by Fabian Cambero
Nov 30, 2021
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile's lower Chamber of Deputies rejected a bill on Tuesday that sought to expand legal access for women to get abortions, legislation that was opposed by the South American country's center-right government.
At the end of
September, legislators in the chamber voted in favor of studying and debating
the bill, that proposed legalizing termination of pregnancy up to 14 weeks.
The story of abortion access in the state helps explain why some legal experts believe the U.S. may be on the brink of overturning Roe v. Wade
By Caroline Kitchener and Casey Parks
Nov 30, 2021
When the abortion doctor lost his medical license in 2004, Nancy Atkins wasn’t sure how she could keep going. Malachy DeHenre had been the only doctor at the clinic Atkins owned in Jackson, Miss. Recruiting OB/GYNs to perform abortions anywhere was difficult, but in Mississippi, Atkins had learned, it was nearly impossible. The state had the toughest regulations and the most ardent antiabortion protesters. One activist even regularly told people that killing an abortion provider might count as “justifiable homicide.”
Seventeen years later, Atkins isn’t surprised that her state is the one that some legal observers believe is poised to overturn or seriously undermine Roe v. Wade. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a challenge to Mississippi’s law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. Roe protects a person’s constitutional right to abortion before viability, usually around 22 to 24 weeks.
Awaiting a court decision, providers are serving far fewer patients and losing staff. “This is disaster management.”
BY KAREN BROOKS HARPER & ELEANOR KLIBANOFF, THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
11.30.2021
WHEN TEXAS IMPOSED the most restrictive abortion law in the nation, doctors and clinics were forced to move their patients quickly to out-of-state providers.
And for the past two months, providers have had to work in a sort of limbo as they wait to see if the new law passes the Supreme Court’s review.
“This is not patient care,” said CeCe Cheng, a maternal fetal medicine specialist in San Antonio. “This is disaster management. And it has no place in medicine.”
Continued: https://undark.org/2021/11/30/how-texas-abortion-law-is-impacting-patients-and-providers/
By Fadzai Ndangana
Nov 30, 2021
Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council (ZNFPC) is lobbying to change the terms of the Termination of Pregnancy Act to reduce maternal death caused by unsafe abortions.
Although Zimbabwe has achieved many public health successes in areas that were once deemed controversial and challenging, too many Zimbabwean women are still dying from one of the leading causes of maternal deaths, particularly unsafe abortion.
Continued: https://www.263chat.com/znfpc-lobbies-for-review-of-termination-of-pregnancy-act/
Nov. 29, 2021
By Sarah Wildman
In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old married dentist, appeared at Ireland’s University Hospital Galway in pain. She was 17 weeks pregnant and miscarrying. According to Dr. Halappanavar’s husband, hospital staff said that there was no saving the pregnancy, but they refused to intercede because her fetus still had a heartbeat. She was told her only option was to wait.
Dr. Halappanavar became feverish. By the time the fetal heartbeat faded away, she was in organ failure. Two and a half days later, she was dead.
Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/opinion/heartbeat-abortion-bans-savita-izabela.html
As Roe v Wade faces a direct challenge, criminal defense attorneys, prosecutors, local judges and cops begin to lay out what it would look like to criminalize abortion
by Jessica Glenza, Graphics by Zala Šeško
Mon 29 Nov 2021
In the early 1970s, law enforcement leaders in Chicago decided the practice of illegal abortion was intolerable in their city and, in a mostly forgotten chapter of history, undertook a campaign to root out those who performed the procedure in secret.
On a tip, police turned their attention to “Call Jane”, a feminist collective of young women who, since 1965, had provided safe but illegal abortions to roughly 3,000 Chicagoans per year. The collective was raided after two Catholic women told police their sister-in-law planned to have an abortion performed by the group.
Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/29/us-abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade
Written by Marga Buenaventura
Nov 29, 2021
It’s hard having a uterus in the Philippines. Nine years have passed since the country formally enacted the Reproductive Health Act, giving hope to those in need of accessible contraception and responsible sexual education. But how has this landmark legislation actually improved the reproductive rights of Filipinos?
Despite the progressive contents of the RH Act, teenage pregnancy in the Philippines is the second highest in Southeast Asia, according to the Save the Children's 2019 Global Childhood Report. That means births to mothers aged 10 to 19 years old reached 180,000 in 2019, or 495 births per day.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an existential threat to Roe — even if the Court doesn’t use the words “Roe v. Wade is overruled.”
By Ian Millhiser
Nov 29, 2021
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which the Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday, is the single greatest threat to abortion rights since Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973. It involves a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, a law which violates the Supreme Court’s holding in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) that “a State may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability.”
“Viability” refers to the moment when a fetus can live outside of the womb, which typically occurs around the 24th week of pregnancy. (It’s worth noting that, while Mississippi’s law is often described as a “15-week” ban, the law provides that the 15-week clock starts ticking on “the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.” So, in practice, the law functions more like a 13-week abortion ban.)
Sure, other countries restrict abortion earlier in pregnancy than the US. They also have broad social safety nets that support families.
By Susan Rinkunas
Nov 29, 2021
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The United States is one of just seven countries worldwide, alongside China and North Korea, that allow “elective” abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. This line has been used on the Senate floor, in Trump administration policy statements, and dissents from court rulings to paint the US as extreme in terms of abortion leniency. (Two of the other countries on that list are Canada and the Netherlands, but Republican lawmakers oddly never mention those.)
The factoid was cited this summer in the Supreme Court brief from Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch to defend the state’s 15-week abortion ban. The law has never taken effect because it’s unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade, but Fitch explicitly asked the high court to overturn Roe in the case it’s hearing on Wednesday.
Continued: https://jezebel.com/no-the-us-isn-t-an-extreme-outlier-on-abortion-1848131047
Holly Meyer, Associated Press
Nov. 28, 2021
On the day the Supreme Court hears arguments in a Mississippi abortion ban case, Sheila Katz plans to be at a nearby church.
It is where the Jewish organization she leads is helping to host a morning interfaith service in support of abortion rights. That gathering, and a planned rally outside the court, are among the ways the National Council of Jewish Women and like-minded faith groups are challenging the erosion of abortion access in the U.S.
Continued: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/11/28/religious-abortion-rights-supporters/8786118002/
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