October 31, 2017

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

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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’

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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

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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.?

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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

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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

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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: , , |
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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

 

October 27, 2017

Republicans Are Trying to Ban Abortion After 6 Weeks of Pregnancy

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
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It’s the latest in a series of attempts to restrict abortion access.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives voted to ban abortion after 20 weeks. Now, the GOP is officially aiming to ban abortions considerably earlier — at six weeks, before many women even realize they’re pregnant.

Back in January, the GOP introduced a bill banning abortion “in cases where a fetal heartbeat is detectable.” Last night, news broke that next Wednesday, November 1, a judiciary committee will hold a hearing to discuss the bill, entitled H.R. 490: Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017. The proposed bill, which is sponsored by Rep. Steve King of Iowa, would make it a federal crime to knowingly perform abortions “without 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.”

“Since Roe v. Wade was unconstitutionally decided in 1973, nearly 60 million innocent babies’ lives have been ended by the abortion industry, all with a rubber stamp by the federal government,” King said in a press release in January. “If a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected.”

The only exception to the bill is if a woman has a physical — but, notably, “not psychological or emotional” — condition or illness that makes the pregnancy life-threatening for her; otherwise, physicians who perform the procedure could face up to five years in prison, a fine, or both.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because a similar bill in Ohio led to an uproar before Governor John Kasich vetoed it. The same could happen H.R. 490, which as Refinery29highlights, likely won’t pass in the House and the Senate — but it’s clear that this is a battle that’s far from over.

In a statement emailed to Teen Vogue, NARAL Pro-Choice America senior vice president Sasha Bruce said, “the GOP’s crazy obsession with banning all abortions in this country knows no end, no boundary, and no common sense.

“Americans are clear: they want their elected officials addressing the crises our country faces instead of wasting time and taxpayer dollars attempting to ban abortion,” Bruce said. “The majority of Americans stand on the side of abortion access, and seven in 10 Americans believe abortion should remain legal and accessible. That’s not just a majority, that’s consensus, and we will keep mobilizing and organizing to ensure that all women can make decisions about their lives, bodies, and futures.”

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/six-week-abortion-ban

 

October 27, 2017

Federal Judge Rules Alabama’s Anti-Abortion Laws Are “Unconstitutional” & Saved 2 Clinics From Shutting Down

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Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Reproductive rights advocates had a reason to celebrate on Thursday when a federal judge blocked two abortion restrictions in Alabama. One prevented clinics from operating abortions within 2,000 feet from public schools, signed into law after abortion opponents claimed a Huntsville abortion clinic and demonstrations there disrupted students attending nearby schools. The other law banned dilation and evacuation, a procedure commonly used to terminate pregnancies in the second trimester.

Former Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley signed the two laws in May 2016. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson declared both laws were “unconstitutional” and would place “undue burden on a woman’s ability to choose an abortion.”

Thompson wrote in his decision that there was no evidence that the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives concerned the schools’ students or parents. He also wrote that the closure or relocation of the that clinic, located in Huntsville, would neither minimize disruption nor hinder a parent’s right to control their children’s exposure to the subject of abortion. The Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives sits near an elementary school and across the street from a magnet school. Local Rev. James Henderson and other anti-abortion protesters have clashed with patients and escorts coming in and out of the clinic.

Thompson also struck down the law banning a safe and common procedure for second trimester abortions. Anti-abortion activists have dubbed the dilation and evacuation method with the non-medical term “dismemberment abortion.” The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement opposing such bans that “represent legislative interference at its worst: doctors will be forced, by ill-advised, unscientifically motivated policy, to provide lesser care to patients.”

Had Thompson ruled in favor of the laws, Alabama would have to close two abortion clinics, the one in Huntsville and one in Tuscaloosa, leaving only three remaining in the state. Doctors perform 72 percent of the state’s abortions at the two clinics that were on the chopping block. The limited options would disproportionately affect low-income women who would have to drive further away or out of state to get abortions, Thompson wrote.

Thompson’s decision comes just a few months after a federal judge struck down a previous abortion restriction in the state as unconstitutional. Alabama law requires that a minor either have parental consent for an abortion or a court order to bypass parental consent. Usually a judge and the minor’s lawyer is involved in the legal process, where the bypass court determines if the minor is mature and well-informed enough to make a decision.

Judge Susan Walker struck down 2014 amendments to that law that gave the court power to appoint a legal representative for the fetus. The amendments also required a district attorney to be involved, and permitted the abortion seeker’s parents or guardians at the hearing. All involved parties, including the fetus’ representative ad litem, would be allowed to call witnesses to testify for or against the minor’s choice.

Reproductive rights advocates and the judge argued that adding more people to the process violated the minor’s privacy. “The bypass court is hardly the appropriate setting for such counseling, in any event; it is neither a physician’s office, nor a classroom, nor any other such place of instruction or guidance,” Walker wrote.

Alabama is not the only state dealing with attempts to chip away at Roe v. Wade. Legislation in Texas — which used to have more than 40 abortion clinics — set up tight measures that eventually forced several clinics to shut down. By the time the restrictions reached the Supreme Court, where they were ultimately struck down, Texas had only 19 abortion clinics.

As of August 2017, seven states have only one abortion clinic: Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming. And while conservative states have garnered the most attention in such cases, abortion clinics are disappearing in liberal states as well.

https://www.bustle.com/p/federal-judge-rules-alabamas-anti-abortion-laws-are-unconstitutional-saved-2-clinics-from-shutting-down-3010144?utm_source=nar.al&utm_medium=urlshortener&utm_campaign=FB

 

October 26, 2017

Massachusetts Fake Clinic Unveils New Way to Trick Those Seeking Abortion Care

Posted by laurasmith20200 under Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
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“Everything that we provide is on our website, so there will be no comment,” Howard said, before hanging up on Rewire.

