U.S.: Abortion Clinics Report Threats of Violence on the Rise

Abortion Clinics Report Threats of Violence on the Rise

Feb 13 2017
by Mary Emily O'Hara

A new report finds that anti-abortion violence last year was higher than it's been in 20 years — and now that newly confirmed conservative Republican Attorney General Jeff Sessions will oversee law enforcement initiatives that protect an providers from harm, many advocates are on edge.

According to the 2016 National Clinic Violence Survey published last Thursday by the Feminist Majority Foundation, 34.2 percent of U.S. abortion providers reported "severe violence or threats of violence" in the first half of 2016.

That number is up from 19.7 percent in 2014 — and before that, the highest recent peak came in 1995, with an average of 24 percent.

Continued at source: NBC News: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/abortion-clinics-report-threats-violence-rise-n719426

Italy: Police launch inquiry into death of woman ‘refused’ an abortion by Sicilian doctors

Family of 32-year-old who died after pregnancy claim she was denied procedure on ‘moral’ grounds

Stephanie Kirchgaessner

Sunday 23 October 2016 00.05 BST, The Guardian

Italian police are investigating a dozen doctors at a Sicilian hospital after the family of a 32-year-old woman who died after a miscarriage claimed she was not given adequate medical attention. The family says that her doctor had professed moral objections to abortion.

The death of Valentina Milluzzo, who was five months pregnant with twins when she miscarried and fell ill, has reignited a debate across Italy about the high number of gynaecologists and obstetricians who refuse to provide abortions. As a result, women may not get the medical attention they require in emergency situations.

The investigation into the Cannizzaro obstetrics and gynaecology hospital in Catania on the east coast of Sicily was opened after the family of Milluzzo, who became pregnant through in-vitro fertilisation, said a doctor refused to intervene even though her life was at risk.

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Source: The Guardian

23.10.2016

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U.S.: The Planned Parenthood Shooting Survivors Finally Speak Out

The workers who survived the 2015 shooting can't tell you their names - but they want you to know their story.
By Jim Rendon
Oct 16, 2016, Cosmopolitan

Sitting on the couch in the living room of her Colorado home, a woman we’ll call Karen leafs through a small notebook as she gathers her thoughts. Her legs are curled up around her — her feet bare, toenails painted blue. She pauses on one page. At the top, she’s written the letters PTSD in all caps. The letters have been traced over and over again in ballpoint pen, leaving thick, dark creases in the paper. At the bottom is a doodle of flowers growing upward.

For most of the time that she and her husband have lived in their 100-year-old Craftsman house in a small mountain town, she never locked the front door. She would sometimes even leave it wide open when she was home. “I was always more afraid of a bear coming into the house than a human,” she jokes.

But that has changed. A reporter from the New York Times once knocked on her door, and she was terrified. If he can find me, anyone can, she thought. We should get more locks.

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Source: Cosmopolitan

16.10.2016