Embattled Finland minister quits amid new ‘mass abortions for Africa’ scandal

By David Mac Dougall
30/06/2023

The extremist comments and behaviour of Vilhelm Junnila have come under scrutiny since his appointment as minister for economic affairs just last Tuesday.

Finland's minister for economic affairs resigned on Friday, a little more than a week after taking office, amid a flurry of scandals linking him to neo-Nazi ideology.

Vilhelm Junnila, of the far-right Finns Party, quit amid a new furore over comments he made in parliament where he said a solution for the climate crisis is to give more abortions to African women. He called the concept "climate abortions".

Continued: https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/30/embattled-finland-minister-quits-amid-mass-africa-abortions-scandal

30.06.2023

News

anti-choice Neo-Nazis

anti-choice stupidity

Denied an abortion, she raised a child: One Mississippi mom shares her story

"I love my child to the ends of the earth. That doesn’t make what happened any less unfair.”

June 30, 2023
By Danielle Campoamor

Laurie Bertram Roberts remembers the emotion that consumed her when, as a 19-year-old single mom of two, she needed an abortion.

Fear.

She was only three months postpartum and recovering from a C-section when she found out she was pregnant again. She's now 45, but vividly remembers desperately searching for the nearest clinic, poring over every weathered phonebook she could find as her newborn slept in her arms.

Continued: https://www.today.com/parents/moms/abortion-mississippi-mom-had-baby-rcna90226

30.06.2023

Commentary

Equal Rights Advocates

Laurie Bertram Roberts

maternal mortality

Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

South Africa – ‘It was just another abortion’

June 29, 2023
Nicola Daniels

While sitting and queuing for hours to have a legal abortion, she felt scared and confused. Some girls were crying, some left the facility because they felt alone, and the staff didn’t care about their feelings or stories.

It was “just another abortion”.

This was the experience of a young woman who underwent an abortion at a local hospital this year. She asked to remain anonymous for her safety.

Continued: https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/it-was-just-another-abortion-d2699620-2834-4941-998c-dcd5df2d44e6

29.06.2023

Commentary

Dr Margit Endler

Kholofelo Mphahlele

women's abortion stories

Our Abortion Stories: ‘I Want Greg Abbott to Look Me in the Eye and Tell Me I Deserve What Happened’

6/29/2023
by VAL DIEZ CANSECO

“It had been a normal day.”
When Terry went to her 15-week ultrasound appointment, she found out her fetus had not developed at all above the neck—there was no head. It was a one-in-a-million abnormality, the specialist told them.

“It was at that point I began to go numb. I kind of shut down. My specialist told me, ‘There’s only one thing that we can do to assure that you walk out of this healthy.’ He recommended that I terminate the pregnancy.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/06/29/abortion-stories-roe-v-wade-5/

29.06.2023

Commentary

abortion stories

Greg Abbott

near-total abortion ban

women's abortion stories

The Forgotten Tragedy Of Unsafe Abortion

Jun 29, 2023
By Amanda Seller, President MSI United States

In the half a century that Roe v. Wade protected the right to choose in the United States, the risks of unsafe abortion became a distant memory. But in countries that liberalized their abortion laws more recently, the deadly consequences of abortion restrictions are still recent. Their experiences are an important reminder that banning abortion endangers women’s lives.

MSI Reproductive Choices is one of the world’s largest providers of sexual and reproductive healthcare, including safe abortion and care after unsafe abortions. Three providers in Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Nepal shared memories of the impact restrictive laws had on women in their countries.

Continued: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeseq/2023/06/29/the-forgotten-tragedy-of-unsafe-abortion/?sh=703c3c1a1ec7

Biden has reminded us yet again that he’s a weak and lukewarm ally of abortion rights

At a recent fundraiser he said he’s ‘not big on’ abortion. It’s not pro-choice activists who are out of step with the mainstream; it’s Joe Biden

Moira Donegan
Thu 29 Jun 2023

A closed-door fundraiser for the very wealthy is a place where a lot of politicians really shine. Among their fellow elites, surrounded by people like them who like them – and are giving them money – Democrats and Republicans alike often become their truest selves. They drop the flesh-pressing affectations, the focused-group soundbites, the stiff smiles. They become something they’re usually not: honest.

