The American Taliban

The American Taliban
Our equally extreme evangelical vice president Mike Pence also believes our laws should be based on the bible.

Published on Sunday, October 28, 2018
by Common Dreams
by Bob Topper

If you believe in the separation of church and state, then you probably think that evangelicals exert far too much influence on American life, our politics, and culture. When I remarked to a friend that evangelicals are the America’s answer to the Taliban, he thought the comparison was too harsh. After all, he said, “Evangelicals don’t go around killing people.”

Maybe not, but the beliefs they hold and the positions they take can have deadly consequences. Take the evangelical position on abortion, which has had a major effect on national foreign policy. The Helms Amendment, first enacted in 1973, provides that no US funds “may be used to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.”

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/10/28/american-taliban

Unintended Pregnancy Rates Declined Globally from 1990 to 2014

Unintended Pregnancy Rates Declined Globally from 1990 to 2014
Larger Declines in Developed Than Developing Regions

March 5, 2018
News Release, Guttmacher Institute

Rates of unintended pregnancy have decreased globally since 1990, according to a new study published today in The Lancet Global Health. While the unintended pregnancy rate fell worldwide from 1990–1994 to 2010–2014, it dropped less sharply in developing regions (16%) than in developed regions (30%). “Global, Regional, and Subregional Trends in Unintended Pregnancy and Its Outcomes from 1990 to 2014,” by Guttmacher Institute researcher Jonathan Bearak and colleagues, highlights the incidence of unintended pregnancies in all world regions, using an updated methodology and a broader evidence base than past studies to examine changes over time.

The researchers found that during the most recent period (2010–2014), an estimated 44% of pregnancies worldwide were unintended. This translates to a rate of 62 unintended pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–44, a decrease from 74 per 1,000 women in 1990–1994.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2018/unintended-pregnancy-rates-declined-globally-1990-2014

The Growing Challenge of Meeting the Reproductive Health Needs of Women in Humanitarian Situations

The Growing Challenge of Meeting the Reproductive Health Needs of Women in Humanitarian Situations
Recent Progress Is Threatened by Rising Nationalism in the United States and Europe

February 13, 2017
News Release

About one in four of the 129 million people around the world in need of humanitarian assistance are women and adolescent girls of reproductive age. Women and girls are at particular risk when a region or country’s social, health and other support systems collapse, exposing them to sexual violence, unwanted pregnancy, unsafe abortion, STIs (including HIV), and maternal illness and death. And yet, sexual and reproductive health services in humanitarian settings continue to lag far behind the enormous need, argues a new analysis in the Guttmacher Policy Review.

“Humanitarian agencies have made substantial advances in issuing sexual and reproductive health guidance in crisis settings. But implementation of these policies and standards has often fallen far short of what is needed,” says Sneha Barot, author of the new analysis. “Fundamentally, the same barriers that can interfere with access to sexual and reproductive health care under normal circumstances are often magnified during emergencies.”

Continued at source: Guttmacher Institute: https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/growing-challenge-meeting-reproductive-health-needs-women-humanitarian-situations

13.02.2017

Commentary

News

humanitarian crisis

reproductive healthcare

sexual and reproductive health

Trump Makes the Global Gag Rule on Abortion Even Worse

By Margaret Talbot January 25, 2017

In 1984, at a population conference in Mexico City, the Reagan Administration brought domestic abortion politics into the arena of international aid for the first time. The Administration declared that “the United States does not consider abortion an acceptable element of family planning programs and will no longer contribute to those of which it is a part.” The so-called Mexico City Policy has been in effect for seventeen of the past thirty-two years—espoused by every Republican Administration, renounced under every Democratic one, including that of President Barack Obama. One of the policy’s requirements is that the United States not contribute to nongovernmental organizations that “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.” To receive American funding for any of their family-planning work, in other words, groups would have to promise that they wouldn’t even speak of abortion—hence the nickname that the policy’s exasperated critics soon coined: the global gag rule.

[continued at link]
Source, New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trump-makes-the-global-gag-rule-on-abortion-even-worse