causes “severe, lifelong birth defects.” In fact, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said “the primary strategy to reduce Zika-related pregnancy complications is helping women avoid or delay pregnancy through robust family planning and birth control.” Planned Parenthood has been distributing Zika prevention kits and educating women in neighborhoods where the virus is spreading like wildfire. Not surprising in the theocratic South with the most “high-risk states for the mosquito-borne and sexually transmitted virus – Florida, Louisiana and Texas – religious Republicans have voted to block funding for the only organization working to control the infectious disease, Planned Parenthood. President Obama’s “new rule” puts an end to that anti-woman atrocity.

The new Title X rule becomes permanent after a 30-day public comment period, which experts say is certain, and it means a quick end to religious Republicans attacks against Planned Parenthood. As Planned Parenthood’s president said,

“This rule makes it clear that politicians cannot ignore the law as they pursue their [religious] agenda to stop women from getting the care they need.”

The new rule also makes it abundantly clear that President Obama is still leading the fight to protect women’s rights and this time he used a stroke of his pen to permanently protect Planned Parenthood and millions of America’s poor women.

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/13/stroke-pen-president-obama-permanently-protects-planned-parenthood.html

Source: Politicus USA

Punitive abortion laws – like in South Korea – violate human rights. In recent weeks, the government has threatened to toughen penalties on medical providers who perform abortions illegally. Women’s groups and experts are fighting to make the government back down on this threat.

Rather than further penalizing providers, the government should fully decriminalize abortion. It should remove penalties for women who seek abortion and for medical providers of abortions.

At present, the law treats abortion as a crime, but sets out exceptions. Women may only legally obtain an abortion in cases of rape or incest, if the parents cannot marry legally, if continuation of the pregnancy is likely to jeopardize the pregnant woman’ health, or when the pregnant woman or her spouse has one of a limited number of designated hereditary disorders or communicable diseases.

Women who are married must have their spouse’s permission to obtain an abortion. Any abortion, regardless of motivation or context, is prohibited after 24 weeks of pregnancy. A woman who gets an abortion is subject to up to one year of imprisonment or fines up to 2 million won, and healthcare workers who provide abortions can face up to two years in prison.

In spite of these restrictions, abortion is widely available in South Korea, and prosecutions for abortion arerare. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.

When abortion is illegal, the risks increase for women. South Korea’s punitive laws on abortion mean that manyabortions performed in the country take place illegally. This forces women and girls who seek abortions into a legal no man’s land where abortion care is unregulated, clandestine, and riskier than if it were legal.

According to 2008 data, an estimated13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide are due to unsafe abortion, and the World Health Organization estimates that 47,000women die from unsafe abortions each year. Restrictive abortion policies are associated with higher numbers of unsafe abortions.

In South Korea, the generally high quality of medical services may mitigate that risk. But the fact remains that neither women, nor their doctors, should have to sneak around. Under international human rights law, which South Korea has pledged to uphold, denying a woman access to abortion can constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and violate a range of other human rights.

The South Korea government’s recent interest in restricting abortion may be linked to the country’s falling birthrate, which are far below the level necessary to sustain current population levels, and are contributing to the country’s rapidly aging population. But cracking down further on abortion is neither a practical nor a legal approach to increasing the birth rate.

Research around the world shows that when governments restrict abortion, women still have abortions — they just have more dangerous ones. According to a UN report, the average unsafe abortion rate was more than four times greater in countries with restrictive abortion policies in 2011 than in countries with liberal abortion policies.

If the government’s main goal is to increase the birthrate, there are many steps to make it easier for people to decide to have children, or to have more children. Enhanced access to pre-natal and obstetric care, generous parental leave for both women and men, measures to ensure equality and lack of stigma for single and unmarried parents and their children, free or subsidized child care, and improved access to high quality free education for children are just a few strategies that might encourage increases in the birth rate. The government has taken smallsteps in this direction, but could do much more.

