Netherlands – There Are No Stigma-Free Abortions, Even in ‘Progressive’ Countries

There are so many things you’d never know about abortions unless you go through one.

By Maud Droste, Illustrated By Djanlissa Pringels
December 8, 2023

I’m in utter disbelief, staring down at a positive result on a drugstore pregnancy test. It’s March 2020. My relationship had just ended two days before, I’d just found out my roommate and I would be evicted and, thanks to a massive bout of procrastination, I had about a month left to finish my bachelor’s thesis.

Getting pregnant was the last of a long list of life-changing events I hadn’t seen coming. My roommate, however, had. I’d been tired for weeks, the only food I craved was mango – which I inevitably threw up after eating – and I felt ambivalent about absolutely everything. “I think you should probably take a test,” she said.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5gay7/no-stigma-free-abortions

08.12.2023

Opinion

Abortion Buddies programme

abortion stigma

European Abortion Policies Atlas

Eva de Goeij

five-day reflection period

Humanistisch Verbond

mandatory waiting period

Poland’s radical antiabortion law didn’t have the intended effect

By Lee Hockstader, Washington Post
November 29, 2023

WARSAW — A right-wing government in Poland, in league with the Catholic Church and legitimately worried about plummeting birthrates, pushed for the toughest abortion law of any major European country three years ago. The results are now in, providing a telling lesson in unintended consequences.

Across broad swaths of Europe that are graying, antiabortion politicians should think twice if they believe tighter abortion restrictions will help reverse population decline.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/poland-abortion-ban-birth-fertility/ (Or https://wapo.st/3Gjq7fU)

29.11.2023

Law and Justice party

Ken Paxton’s latest Texas abortion argument is a breathtaking abdication

If Texans lose their children, their fertility, or even their lives, it’s simply not Texas’ problem.

Nov. 29, 2023
By Andrea Grimes, journalist and activist

“There’s gonna be some hard calls.” That’s how a lawyer with the Texas Attorney General’s office callously shrugged off the question of how, and indeed whether, doctors are allowed to save the lives of pregnant women during a hearing at the state Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s hearing put the state’s disregard for its own responsibility to protect and defend “life” in devastating relief.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/texas-abortion-ban-supreme-court-ken-paxton-rcna127147

UK – Parliament must vote to decriminalise abortion

Stella Creasy MP
27 November, 2023

When Roe v Wade was repealed in America last year, many voices in the UK were quick to dismiss concerns that restrictions on a woman’s basic right to choose could ever happen here, and assumed that our right to access abortion services was secure and reflected the settled will of the people.

At the same time, multiple women were awaiting trial, under a law older than the nation of Germany, for the offence of having an abortion. In contrast to Northern Ireland, abortion in England and Wales remains a criminal offence, with only a few closely defined circumstances in which people are exempt from prosecution.

Continued: https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/parliament-vote-decriminalise-abortion

27.11.2023

Opinion

decriminalisation of abortion

Offences Against the Person Act

Argentina’s new leader is a snake-oil salesman with extreme views on abortion, gay rights and more. I fear for my country

After his landslide victory in the presidential election, Javier Milei is threatening to undo 40 years of democracy in Argentina

Uki Goñi
Tue 21 Nov 2023

Anti-woke libertarian Javier Milei’s landslide win in Argentina’s presidential election poses not only a worrying question for my country’s fragile 40-year-old democracy, but could also embolden other extreme libertarians in the US and Europe in their own anti-woke wars.

Milei is often described as an outsider – but his revolutionary persona has been carefully crafted by one of the country’s richest men. Argentinian billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian plugged the wild-haired economist relentlessly on his A24 media network as an antidote to those he views as the dominant “political caste”. Milei has accused the Peronist establishment of being “socialist” because they had legalised gay marriage and abortion, put on trial and sentenced the perpetrators of Argentina’s genocidal 1976-83 dictatorship and threatened to impose new taxes on wealth.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/21/argentina-new-leader-extreme-abortion-gay-rights-javier-milei

21.11.2023

Malta – We aid and abet abortion

People call the free Abortion Doula Service because they know they will receive abortion advice according to best practice

Christopher Barbara, Natalie Psaila and Isabel Stabile
Nov 20, 2023

We refer to ‘Inciting murder of the unborn” (October 6) in which senior colleagues call for the police to investigate us for providing information and support to those persons in Malta who seek an abortion. This is preposterous.

We have absolutely no qualms letting people know exactly how to order pills online, how to take them and what complications are possible as well as the precautions they need to take to avoid them. We do this because we are medical professionals and are obliged to provide every support possible to any person that needs our help.

Continued: https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/we-aid-abet-abortion.1067760

Abortion Wins Again. Now What? Democrats can’t coast on the issue’s popularity.

Rebecca Traister
Nov 17, 2023

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, Democrats have pulled off unlikely victories — in red states and blue states; in oddly timed off-year contests; in places where inflation is high and their unpopular president is especially disliked — because of abortion. They’ve won state-supreme-court seats, legislative majorities, gubernatorial races, and an unbroken string of referendum votes on the issue. Most recently, on Election Day this year, voters approved a state constitutional protection of abortion in Ohio, rejected Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s promise of a 15-week abortion ban, reelected pro-choice Democratic governor Andy Beshear in Kentucky, and chose a justice who vowed to protect abortion rights for Pennsylvania’s supreme court.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2023/11/joe-biden-abortion-rights-democrats-2024-election.html

17.11.2023

Next for the GOP on Abortion: Minority Rule

Republicans keep losing elections because they want to restrict reproductive freedom. That doesn’t mean they will stop.

David Corn, Mother Jones
Nov 8, 2023

Once again, American voters in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision that last year nullified a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion have told the Republican Party what they think of its crusade to restrict reproductive freedom: Get lost.

On Tuesday, abortion won. In Ohio, 57 percent of the Buckeyes who went to the polls, in an election that saw supercharged turnout, supported a measure to amend the state constitution to guarantee individuals the “right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions.”

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/minority-rule-gop-republicans-abortion-rick-santorum/

08.11.2023

Ohio, Kentucky show abortion rights matter – and Biden might not be such a drag for Dems

It's clear Americans continue to not like having their rights taken away, and that spells serious trouble for the Republican Party.

Rex Huppke, USA TODAY
Nov 8, 2023

Several political narratives died Tuesday night at the hands of voters, marking a nontragic and fully deserved end to days of nervous liberal-pundit blah-blah.

First, in Ohio, voters turned out and overwhelming approved a ballot measure that will enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. There had been considerable brow-furrowing in Democratic circles about whether the issue of reproductive rights would remain as powerful a vote motivator as it was in previous elections held since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2023/11/07/election-abortion-ohio-issue-1-kentucky-virginia-vote-democrat/71495769007/

08.11.2023

Opinion

public support for abortion

USA – The right-wing’s opposition to abortion is not about saving or protecting women lives

by Jill Filipovic
November 1, 2023

A year and a half after Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped the constitutional right to abortion from American women, the Republican Party has been floundering.

It turns out that the American public is broadly pro-choice, according to a CNN poll from August, and many voters are horrified by the predictable results of abortion bans: child rape victims unable to end dangerous pregnancies in their home states, women nearly dying of treatable pregnancy complications, mothers with much-wanted but tragically doomed pregnancies being denied the ability to choose how those pregnancies end.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/01/opinions/over-the-counter-birth-control-gop-filipovic/index.html

01.11.2023