Police at the hospital: Abortion battle heats up in Poland

The case of a humiliating police operation in response to a woman who’d taken an abortion pill has intensified debate over whether Poland’s abortion laws have gone too far.

Jacek Lepiarz
July 23, 2023

The leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, likes to surround himself with women at campaign events. He courts them in the old Polish manner with a kiss on the hand, but such gestures belie the fact that his right-wing nationalist party is actually at war with the country's women.

An ever closer alliance between the Polish government and the Catholic Church has led to a radical tightening of abortion laws in recent years. In 2020, the PiS-controlled Constitutional Court removed the risk of serious fetal malformation as a condition allowing for legal abortion, creating a climate of fear and mistrust among doctors and women.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/police-at-the-hospital-abortion-battle-heats-up-in-poland/a-66319325


USA – They ended wanted pregnancies. Post-Roe, they face new pain.

By LAURA UNGAR, AP Science Writer
September 18, 2022

Ashley Lefebvre hugs her unborn daughter’s urn each night. Sarah Halsey treasures the tiny hat worn by her baby who lived just 38 minutes. Abi Frazier moved away from her home with a furnished nursery.

All ended wanted pregnancies because of grave fetal medical problems.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ended-wanted-pregnancies-post-roe-face-pain-90101539


UK – Heidi Carter should not judge pregnant women’s decisions

Aborting a fetus with Down’s syndrome says nothing about how society views disabled people. It is a matter of choice.

ANN FUREDI, Spiked
9th July 2021

Heidi Carter is a talented and able young woman. She also has Down’s syndrome. This week she launched a legal challenge which, if successful, would lower the time limit for abortions when there is a high risk of serious disability. Carter believes that it is morally wrong for any woman to decide to end her pregnancy to avoid the birth of a child with disabilities or genetic conditions.

In 2020, almost 300 women who had abortions stated Down’s syndrome as the primary reason. For these women, and for others where a serious fetal anomaly is indicated, there is no time limit. Heidi Carter believes this is offensive to people with disabilities – and she is entitled to hold that view. As a person with a disability she has insight into what it feels like to have that disability. But it gives her no authority to stand in judgement on pregnant women’s decisions.

Continued: https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/07/09/heidi-carter-should-not-judge-pregnant-womens-decisions/


GABON – Therapeutic abortion legalised in Gabon, especially for girls, but criminal sanctions retained

GABON – Therapeutic abortion legalised in Gabon, especially for girls, but criminal sanctions retained

International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion
Nov 12, 2019

This is a summary of a report, in French, by Gabon Media Time. As part of reforms in the Penal Code, Law No. 042/2018 of 5 July 2019 in the Penal Code says that voluntary interruption of pregnancy is authorised in Gabon on the following grounds: “when it has been proved that the fetus will be born with serious or incurable physical malformations, when the pregnancy seriously compromises the mother’s life, or when the conception has taken place as a result rape or incest, or where a minor is in a state of serious distress”. The state of serious distress can be likened here to the incapacity or the impossibility for the minor to take care of her pregnancy and the child.

The legislation insists on the therapeutic character of the abortion, as provided by Article 378, and must be done “within a period of ten weeks, by a doctor and in a hospital”.

Illegal abortion “is punishable by imprisonment of up to two years or a fine of 1,000,000 plus, or both, and if the woman has obtained an abortion for herself or has attempted to obtain it or has consented to the use of any means provided or administered for this purpose”.

The article concludes: “While welcoming the will of the Parliament to legalise abortion under certain conditions, the fact remains that the provisions of the third paragraph of Article 377, paragraph 2, create a breach of equality between minors and adult women. It grants the right to abortion to girls who are in a “state of serious distress” but not to women.

SOURCE: Gabon Media Time, by Pharel Boukika, 5 November 2019 (en français) ; PHOTO: UNFPA, 2 July 2018

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Source: http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/gabon-therapeutic-abortion-legalised-in-gabon/


Born Alive Abortion Survivors: Parsing Fact from Fiction

Born Alive Abortion Survivors: Parsing Fact from Fiction

March 11, 2019
by Libby Anne

Last week, a friend sent me an article bearing the headline They Are Real: Meet Born-Alive Abortion Survivors. Could I maybe blog about it, she asked? This article led me down to a rabbit hole with numbers that kept getting bigger. When I reached an article that argued that there are 44,000 abortion survivors living in the U.S. today, I knew we had a definitional problem. What is really going on here?

The article my friend sent me profiled five individuals it labeled “abortion survivors.” These individuals are real people. The first one profiled Gianna Jesson, whose mother had a saline abortion at 30 weeks in 1977, and Gianna survived. When she was born alive, she was provided with care and given up for adoption. Melissa Ohden’s biological mother had a saline abortion at 31 weeks in 1977; she, too, survived and was provided care.

Continued: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2019/03/born-alive-abortion-survivors-parsing-fact-from-fiction.html


Eighth ‘prevents me from providing complete pregnancy care’

Eighth ‘prevents me from providing complete pregnancy care’
Doctor says two women travel for abortions weekly after foetal abnormality diagnosis

May 3, 2018
Sarah Burns

Two women a week have to travel abroad as a result of the Eighth Amendment to terminate a pregnancy after receiving a diagnosis of a complex foetal abnormality, a consultant in obstetrics and maternal foetal medicine has said.

Dr Jennifer Donnelly, from the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, said the amendment, a constitutional provision which guarantees the mother and unborn an equal right to life, “prevents me from providing complete pregnancy care to women and their families”.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/eighth-prevents-me-from-providing-complete-pregnancy-care-1.3482876