It’s only deep in the “About” section that the center acknowledges it does “not offer, recommend or refer for abortions or abortifacients.”
 Lauryn Gutierrez / Rewire

Attleboro Women’s Health Center in Massachusetts, like many abortion clinics,has a website offering information about the steps involved in surgical and medication abortion care, price estimates, reassuring imagery of personnel in white coats, and appointments “to discuss the abortion methods that may be available to you.”

There’s only one hitch.

This center doesn’t offer abortion—or even accurate information about the procedure. Attleboro Women’s Health Center is a crisis pregnancy center, or fake clinic, whose mission is to deter patients from abortion care. The center’s website is registered to Darlene Howard, executive director of Abundant Hope Pregnancy Resource Center, which is a self-described “Christian pro-life ministry.” The two organizations share an address.

Melissa Simas, who lives in the area, told Rewire that she noticed within the past week that the center had installed a green awning with the words “Attleboro Women’s Health Center.”

The fake clinic is about half a mile from Four Women Health Services, an abortion clinic. (Disclosure: This Rewire reporter worked at Four Women several years ago.) While it’s not unusual for anti-choice centers to try to lure abortion clinic patients by offering the false impression that they provide abortion care, the extent of this center’s efforts shocked pro-choice advocates.

“It’s one of the most egregious cases of deceptive rebranding of a CPC I can personally remember seeing in over a decade of advocating for reproductive freedom,” Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, told Rewire, after reviewing the website.

The site, which has been active for months, was recently changed to add tabs on the abortion pill and surgical abortion. It features a detailed breakdown of the procedures for varying gestational ages; unscientific terms like “dismember” and “unborn baby” may alert discerning readers that this is biased information. When a Rewire reporter registered for an appointment and inquired by email about the center’s services, a representative promised the “initial appointment will include a free pregnancy test and an abortion consultation to discuss which methods may be available to you based on your individual circumstances.”

It’s only deep in the “About” section that the center acknowledges it does “not offer, recommend or refer for abortions or abortifacients.”

“Everything that we provide is on our website, so there will be no comment,” Howard said, before hanging up on Rewire.

The website features unsubstantiated claims about the purported psychological risks of abortion—contradicting research that shows abortion does not damage mental health—and a phone number for so-called abortion reversal, a misleading and unproven protocol promoted by anti-choice activists.

Abundant Hope is listed as an affiliate of Heartbeat International, which describes itself as the largest network of crisis pregnancy centers in the world, and instructs these centers to conceal their true intentions by scrapping religious language, for example. (Someone who answered the phone at Attleboro Women’s Health Center acknowledged it is under the same “umbrella” as Abundant Hope.) Attleboro Women’s Health Center’s website claims it “was founded to empower women to make informed decisions about an unplanned pregnancy that support their privacy, dignity and self-respect.”

That’s a near-verbatim repetition of the stated mission of the abortion clinic nearby: “to empower women to make informed decisions that support their privacy, dignity and self-respect.”

While it has relatively few restrictions on abortion care, Massachusetts allows the sale of “Choose Life” license plates and donates a portion of the proceeds to anti-choice organizations—one of 15 states to do so. Crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics in the state by more than three to one, with 30 operating across the state, according to a 2011 NARAL report.

“I think it’s wrong for us to fall into the trap of thinking, ‘Well, we’re in a state historically friendly to women’s rights,’ particularly in this climate where we have anti-choice forces emboldened by our leadership on the federal level,” said Holder of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts.

Indeed, these anti-choice fake clinics have found key allies in the Trump administration.

The family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has funneled money to crisis pregnancy centers, including one in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that, like the one in Attleboro, lists detailed information about abortion procedures and touts abortion reversal on its website. Vice President Mike Pence divertedmillions intended for needy families to fake clinics while he was Indiana governor. And a Rewire reviewfound the Trump administration has already awarded such clinics millions in taxpayer dollars.

“The deceptive and false things they’re saying [on the Attleboro website] about the harms of abortion are part of this general narrative that has taken hold within many areas in the federal government,” Kelli Garcia, director of reproductive justice initiatives at the National Women’s Law Center, told Rewire.

While a number of states have used public dollars to support fake clinics, Hawaii was the most recent state to attempt to crack down on their deceptive tactics, following California. Both states have faced legal challenges from anti-choice groups over these regulations, as have cities like Baltimore, which defended its truth-in-advertising ordinance in court this week.

Rewire contacted the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to ask if the Attleboro clinic’s behavior might constitute fraud or other illegal behavior.

“Every woman has a right to make decisions about her own reproductive health care without being subjected to intimidation or harassment,” Emalie Gainey, a spokesperson for Healey, said in an emailed statement. Following a Rewire report last year, Healey announced a settlement agreement to prohibit a Boston-based firm hired by anti-choice groups from targeting “abortion-minded women” in Massachusetts with digital propaganda while they visit abortion clinics.

Meanwhile, grassroots groups are taking action. The Expose Fake Clinics campaign, which involves dozens of organizations, including Lady Parts Justice, encourages people to submit and “like” accurate reviews on platforms like Yelp and Google to expose the ideological goals of fake clinics.

“Our whole thing is, you should be up front,” Lizz Winstead, founder of Lady Parts Justice, told Rewire. “If you are a Christian-based organization that would like to encourage people who are pregnant to have a baby, then you should say that’s who you are. But the fact that you don’t leads me to believe that you can’t get people in your doors by saying that about yourself.”

https://rewire.news/article/2017/10/24/massachusetts-fake-clinic-unveils-new-way-trick-seeking-abortion-care/

 

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