Looking at Guam’s abortion laws

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(Photo: PDN file)

A key question for us on Guam is whether our current abortion laws meet the terms and conditions set down by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases such as Roe v. Wade and the recent decision of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

My guess is that they do, but the road to compliance has been bumpy, to say the least.

In 1978, the Guam Legislature enacted a criminal law that regulated abortions. The apparent goal was to bring Guam’s abortion laws into compliance with the Roe v. Wade decision.  Tracking the Supreme Court’s trimester approach to regulating abortions, the law provided that an abortion on Guam could be performed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.  Between the 14th and 26th weeks, an abortion was permitted if the unborn child faced a “grave physical or mental defect,” or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. The law also permitted an abortion at any time during the pregnancy if there was substantial risk to the mother’s health.

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Source: Pacific Daily News


Australia: Doctors call for country GPs to be ‘one-stop shop’ abortion providers

Posted Sun 28 Aug 2016, 3:57pm

By James Purtill, ABC News

Ten years since the medical abortion drug RU486 was made available in Australia, and three years since it was listed with other taxpayer subsidised drugs, the legacy of the abortion taboo remains.

It's estimated around one-in-four pregnancies in Australia, or about 80,000 per year, end in abortion - the vast majority of them surgical procedures.

Access to medical abortions - the pill kind - is limited by the fact relatively few GPs offer the service, and some young women, particularly in regional areas, are still not even aware they may take a pill to abort an early-stage pregnancy, instead of going through surgery.

Complementary studies of access to medical abortions in Victoria paint a picture of small town GPs wary of stigma, and of women cobbling together information about their options through google search and the recommendations of friends and family.

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Source: ABC News


Ireland: Abortion meeting cancelled because GAA ‘has to stay neutral’ – club boss

Parnell GAA club house Picture:Arthur Carron/Collins

Luke Byrne

Published 27/08/2016 | 07:07

A Dublin GAA club cancelled a clubhouse booking to host a meeting on the eighth amendment because the sports organisation has to remain "neutral", according to its chairman.

But organisers have claimed that Parnell's GAA club in Coolock were advised of the topic of the meeting nearly one month in advance.

The club informed the People Before Profit (PBP) party it could not use the space on Thursday, less than five hours before the meeting was due to begin.

Chairman of the club ,Brendan O Connalain, said the decision was made because the GAA could not be seen to promote either side in a possible abortion referendum.

But John Lyons, a councillor who represents PBP in the constituency, said the club was told exactly what the meeting was about three-and-a-half weeks ago.

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Source: The Independent


Woman turned down for abortion in Irish hospital after review

A woman who wanted to have an abortion performed in an Irish hospital was refused the termination last year after taking her case to a review panel. (Stock image)

Eilish O'Regan
Published 27/08/2016, The Independent

A woman who wanted to have an abortion performed in an Irish hospital was refused the termination last year after taking her case to a review panel, the Irish Independent has learned.

The circumstances of the woman, whose details have not been released, were deemed to be outside the legal scope of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act of 2013.

She was initially refused the abortion and went on to avail of her right to a review of the decision.

This review is conducted before a panel of medical practitioners. These are drawn from a group of doctors who have volunteered to sit on the panels.

In cases where there is a risk of suicide, there must be two psychiatrists on the review panel.

The doctors who are reviewing the case must not have been involved in the original decision to refuse the termination.

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Source: The INdependent


Ireland: FactCheck: What do HSE guidelines actually say about the effects of abortion?

The Pro Life Campaign’s Sinead Slattery made a bold claim on Tonight With Alison O’Connor this week. Does it hold up?

The Journal, Ireland
Fri 7:35 PM 22,517 Views 137 Comments

On Tuesday, TV3′s Tonight With Alison O’Connor hosted a debate on the issue, during which the Pro Life Campaign’s Sinead Slattery made an interesting claim.

According to her, the HSE’s recently published maternal bereavement guidelines had said that “abortion actually causes more distress” than carrying a pregnancy to term.

Is that actually what they say?

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Source: The Journal


Africa: Abortion sparks heated debate at Ticad side event

Zambian economist Highvie Hamdudu confers with his Cameroonian counterpart Marie Rose Nguini Effa during a discussion on reproductive health for the youth in Africa at a Ticad side event in Nairobi on August 26, 2016. PHOTO | AGGREY MUTAMBO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

Health PS Nicholas Muraguri argued the debate on legalising abortion should be turned into a campaign to prevent teenage pregnancies.

Friday August 26 2016, The Daily Nation

By AGGREY MUTAMBO

Government health officials clashed on Friday with representatives of a global reproductive health campaigner over the approach to be taken on abortion policy.

At event to discuss reproductive health in Africa, Health Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri argued the debate on legalising abortion should instead be turned into a campaign to prevent teenage pregnancies.

“We remain committed as a country to ensure that people are able to access all the services they need and the debate about abortion can continue.

"But more important, we know that abortion is a reflection of unwanted pregnancies,” he said during the discussion at a side meeting to the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (Ticad) in Nairobi.

