Trudeau touts funding for women’s rights in New York amid abortion battle in U.S.

By James McCarten The Canadian Press
Posted April 27, 2023

The Liberal government is spending more money on women’s rights abroad – an effort to showcase Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s bona fides on gender equality in a country where access to abortion seems to be slipping away.

Trudeau was expected to reaffirm his government’s commitment to supporting reproductive freedom later Thursday at a star-studded progressive summit in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen on the shores of the Hudson River.

Continued: https://globalnews.ca/news/9654822/trudeau-new-york-visit/

27.04.2023

Gender equality isn’t possible without abortion and contraception

Access to reproductive health protects women and girls, uplifts them and allows them to prosper.

Banchiamlack Dessalegn, Africa Director at MSI Reproductive Choices
Published On 18 Mar 2023

It is Women’s History Month and the world is bursting with proclamations of support for gender equality and women’s rights. But too often, the general narrative celebrating historical progress on gender issues leaves out abortion and contraception, sidelining the fact that without them, gender equality would have been – and still is – impossible.

This year, millions of women and girls will be denied access to abortion, forced to carry unintended pregnancies to term or resort to unsafe termination. Abortion continues to be unjustly restricted across the world, most recently in the United States, where new state bans are being introduced with the Supreme Court’s decision to rescind the legal protection of abortion established in the 1970s.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/3/18/gender-equality-isnt-possible-without-abortion-and-contraception

18.03.2023

Opinion

Banchiamlack Dessalegn

gender equality

maternal mortality

MSI Reproductive Choices

Women's History Month

Will the world abort women’s rights after death of Roe v. Wade?

BY ELLEN WULFHORST, THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
Nov 24, 2022

PATTAYA CITY, THAILAND – Women and girls around the world will suffer a knock-on effect from the U.S. decision to roll back abortion rights, experts say, predicting a global clampdown on hard-won female freedoms.

From access to abortion to voting rights, equal pay to equal status, women from Africa to Asia to Europe are expected to feel the fallout of the U.S. decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/24/world/women-rights-abortion/

BY ELLEN WULFHORST, THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
Nov 24, 2022

From access to abortion to voting rights, equal pay to equal status, women from Africa to Asia to Europe are expected to feel the fallout of the U.S. decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/24/world/women-rights-abortion/

UK in diplomatic standoff over deletion of abortion rights from gender statement

Exclusive: Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands refuse to sign edited version, drawing up new phrasing including women and girls’ sexual and reproductive rights

Lizzy Davies
Thu 28 Jul 2022

The UK government is in a diplomatic standoff with three European countries over a statement on gender equality that it changed to remove commitments to women’s reproductive and sexual health rights.

Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands are refusing to sign the edited version unless their concerns “are taken into consideration”, a spokesperson for the Dutch foreign ministry told the Guardian on Thursday.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jul/28/uk-in-diplomatic-standoff-over-deletion-of-abortion-rights-from-gender-statement

America Almost Took a Different Path Toward Abortion Rights

Roe v. Wade was never expected to be the case that made history.

By Emily Bazelon
May 20, 2022

For three days in January 1970, they filled the 13th floor of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, women of all ages crowded into a conference room, sitting on the floor, spilling into the hallway. Some brought friends or husbands. One nursed a baby. Another was a painter who also taught elementary school. A third had gone to Catholic school. They’d come to give testimony in the case of Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz, the first in the country to challenge a state’s strict abortion law on behalf of women.

The witnesses in the courthouse were among 314 people, primarily women, brought together by a small team of lawyers, led by Florynce Kennedy and Nancy Stearns, to set up a legal argument no one had made before: that a woman’s right to an abortion was rooted in the Constitution’s promises of liberty and equal protection. New York permitted abortion only to save a woman’s life. Kennedy and Stearns wanted the court to understand how risking an illegal procedure or carrying a forced pregnancy could constrict women’s lives in ways that men did not experience.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/magazine/roe-v-wade-abortion-rights.html

20.05.2022

Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz

Coat Hanger Farewell

Diane Schulder Abrams

Equal Protection Clause

Griswold v. Connecticut

Justice Harry Blackmun

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey

United States v. Virginia

women's abortion stories

Why a growing number of Latin American countries are legalizing abortion

May 14, 2022
By Ali Rogin
6-minute video with transcript

As Americans contemplate living in a country where Roe versus Wade is overturned, a very different story is playing out in many parts of Latin America. In recent years, countries throughout the region have relaxed abortion restrictions. Alicia Yamin, senior fellow for the Global Health and Rights Project at Harvard Law School, joins Ali Rogin to discuss what's changed and why.

