Spain approves menstrual leave, teen abortion and trans laws

Measures allow workers suffering period pain to take paid time off, as right to abortions in state hospitals is enshrined.

16 Feb 2023

Madrid has approved legislation expanding abortion and transgender rights for teenagers, while making Spain the first country in Europe that will entitle workers to paid menstrual leave.

The driving force behind the two laws was equality minister Irene Montero, who belongs to the junior member in Spain’s left-wing coalition government, the “United We Can” Party.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/16/spain-approves-menstrual-leave-teen-abortion-and-trans-laws


Spain passes pioneering sexual, reproductive health law

December 15, 2022
Reuters

MADRID - Spain's parliament on Thursday passed a sexual and reproductive health law that allows girls aged 16 and 17 to undergo abortions without parental consent and, in a first for a European country, offers state-funded paid leave for women who suffer from painful periods.

"These advancements allow us to exercise freedom over our bodies, with the state recognising the full citizenship of more than half the population," Equality Minister Irene Montero told lawmakers before the vote, which was adopted with a 190-154 majority and five abstentions.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spain-passes-pioneering-sexual-reproductive-health-law-2022-12-15/


USA – A process that allows minors to get an abortion could disappear if Roe falls

June 14, 2022
Ailsa Chang, Jonaki Mehta, Sarah Handel

B was at her partner's house one day when she had a gut instinct, a churning feeling inside her body that led her to take a pregnancy test.

"I kind of went robotic and shut everything out, any emotions or anything," she said. "I felt like my whole life was going to go down the drain because that's how society portrays it."

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/14/1104649399/scotus-roe-v-wade-abortion-minors-law-texas


Texans seeking abortions have options — but they’re very limited

The state now has the nation’s most restrictive abortion law

Caroline Anders
September 5, 2021

A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to stop a restrictive Texas abortion law from taking effect, allowing the state to prohibit medical providers from ending a pregnancy after detecting an embryo’s cardiac activity.

In effect, the law bans Texans from getting abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

https://www.thelily.com/texans-seeking-abortions-have-options-but-theyre-very-limited/


Jamaica – Churches must back off from abortion issue, says Reverend

Sunday | February 7, 2021
Corey Robinson - Senior Staff Reporter

Discussions on abortion should not be limited to religion and morality, and according to one man of the cloth, if the churches are not prepared to consider the social implications of the practice, they best take a back pew and leave the discussion solely to the policymakers.

Straight-talking Anglican cleric, the Reverend Sean Major-Campbell – while reinforcing his long-standing view that Christianity is only effective so far as its relevance to the lives of people – said church leaders who take a myopic approach on the abortion discussion are doing a disservice to Jamaican women.

Continued: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20210207/churches-must-back-abortion-issue-says-reverend


Jamaica – Abortion debate escalates with CAPRI recommendation on minors

6 FEBRUARY 2021

The ongoing debate over whether to legalise abortion in Jamaica has escalated with the controversial recommendation from the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) that minors be allowed to access an abortion on their own without the consent of a parent.

The controversial position was put forward by CAPRI in its European Union-funded report titled: Coming to Terms: The Social Costs of Unequal Access to Safe Abortions, the findings of which were presented Thursday during a webinar.

Continued: https://www.loopjamaica.com/content/abortion-debate-escalates-capri-recommendation-minors


“Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Reviewed: Eliza Hittman’s Ingenious Portrait of the Bureaucracy of Abortion

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Reviewed: Eliza Hittman’s Ingenious Portrait of the Bureaucracy of Abortion

By Richard Brody
March 12, 2020

With her third feature, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” the writer and director Eliza Hittman accomplishes something extraordinary: she expands her method and her style into a vision of the world. Her first feature, “It Felt Like Love,” from 2013, centered on a teen-age girl in a Brooklyn community that Hittman knows well, and extended the tendrils of the protagonist’s dramatic experience into the broader life of the neighborhood. In her second feature, “Beach Rats” (2017), she did something similar and carried it further, scratching and scraping the surface of social connections to reveal the passions and prejudices underlying it. Now, in her new feature, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”—a stark and harrowing story of a teen-ager’s quest to get an abortion—Hittman creates an intimate drama that’s also a story of the social fabric and, in particular, its bureaucratic abstractions and administrative minefields.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/never-rarely-sometimes-always-reviewed-eliza-hittmans-ingenious-portrait-of-the-bureaucracy-of-abortion