Enab Baladi
29/02/2024
Women in Idlib province face societal difficulties and pressures when they decide to undergo an abortion. These pressures come from relatives, neighbors, and even doctors, despite the woman’s need for the procedure in some cases.
Some believe that abortion is religiously forbidden in Islam and other religions, and this applies not only to Idlib but to many countries that criminalize such operations, considering it as taking a life.
FEB 29, 2024
Notes from Poland
Mateusz Morawiecki, who led the former Law and Justice (PiS) government that oversaw the introduction of Poland’s near-total abortion ban, now says he and “many PiS colleagues” would vote in favour of a proposal by one of the country’s new ruling groups to overturn that ban.
In December, the national-conservative PiS party was replaced in power by a more liberal coalition led by Donald Tusk. Two of the groups in that coalition – Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO) and The Left (Lewica) – want to not only end the near-total abortion ban but also introduce abortion on demand.
The conservative-dominated Sénat, with 267 votes to 50, approved the bill to constitutionalize abortion as a 'guaranteed freedom.' President Emmanuel Macron will call a joint session of Parliament on March 4 for a final vote on the reform.
Le Monde with AP and AFP
February 28, 2024
France's Sénat on Wednesday, February 28, adopted a bill to enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in the Constitution, clearing a key hurdle for legislation promised by President Emmanuel Macron in response to a rollback in abortion rights in the United States.
With 267 votes in favor and 50 against, the Sénat voted in favor of constitutionalizing abortion. Wednesday's vote came after the Assemblée Nationale, overwhelmingly approved the proposal in January. The measure now goes before a joint session of Parliament for its expected approval by a three-fifths majority next week.
The number of monthly abortions in the U.S. is similar to what it was before the nation's top court overturned the right to abortion
By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press
February 28, 2024
The number of abortions performed each month is about the same as before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to abortion more than a year and a half ago, a new report finds.
The latest edition of the #WeCount report conducted for the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit organization that promotes research on abortion and contraception, finds that between 81,150 and 88,620 abortions took place each month from July through September of last year, the most recent period for which survey results are available. Those numbers are just slightly lower than the monthly average of about 86,800 from April through June 2022, before Roe and just after was overturned.
The criticism of four older studies alleging abortion causes mental illness follows high-profile retractions of studies claiming the abortion pill is dangerous.
BY: SOFIA RESNICK
FEBRUARY 27, 2024
Health and science experts published a commentary in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday calling for the retraction of four older abortion-related studies that, despite documented flaws, have influenced major anti-abortion decisions over the past 20 years, including the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned federal abortion rights.
The commentary comes the same month academic publisher Sage Journals retracted studies calling into question the long-established safety record of the abortion drug mifepristone, which were produced by anti-abortion activists shortly before they sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the same drug.
Continued: https://kentuckylantern.com/2024/02/27/researchers-call-for-more-abortion-studies-to-be-retracted/
The GOP's been suffering on the issue of abortion already — Democrats can now clobber them with Alabama's IVF move
By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV, Salon
FEBRUARY 27, 2024
Man, one thing you can depend on Republicans for is that if you give them a shovel, they will just keep on digging. Last week the Alabama Supreme Court did Republicans the favor (not!) of putting in vitro fertilization on the ballot for 2024. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court did their Republican handlers the favor (not!) of putting abortion on the ballot by overturning of Roe v Wade. Now Democrats will be able to use access to contraception as another issue to pound Republicans with, given the results of a new poll that shows how hugely unpopular Republican opposition to contraception is.
Republicans have been suffering on the issue of abortion already, losing several special elections to Democrats pushing the issue. It’s a no-brainer.
Continued: https://www.salon.com/2024/02/27/first-abortion-then-ivf-and-now-birth-control/
Even before the court ruled in favor of this vulgar fiction, state authorities relied on the concept to intimidate and jail women
Moira Donegan
Mon 26 Feb 2024
Something that’s important to remember about last week’s ruling by the Alabama supreme court, which held that frozen embryos were persons under state law, is that the very absurdity of the claim is itself a demonstration of power. That a frozen embryo – a microscopic bit of biological information that can’t even be called tissue, a flick laden with the hopes of aspiring parents but fulfilling none of them – is equivalent in any way to a child is the sort of thing you can only say if no one has the power to laugh at you. The Alabama supreme court is the final court of review in that state. It cannot be appealed. For the foreseeable future, frozen cells in Alabama have the same legal status there as you or I do. Is this an absurd elevation of the status of an embryo, or an obscene degradation of human beings? The answer, of course, is both.
Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/26/alabama-ivf-frozen-embryos-surveillance
In states that banned abortion, doctors are forced to wrestle with tough decisions about high-risk pregnancy care. “I don’t want to have a patient die and be responsible for it,” one Tennessee doctor said.
by Kavitha Surana
Feb. 26, 2024
Sitting at her computer one day in late December, Dr. Sarah Osmundson mustered her best argument to approve an abortion for a suffering patient.
The woman was 14 weeks pregnant when she learned her fetus was developing without a skull. This increased the likelihood of a severe buildup of amniotic fluid, which could cause her uterus to rupture and possibly kill her. Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who helps patients navigate high-risk pregnancies, knew that outcome was uncommon, but she had seen it happen.
Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-doctor-decisions-hospital-committee
The campaigner said unsafe abortion in Nigeria constitutes 10 per cent of the global maternal death rate and stands as the country’s second leading cause of maternal mortality.
By Mariam Ileyemi
February 26, 2024
Women groups and representatives of civil society organisations led by the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) have appealed to the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to reinstate the suspended guidelines on safe termination of pregnancy.
The groups in a webinar on Monday said the guidelines are important to make provision for termination of pregnancy in cases of incest, rape, and sexual and gender-based violence.
FEB 24, 2024
Notes from Poland
A bill that would liberalise Poland’s abortion law has been submitted by the centre-right Third Way (Trzecia Droga), which is the more conservative wing of the ruling coalition that took power in December.
The group wants to restore the right to terminate pregnancies in cases where a birth defect is diagnosed in the foetus. Such abortions were banned under the former conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government.
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