N. Ireland – Abortion access lessons to be compulsory in post-primary schools in NI

June 6, 2023
By Robbie Meredith, BBC News NI education correspondent

It will be compulsory for all post-primary schools in Northern Ireland to teach pupils about access to abortion and prevention of early pregnancy.

It comes after Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris laid new regulations in Parliament, covering relationships and sex education (RSE). In a written statement, he said he had a legal duty to act on recommendations made in a United Nations (UN) report.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65824502

06.06.2023

CEDAW Report

Chris Heaton-Harris

Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

comprehensive sex education

Dr John Kirkpatrick

Executive Formation Act

Natalie Whelehan

Relationships and Sex Education

More than 25 NGOs intensify their fight to legalize abortion in Venezuela

by Lance Vaughn
September 10, 2022

Some 25 Venezuelan NGOs, grouped in the Ruta Verde platform, intensify their fight to legalize abortion with the collection against the clock of 21,000 signatures that must be attached to the bill on sexual and reproductive rights that they will take to Parliament, which will have to debate if it advances until become normative.

The platform intends for there to be a sexual and reproductive education that provides knowledge about contraceptive methods, abortion in different cases and the options that women have to face unwanted pregnancies.

Continued; https://www.ruetir.com/2022/09/10/more-than-25-ngos-intensify-their-fight-to-legalize-abortion-in-venezuela/

US Donors Are Helping Push Anti-Abortion Agendas in British Schools

A British anti-abortion group that gives talks in schools has received over £72,000 from the US over the last 2 years, VICE World News can reveal.

By Sophia Smith Galer
May 30, 2022

An anti-abortion group in the UK that gives talks to schoolchildren and medical professionals about what it terms “coerced abortion” is receiving tens of thousands of dollars from anonymous US-based backers, VICE World News can reveal.

Nearly £73,000 ($91,885, €85,330) has been donated anonymously via a donor agency called NPT Transatlantic in the past two years to the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child’s (SPUC) registered charity, one of the UK’s most active anti-abortion groups. The agency allows US and UK taxpayers to donate to organisations across the Atlantic without revealing their name and without qualifying for any tax deduction.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93be83/anti-abortion-schools-uk

The struggle to secure access to abortion in Argentina goes on

The Argentinian government must continue to dismantle barriers women face in accessing safe abortion.

Mariela Belski, Executive director of Amnesty International Argentina
9 Aug 2021

In recent months, Argentinians have had access to legal abortion for the first time. In December, Argentina became the fourth in Latin America to legalise abortion after the National Congress passed the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy Law.

Securing this right for women and pregnant persons was a milestone achievement and the culmination of decades of struggle, setbacks and progress. Now, new challenges emerge: the effective implementation of the law across a vast and unequal territory and the legal battles filed by conservative groups in the nation’s courts.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/9/the-struggle-to-secure-access-to-abortion-in-argentina-goes-on

There Are No Abortion Providers in Guam. We Must Change That

BY MARIA DOLOJAN, Teen Vogue
MARCH 17, 2021

In 2019, when news broke that a 12 year-old girl in my island community on Guam was raped and impregnated, reality set in for me and many women and girls. It was the first time some of us realized that we did not have any abortion providers in Guam, and it would take extraordinary measures for someone from our island to get an abortion. She would have to fly thousands of miles to Hawai‘i — and because she likely comes from a poor family who does not have the financial means to pursue abortion services elsewhere, she would not able to end the pregnancy.

It was a wakeup call.

Continued: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/there-are-no-abortion-providers-in-guam

India – A pregnant silence on reproductive rights of women

A pregnant silence on reproductive rights of women
The country needs to recognise the wrongs and affirm the rights for advancing women’s sexual and reproductive health

Monday, 25 November 2019
Prabhleen Tuteja

Young women (15-24 years) constitute 11 per cent of India’s population, out of whom 41 per cent have faced sexual violence, 27 per cent are married before the legal age and 7.8 per cent (15-19 years) become mothers or are pregnant. The data on access to information on contraceptives reveals that only 17.7 per cent were informed about family planning by health workers and just 6.9 per cent women in Bihar and 11.6 per cent in Uttar Pradesh (UP) reported using contraceptives within marriage.

The policy level commitments on health, education and gender parity often look in absolute terms of changing certain societal norms through cash transfer based schemes, number of girls reported to be married before the legal age of marriage, status of body mass index and nutrition and sometimes enrollment in school and skill development among women. While evidence in these parameters are significant, this skewed approach to gender equality leaves out a range of issues, including prevalence of sexual violence and status of accessible sexual and reproductive health services. Stigma and fear attached to young women’s sexuality act as a major barrier in achieving gender equality.

Continued: https://www.dailypioneer.com/2019/columnists/a-pregnant-silence-on-reproductive-rights-of-women.html

Ghana – More than three million teenage girls undergo unsafe abortion

More than three million teenage girls undergo unsafe abortion

By Regina Benneh/ Eugene Ohemeng, GNA
Sunyani, May 31, 2019

Research has indicated that more than three million girls between the ages of 15 and 19 go through unsafe abortion globally every year.

Madam Ama Nyankoma Asirifi, Bono, Bono East and Ahafo Regional Adolescent Heath Focal Person of the Regional Health Directorate, made the disclosure in a presentation on Adolescent Sexually and Reproductive Health Right at a sensitization forum in Sunyani.

Continued: http://www.ghananewsagency.org/health/more-than-three-million-teenage-girls-undergo-unsafe-abortion-150769

31.05.2019

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Ama Nyankoma Asirifi

comprehensive sex education

America’s Leaders Need Sex Ed

America’s Leaders Need Sex Ed
For those who want to regulate women’s bodies, ignorance has been no obstacle.

By Lauren Kelley
April 5, 2019

A few recent news stories have served as reminders that an awful lot of people lack even a basic understanding of the female body. And some of those people get to make and shape our laws.

There was the lawyer in Alabama who tried to justify an extreme anti-abortion bill that he helped draft by arguing that after a man and a woman have sex, “you can take her straight into a clinic and determine an egg and sperm came together.”

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/opinion/sex-women-facts-education.html

05.04.2019

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USA – How Republican Policies Force Women to Choose Abortion

How Republican Policies Force Women to Choose Abortion

ZawnVillines
Thursday February 28, 2019

If you believe the social media posts, television screeds, and scare tactics of Republicans, women are murderous by nature. Given half the chance, they’ll undergo invasive surgery to kill a baby for the sheer joy of it. If their unwanted baby is somehow born alive, they’ll happily ask a doctor to snuff out its life.

It’s a nightmarish vision that runs counter to all reason and all evidence. For generations, women have stood at the forefront of every movement to protect human life and dignity. They commit fewer crimes. And though they spend, on average, significantly more time with their children, they’re far less likely to abuse them. When you really start digging into Republican views, it’s hard for them to mask their true feelings: they hate women. They don’t trust them. This depiction of women as infanticidal monsters also ignores hundreds of heartbreaking stories of women who choose to abort children they love, either to spare the child the misery of a few agonizing seconds of life on Earth, or because the child is already dead.

continued: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/28/1838316/-How-Republican-Policies-Force-Women-to-Choose-Abortion