Continued: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-a-growing-number-of-latin-american-countries-are-legalizing-abortion

OBGYNs in Mozambique call to strengthen gender equality and access to safe abortion

FIGO
30 April 2021
Eunice Themba, Project Manager, AMOG

In a year that saw access to reproductive health services diminish due to
COVID-19 and associated restrictions, International Women’s Day 2021 provided a
welcome opportunity to reflect on, learn about and advocate for important
women’s health topics, including access to safe abortion. Unsafe abortion
remains a huge cause of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity.

The World Health Organization estimates that around 13% of maternal deaths are
attributable to unsafe abortion, and that around 3 in every 4 abortions in
Africa and Latin America are unsafe. According to the 2011 Demographic Health
Survey, unsafe abortion was a leading cause of preventable maternal death in
Mozambique, one of ten countries in FIGO’s Advocating Safe Abortion Project. In
order to reverse this dramatic situation that affects girls and women, the new
Penal Code of 2014 was approved (law Nr 35/2014 of December 31st), that was
revised in 2019 (Law Nr 24/2019 of December 24th), which included, in Article
168, the modalities that make abortion non-punishable.

Continued: https://www.figo.org/news/obgyns-mozambique-call-strengthen-gender-equality-and-access-safe-abortion

From Herrera to Herrera: women against the patriarchy in El Salvador
The current climate of anti-abortion zealotry fosters brutal regimes that persecute and torture people such as Manuela, who died while imprisoned for having a miscarriage

DEBORA DINIZ, GISELLE CARINO
12 MAR 2021

The voice that conveyed the information to Morena Herrera, from El Salvador,
was foreign. “There are women who have been imprisoned for abortion,” the voice
said, “and they’ll stay there for 30 years or more.” Herrera could not believe
what she was hearing; under the criminal code, abortion carried a maximum
sentence of eight years. Why such long prison terms? Morena Herrera asked the
speaker, Donna Ferrato, how she knew about these women. Ferrato had just
finished a photo essay for The New York Times on the criminalization of
abortion in El Salvador, and she had heard the story from the imprisoned women
themselves. One of them was Karina Herrera. The coincidence of sharing the same
last name helped Morena embark on a journey to identify these women and take the
fight for their freedom to national and international courts.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-03-12/from-herrera-to-herrera-women-against-the-patriarchy-in-el-salvador.html

12.03.2021

Commentary

Featured

30-year jail sentence for stillbirth

aggravated homicide charges

Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto

Alba Lorena Rodríguez

anti-choice torture

anti-choice zealotry

Center for Reproductive Rights

Cindy Erazo

Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion

Colectiva Feminista para el Desarrollo Local

Feminist Collective for Local Development

gender equality

Giselle Carino

Herrera to Herrera

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

obstetric emergencies

Jamaica – Abolishing our antiquated abortion law

Alando N. Terrelonge
Published:Tuesday | February 9, 2021

True gender equality cannot be achieved unless and until we relinquish our pervasive desire to enslave, control, and police the body and dignity of women. A woman must have the very basic human right and freedom to make autonomous decisions concerning her own body. Our common humanity demands that we respect the humanity of all our women and abolish our antiquated abortion law, which shackles true female empowerment beneath the brutal and agonising whip of a misogynistic and patriarchal era that ought to be obsolete. Regrettably, the present national discussion and debate surrounding abortion has resurfaced the expected fire and brimstone temperatures of controversy. That we can debate and argue any matter with freedom and without fear as a modern democracy is good and commendable. However, it matters that the debate and arguments remain fair.

Continued: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/commentary/20210209/alando-n-terrelonge-abolishing-our-antiquated-abortion-law

09.02.2021

Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn

Repealing the Global Gag Rule is good news – but it could take months to repair the damage it caused

Preventing abortion services from operating does not stop women seeking terminations – this policy's effects have been felt around the world

EDWARD MORRIS, ASHA KASLIWAL
2 February 2021

When Joe Biden signed the executive order to repeal the Global Gag Rule last week, there was an audible sigh of relief from the sexual and reproductive health community around the world.

Four years earlier, President Trump reinstated and later expanded the rule – also known as the Mexico City policy. The policy was initially introduced by President Reagan in 1984 to stop foreign organisations in receipt of United States family planning funding from providing abortion services, information, counseling, referrals or advocacy.

Continued: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/repealing-global-gag-rule-good-news-could-take-months-repair/