Gibraltar votes to ease tough abortion laws

June 24, 2021

Gibraltar voted to relax its tough anti-abortion laws in a referendum on Thursday.

The tiny British territory has some of the harshest abortion laws in Europe - the penalty for breaching the law is life imprisonment.

Voters backed relaxing the rules to allow abortions where a woman's mental or physical health is at risk or when foetuses have fatal physical defects.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57606228


Gibraltar votes on whether to ease its strict abortion law

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted Jun 24, 2021

GIBRALTAR (AP) — Gibraltar was holding a referendum Thursday on whether to introduce exceptions to the British territory’s ban on abortion.

Abortion is illegal in Gibraltar, unless it is needed to save the mother’s life. Abortion is legally classified as “child destruction” and is punishable by up to life in prison. It is one of Europe’s most restrictive laws on pregnancy termination.

Continued: https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/06/24/gibraltar-votes-on-whether-to-ease-its-strict-abortion-law/


Jamaica – No referendum on abortion

WE-Change
Jamaica
Tuesday | February 9, 2021

We have been
here before. We were here in 1975 when Health Minister Kenneth McNeill, after
his recognition of the high mortality rate of Jamaican mothers and the increase
in complications as a result of unsafe abortion practices, placed the need for
amendments to the 1865 Act to allow for abortions in special circumstances
(cases on incest, statutory rape, and carnal abuse).

We were here in 2007, when Minister Horace Dalley commissioned the Abortion
Policy Review Group to engage research about the landscape of abortion in
Jamaica and they presented a document with recommendations on a potential way
forward. We were here in 2018 and 2019, when MP Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn put forth
a motion to repeal the sections of the Offences Against the Person Act that
makes abortions illegal and replace it with civil law, Termination of Pregnancy
Act.

Continued: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/letters/20210209/letter-day-no-referendum-abortion


Mexico – AMLO repeats belief that citizens should decide abortion issue

The president was responding to Argentina's decision to decriminalize

Published on Monday, January 4, 2021

President López Obrador has once again proposed holding a citizens’ consultation to decide whether abortion should be legalized in Mexico, stating that “the democratic method” is the best way to resolve controversial issues.

Speaking after Argentina’s Senate legalized
elective abortion on the penultimate day of 2020, López Obrador said the
people, not the government or the Catholic Church, must decide whether women
should have the right to terminate a pregnancy.

Continued: https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-repeats-belief-that-citizens-should-decide-abortion-issue/


Women should decide whether to legalize abortion, Mexican president says

DECEMBER 31, 2020
By Reuters Staff

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico’s president said on Thursday that women should decide whether the country should legalize abortion, but he declined to take a position on the issue, which is still opposed by many Mexicans.

One day after the Argentine Senate voted to make abortion legal, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was asked during a news conference whether he thought his country should follow suit.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-abortion-idUSKBN2951GI


Abortion referendum would have no legal impact – gov’t spokesman

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

A referendum on the right to abortion would not have any legal implications, a spokesman for the Polish government said on Tuesday.

Speaking to TVP1, a public television channel, Piotr Mueller said that a "classic referendum," as described in the constitution, "would not have any binding force because it would not change the constitution."

Continued: https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/abortion-referendum-would-have-no-legal-impact---govt-spokesman-17838


’Let down’: calls for Gibraltar’s Covid-delayed abortion vote to take place

Pro-choice activists demand decriminalisation referendum happen despite conservative opposition

Darcy Jimenez
Tue 29 Sep 2020

Earlier this year, pro-choice activists in Gibraltar were hopeful that their territory’s abortion laws – the harshest in Europe – could soon be overturned.

Terminations are banned in the tiny British territory, even in the cases of rape, incest, or foetal abnormality where the foetus will not survive. Abortions are punishable by life imprisonment, except when the woman’s life is in danger.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/29/the-gibraltarians-demanding-covid-delayed-abortion-vote-takes-place


Malta looks to Ireland in campaign for legal abortion

Malta looks to Ireland in campaign for legal abortion

Monday, 25 May 2020
By Ailbhe Conneely, Social Affairs & Religion Correspondent

The second anniversary of the referendum on the 8th amendment has arrived, and has barely made a dent in the news coverage due to Covid-19.

Arguably, the appetite for the story is no longer there, but it is a topic that will never be far from the headlines.

Legislation underpinning the current service will be reviewed next year, for example.

Continued: https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/0525/1141515-abortion/


Ireland – Amy Dunne on her lonely, harrowing abortion fight: ‘I was told I would be done for murder’

Amy Dunne on her lonely, harrowing abortion fight: 'I was told I would be done for murder'
At 17, Dunne was pregnant with a baby who had a fatal abnormality. She was given a pseudonym and became the focus of a landmark Irish legal case – but now she is reclaiming her story

Rory Carroll
Thu 5 Dec 2019

The week Amy Dunne turned 17, she was several months pregnant and made two discoveries – one devastating and the other incomprehensible. A hospital scan showed something badly wrong in her womb. The foetus had anencephaly, a fatal abnormality. Doctors said the baby, a girl, would die soon after birth.

Although she was living in foster care and still a child herself, Dunne had looked forward to becoming a mother and building a new life with her boyfriend. Distraught, she shared the news with her social workers and said she needed to travel to Britain from Ireland for an abortion. That’s when Dunne discovered something badly wrong in her country.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/05/amy-dunne-miss-d-abortion-told-would-be-done-for


N. Ireland – How We Won the Right to Choose

How We Won the Right to Choose

By Maev McDaid and Brian Christopher
10.31.2019

Coming hot on the heels of Dublin’s repeal of anti-abortion laws, decriminalization in the North is a decisive victory for Irish feminists. The church and the state are losing their control over our bodies — but we still need to make abortion legal, safe, and free.

October 22 marked a decisive victory in the North of Ireland, as abortion was finally decriminalized. This news will surely have passed many people by — after all, in national as in international media, the North is almost only ever “represented” by the bigots in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). But last week, this stridently anti-choice party was finally overruled by the Westminster parliament. Its move to decriminalize abortion in the North came fifty years after a similar step was taken on the British mainland. Yet this success especially owes to decades of heroic struggles waged by Irish feminists.

continued: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/northern-ireland-abortion-eighth-amendment