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Source: The Daily Nation, Kenya


India: Abortion is a difficult, personal choice, not a tricky debate

http://www.c2cjournal.ca/2013/01/aruna-papp-and-why-women-in-india-are-chattel/ (Aruna Papp)

FEATURE: Abortion is a difficult, personal choice, not a tricky debate: India
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26 August 2016

OPINION: Abortion is a tricky debate, by K Kannan

On 3 August, a Campaign member from CommonHealth in India wrote to say that a very disturbing article had appeared in The Hindu about women's right to abortion having to be balanced against the right to life of the fetus. The article, entitled "A tricky debate on abortion", was by K Kannan, former Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the same court that in 2015, rejected the plea of the father of a 14-year-old rape survivor to allow termination of her 24-week pregnancy (see Campaign newsletter, 3 August).  The article expresses opposition to extending the legal time limit for abortion from 20 to 24 weeks for certain grounds. The author bases his arguments on his religious views, his interpretation of fetal rights, disagreement with allowing women's autonomy to decide, and his views on disability in relation to abortion.

The Hindu illustrated the article, as many conservative news sites unfortunately do, with a photograph of a very pregnant woman's belly, probably as much as 8 months pregnant, minus her face, thus contributing to two common, but mistaken, beliefs – first, that abortions take place that late in pregnancy and second, that a fetus has an independent existence from the woman who is carrying it.

Although we do not reprint the article here, it is well worth reading in full as it is unusually complex for an anti-abortion argument, requiring an equally complex response. Read it here.

The article was followed by 29 comments. Here is perhaps the most interesting one: "I am shocked to hear a lawyer argue for laws based on religion in a country that is struggling to get a uniform civil code." (Vijayalakshmi Fernandes) Two other respondents mentioned the death of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian dentist who was living in Ireland, who was left to die from sepsis in a Catholic hospital that refused to terminate the pregnancy following an inevitable miscarriage at 17 weeks of pregnancy.

RESPONSE: Abortion is a difficult, personal choice, not a tricky debate

The response from CommonHealth and others was published by The Hindu on 11 August 2016. The Hindu entitled it "A question of rights" while its authors entitled it "Abortion is a difficult, personal choice, not a tricky debate". The news site illustrated this article with a transparent pregnant belly, with only the outline showing, containing a fully-formed cartoon baby with an enlarged head, which is seated, with its feet crossed, its elbow propped on its knee and its fist propping up its head, eyes closed, frowning. A more inappropriate image would be hard to imagine.

Here is their response in full:

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Source: International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion


Ireland: In a country where no one wants to talk about abortion, these women live-tweeted it

Forced 2 leave Ireland, @EndaKennyTD waiting room,waiting for our loved ones #twowomentravel 8:59 AM - 20 Aug 2016

August 25, 2016 · 12:00 PM EDT
By Shondiin Silversmith

It is illegal for women to get an abortion in Ireland unless the pregnancy directly threatens her life.

With no other options, two women live-tweeted as they traveled to the United Kingdom for the procedure.

@TwoWomenTravel live-tweeted from Friday to Sunday. The description of the Twitter account states “Two Women, one procedure, 48 hours away from home.”

The women kept their identities private, and the account of the trip could not be independently confirmed.

Many of the tweets sent out from that account included Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Twitter handle @EndaKennyTD as well as the hashtag #twowomentravel.

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Source: PRI.org


Sri Lanka: Abortion in hot seat, again

August 25, 2016, 9:54 pm
The Island

The fact that abortion, or properly speaking "induced abortion" according to medical parlance, is always a contentious issue across the world goes without saying. That is what to be expected in a multiethnic, multi-religious, multicultural society like ours’, where the views and opinions on matters such as these could be diverse as chalk and cheese. Further, an assortment of concerns ranging from moral, medical, religious and legal to fetal and women’s rights and state’s authority impinge on the matter, thus making abortion one of the most intricate issues of our time. Needless to say, thus arriving at an all embracing consensus on the issue is a near impossibility, if not unrealistic. Naturally, there will be parties on either side of the divide, well armed with sound theoretical and philosophical ordnances, ready to fight tooth and nail to see that their viewpoint prevails at the end of the day. That could be what we are heading toward in the near future with regard to "abortion", which is on the verge of reemergence (after a lapse of two decades).

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Source: The Island


Brazilian attorneys demand abortion rights for women infected with Zika

BMJ 2016; 354 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i4657
(Published 25 August 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;354:i4657

Cláudia Collucci

A public attorneys’ association has asked Brazil’s Supreme Court to allow women who have contracted the Zika virus and are in a state of “great mental suffering” to have access to abortions.

Under Brazilian law, abortion is permitted only in cases of rape, when there is a threat to the mother’s life, or if the fetus has anencephaly.

The petition, which was delivered on 24 August, proposes that the mental suffering of pregnant women seeking abortions must be verified by medical and psychological reports. “[Abortion] would only occur in very exceptional cases,” said Joaquim Neto, president of the National Association of Public Defenders.

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Source: British Medical Journal