Honest is what Biden was at a similar fundraiser in tony Chevy Chase, Maryland, this past Tuesday, when he told a crowd of his wealthy supporters that he was personally ambivalent about abortion rights. “I’m a practicing Catholic. I’m not big on abortion,” the president said. Nevertheless, he claimed that the compromise Roe v Wade decision on abortion “got it right”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/29/biden-abortion-rights-dobbs-roe-v-wade

29.06.2023

Nonreligious Americans Are The New Abortion Voters

By Daniel Cox and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
JUN. 29, 2023

When Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, many white evangelical Protestants didn’t just see the Supreme Court’s ruling as a political win — it was a spiritual victory. For decades, religious conservatives have been singularly focused on ending the constitutional right to abortion, a priority that few other demographic groups shared. White evangelical Protestants — a group that has, since the 1980s, voted overwhelmingly for Republicans — were much more likely than other religious groups to say that abortion was a high priority.

The fall of Roe appears to be changing that. In 2021, the share of religiously unaffiliated Americans (a group that includes atheists, agnostics and people who identify with no religion in particular) who said abortion was a critical issue started to rise. And for the first time in 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the share of religiously unaffiliated Americans who said that abortion was a critical issue was higher than the share of white evangelicals who said the same.

Continued: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nonreligious-americans-are-the-new-abortion-voters/

29.06.2023

Commentary

Research

American Enterprise Institute

Andrew Lewis

atheists and abortion

David Campbell

non-religious and abortion

Pew Research Center

religiously unaffiliated people and abortion

Survey Center on American Life

white evangelicals and abortion

United States

Human Rights

Religion

‘It’s Breaking My Heart’: Abortion Providers on Life After Roe

For many abortion providers, working in a clinic isn’t just a job—it’s a calling. But clinics are businesses, too, and in the 15 states that have banned almost all abortions, business has been turbulent.

Carter Sherman, VICE
June 28, 2023

Kathaleen Pittman was too angry to retire.

Pittman had worked at Hope Medical Group, one of the last abortion clinics in Louisiana, for thirty years. She’d started there as a part-time counselor in 1992; by 2022, she was running the place. She’d gone to the Supreme Court to defend her clinic and won, successfully striking down a Louisiana abortion restriction in 2020.

Two years after that victory, she watched as the Supreme Court dismantled her life’s work by overturning Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. She went back to court to try and fend off Louisiana’s cascade of abortion bans, but a month after the overturning, the clinic had to close. Louisiana had outlawed nearly all abortions.

Continued: https://www.rsn.org/001/its-breaking-my-heart-abortion-providers-on-life-after-roe.html

Maltese lawmakers vote to legalize abortion, but only where the mother is at risk of death

BY KEVIN SCHEMBRI ORLAND, ASSOCIATED PRESS

June 28, 2023

VALLETTA, Malta — Maltese lawmakers on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation to ease the strictest abortion laws in the European Union, but pro-choice campaigners had withdrawn their support, saying last-minute changes make the legislation “vague, unworkable and even dangerous.”

The original bill allowing women access to abortion if a pregnant woman’s life or health is in danger was hailed as a step in the right direction for Malta, an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation. It was introduced last fall after an American tourist who miscarried had to be airlifted off the Mediterranean island nation to be treated.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/malta-abortion-rights-a5cf505917178cde19adf292ce43ce7c

28.06.2023

News

abortion law reform

Andrea Prudente

life of the woman exception

medical emergency exemption

Voices for Choice Coalition Malta

Canada – Why is this CAQ minister so determined to draft an abortion law nobody wants?

Women's health and legal experts agree Martine Biron is trying to fix something that isn't broken

Steve Rukavina · CBC News
Posted: Jun 28, 2023

Martine Biron, Quebec's minister responsible for the status of women, announced to the surprise of many in April that she wanted to enshrine in law a woman's right to abortion in Quebec.

The idea was surprising for many reasons. The CAQ government never campaigned on it and had never before mentioned it.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/martine-biron-abortion-law-no-one-wants-1.6889888