The new anti-abortion tactics of the far right in the Americas

ISABELLA COTASTEPHANIA CORPI
OCT 24, 2021

An EL PAÍS investigation in five Latin American countries has found that a network of centers affiliated with the far-right US organization Heartbeat International (HI) promote themselves online as feminist support groups and use misleading language in favor of abortion, but in reality they work to manipulate and institutionalize women to get them to carry their pregnancy to term.

Five female reporters and one male reporter went undercover to centers in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico between 2019 and 2021, as a follow-up to an OpenDemocracy investigation into HI’s operations in the region.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-10-24/the-new-anti-abortion-tactics-of-the-far-right-in-the-americas.html

24.10.2021

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adoption and abortion

anti-choice deception

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misogyny

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health

Centers to Help Women

CLACAI

crisis pregnancy centres

El Pais investigation

Fanny Cordero

Fundación Hogar Margarita

Gretchen Sisson

Heartbeat International

Latin American Consortium against Unsafe Abortion

Miguel Ángel Salazar

National System for the Integral Development of the Family

PANI

Privacy International

Ron Archer

Susana Chávez

Susana Vallina

undercover investigation of CPCs

Vida y Familia A.C.

Women’s Institute of Comprehensive Health

Abortion in Mexico: Fight for rights just beginning, women say

By Will Grant, BBC Mexico correspondent
Oct 23, 2021

Few customers who get into Paulina Ramírez's taxi know her awful story. But 20 years ago, the so-called Paulina Case made headlines around the world, her name synonymous with Mexico's strict rules and attitudes on abortion.

In 1999, aged 13, Paulina was raped and was left pregnant by a man who broke into her family's home. Following the brutal attack, she sought an abortion, fully legal in Mexico in cases of rape. However, Paulina was harangued by conservative doctors, state officials and priests who put up constant obstacles to stop her from terminating the pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-58900532

Poles protest one year after court ruling restricted abortion rights

By Euronews & AP
Updated: 23/10/2021

Poles took to the streets on Friday night to mark the one year anniversary of a constitutional court ruling that restricted abortion rights in Poland in October 2020.

Protests were held in Warsaw and other cities but numbers were far smaller than the demonstrations that followed last year's ruling, the biggest in three decades since the end of Communism.

Continued: https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/23/poles-protest-one-year-after-court-ruling-restricted-abortion-rights

23.10.2021

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Supreme Court won’t block Texas abortion law but grants expedited review for Nov. 1

by Robert Barnes
Oct 22, 2021

The Supreme Court on Friday said it will consider legal arguments over the Texas abortion law that is the nation’s most restrictive on Nov. 1, and that the law will remain in effect.

The court granted an expedited review of what is called S. B. 8, which the Biden administration in a filing Friday said “has virtually eliminated abortion in Texas after six weeks of pregnancy.”

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-texas-abortion-law/2021/10/22/e62d4954-334b-11ec-9241-aad8e48f01ff_story.html

Texas abortion ban is an early glimpse of what post-Roe America would look like for women

By Katherine Dautrich, Isabelle Chapman, Majlie de Puy Kamp and Casey Tolan, CNN
Fri October 22, 2021 (CNN)

Nicole began her morning with a simple prayer: "Please let my car start today."

She had already gotten the mandatory ultrasound, scrounged up $595 and taken time off work. But at that moment -- with her pregnancy at exactly six weeks -- getting an abortion in her home state boiled down to her hatchback's temperamental engine turning over.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/us/texas-abortion-ban-invs/index.html

Texas targets Roe v. Wade, urges U.S. Supreme Court to maintain abortion ban

By Andrew Chung
Oct 21 (Reuters)

Texas on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to keep in place a law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion and urged the justices that if they quickly take up a legal challenge brought by President Joe Biden's administration they should overturn the landmark ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a legal filing
responded to the U.S. Justice Department's request that the Supreme Court
quickly block the Republican-backed state law while litigation over its
legality goes forward.
Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-urges-us-supreme-court-maintain-states-abortion-ban-2021-10-21/

21.10.2021

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Care and compassion over colonialism: Namibia must protect women and girls seeking abortions

By Marie-Evelyne Petrus Barry and Bience Gawanas
21 Oct 2021

Namibia’s parliament is debating reforms to the abortion law that would bring the country in line with international standards on sexual and reproductive health rights. Activists, medical doctors and public health experts are urging lawmakers to ensure that ‘every pregnancy in Namibia should be a wanted pregnancy’.

This past week, we have watched with great interest and hope as Namibia’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Gender Equality, Social Development and Family Affairs held its first four days of public hearings on whether to reform its Abortion and Sterilisation Act of 1975.

Continued: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-21-care-and-compassion-over-colonialism-namibia-must-protect-women-and-girls-seeking-abortions/

Most democracies are expanding abortion access. The U.S. is retracting it

October 21, 2021
Martha F. Davis and Fiona de Londras

Fifty years ago, the United States was a global leader in recognizing women’s reproductive rights. Today, however, much of the rest of the world has caught up or surpassed the U.S. in extending abortion access.

The United States’ closest legal peers — Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia — have laws that are either in line with or more generous than those here. Like the U.S., other liberal democracies including the Netherlands and Iceland, also protect the right to abortion until or near the point of viability. This is what makes the Supreme Court’s threatened reversal of Roe v. Wade not only dangerous and life-threatening, but legally indefensible.

Continued: https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2021/10/21/supreme-court-abortion-dobbs-texas-martha-f-davis-fiona-de-londras

Benin parliament votes to legalise abortion

By Allegresse Sasse

COTONOU, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Benin's parliament has voted to legalise abortion in most circumstances, the health ministry said on Thursday, becoming one of only a handful of African countries to do so.

Abortion was previously legal only in cases of rape or incest, if the mother's life was at risk, or if the unborn child had a particularly serious medical condition.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/benin-parliament-votes-legalise-abortion-2021-10-21/

21.10.2021

Abortion Without Borders helps more than 34,000 people in Poland access abortions

Published on October 21, 2021

A year ago – on 22 October 2020 – a Polish Constitutional Court decided
that the provision of abortion in case of foetal malformation was
unconstitutional. While the decision didn’t come into force until 27 January
2021, the change happened immediately. The next day, despite the still-valid
provision of abortion under Poland’s abortion act, the first four people
refused abortion in Polish hospitals called Abortion Without Borders for help.

Over the past 12 months Abortion Without Borders groups have helped 34,000
people from Poland to access abortion. 1080 people were able to terminate their
pregnancy in a foreign clinic in the second trimester. Financial support given
was more than 700,000 zloty/ £129,000/ €153,000.

Continued: https://www.asn.org.uk/abortion-without-borders-helps-more-than-34000-people-in-poland-access-abortions/