If the government disapproves of the number of abortions being performed, there are effective ways to address that too, which do not involve violating women’s right to make their own reproductive choices. There will always be situations in which women and girls need access to abortions, but the number of abortions required can be reduced by providing good sexuality education and easy access to family planning information and services, including free contraceptive supplies, for everyone, including adolescents.

It’s time for South Korea to fully respect women’s rights. Pregnant women and girls need to be able to make decisions about abortion, without the threat of criminal penalties. The South Korean government can and should design a set of measures to improve access to family planning services and to make life easier for those who choose to have children.

But it shouldn’t make its punitive abortion law even worse.

By Heather Barr
Heather Barr is a senior researcher on women’s rights with Human Rights Watch.

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=217614

Source: The Korea Times

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Head Mufti of Russia and the Children’s Ombudswoman support the removal of abortions from Russia’s mandatory health insurance, but officials and doctors say that a ban will only move the procedure underground.

On Sept. 27, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill signed “The citizen’s petition for banning abortion.” Promoted by conservative Orthodox activists, the petition supports the position that life begins at conception and reads in part: “We, citizens of the Russian Federation, speak in favor of terminating the practice of legally killing infants before birth.”

The move by the patriarch has once again brought the controversial topic of abortion to the fore in Russian society.

It would be hard to call the patriarch’s support of the petition unexpected. Like many branches of Christianity, including the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church considers abortion murder.

In his Twitter account, journalist Ivan Davydov responded (in Russian) ironically to bloggers who were surprised or outraged by Kirill’s words:

“Judging by the public’s reaction, it seems that many expected the patriarch to speak in favor of a sexual revolution. He was really disappointing.”

A ban, but not a ban

Immediately after the patriarch’s signature on the petition was announced, his press secretary, Alexander Volkov, made a statement tempering the move.

“This petition is not about a ban, but about removing abortions from the mandatory health insurance system,” Volkov said, adding that Kirill “signed the petition in order to attract society’s attention to the issue.”

Vladimir Legoida, head of the Synodal Department for Church-Society Relations and the Mass Media, clarified the Orthodox Church’s position to the TASS news agency: “The most important demand today is to have abortions removed from the mandatory health insurance system so that people who do not support abortions do not have to pay for them out of their pocket,” Legoida said.

Legoida also went a step further, noting that he hopes a future ban on state-funded abortions will become the first step towards a society completely free of abortions.

Allies against abortion

On the subject of abortion, Russia’s official Christian and Muslim representatives agree. Chief Mufti of Russia Talgat Tadjuddin expressed his support for Kirill’s position, calling abortion “infanticide.”

New Children’s Rights Ombudswoman Anna Kuznetsova also added her voice to those calling for a ban. “The entire civilized world has long been speaking against the phenomenon of abortion; we support this position,” Kuznetsova said, noting the importance and effectiveness of state policy in preventing abortions. According to Kuznetsova, last year 67,000 women were dissuaded from taking this step.

A dangerous move for women

The Russian Health Ministry, however, does not support either banning abortion altogether or removing it from the list of procedures covered under the mandatory health insurance system. Health Minister Veronica Skvortsova told radio station Gorvorit Moskvi (Moscow Speaking) that the introduction of limits on abortions could be dangerous for women.

“There are certain nuances that are related to the possibility of abortions becoming clandestine, especially for people with low incomes, for minors,” said Skvortsova. According to her, the Health Ministry’s objective is to prevent an increase in infant mortality and maternal deaths, which could appear if such restrictions are introduced.

Other critics of a ban on abortion echo Skvortsova’s statement that restricting the procedure will not end it, but only drive it underground, making abortions more dangerous for women.

Victor Radzinsky, president of the Russian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that past attempts to ban abortions did not result in an end to the procedure. “In the Soviet Union abortions were banned between 1936 and 1955. People died from sepsis,” Radzinsky said.

http://rbth.com/politics_and_society/politics/2016/09/29/could-russia-ban-abortions_634405

Source: RBTH