USA – Her baby was going to die. Abortion laws forced her to give birth anyway

Photographs by Danielle Villasana
Story by Rebecca Wright, CNN
Published March 31, 2024

Samantha Casiano spent this month planning her daughter’s first birthday party. The 30-year-old east Texas mother of four knows how to throw a good party for her kids.

But this family get-together on Friday was not a traditional party, despite Casiano purchasing a cake and balloons for the event.

Instead, Casiano’s family spent the day at the gravesite of Halo Hope Villasana, Casiano’s daughter who was born with anencephaly, a fatal condition that prevents a child’s brain and skull from forming properly.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/03/health/texas-abortion-law-mother-cnnphotos/

31.03.2024

fatal fetal abnormality

forced childbirth

Luis Fernando Villasana

Canada – Chrystia Freeland stops by Toronto pharmacy to highlight drug coverage for diabetes and contraceptives in upcoming budget

Brooklyn Connolly, CTVNewsToronto.ca Journalist
Saturday, March 30, 2024

Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Saturday that a federal plan that will cover most prescription contraceptives and diabetes medicine in Canada will be rolled out soon.

The Pharmacare Act was tabled last month. The first phase of its rollout will be included in the upcoming 2024 budget, Freeland said Saturday in an appearance at a Toronto pharmacy to highlight the plan.

Continued: https://www.cp24.com/news/chrystia-freeland-stops-by-toronto-pharmacy-to-highlight-drug-coverage-for-diabetes-and-contraceptives-in-upcoming-budget-1.6828024

30.03.2024

News

Chrystia Freeland

contraception coverage

Poland’s president vetoes law on free access to morning-after pill for ages 15 and above

The Associated Press
March 29, 2024

WARSAW, POLAND - Poland’s President Andrzej Duda on Friday vetoed a law that would have allowed over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill for girls and women ages 15 and above, his office said. Duda said he was concerned about the health of minors and heeding the voices of parents.

A statement by Duda’s office said the president sent the law back to the parliament, but was open to a debate on free access to the hormonal contraception pill for those aged 18 and above.

Continued: https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/poland-s-president-vetoes-law-on-free-access-to-morning-after-pill-for-ages-15-and-above-1.6827301

29.03.2024

News

Andrzej Duda

EllaOne

emergency contraception

Migrant women who were raped before crossing the border grapple with restrictive abortion laws in the U.S.

Mexican cartels are using sexual violence as a weapon against migrants, leading women to discover they are pregnant after they cross the border — and face abortion bans.

March 27, 2024
By Paola Ramos and Kay Guerrero
(with 7-minute video)

Six weeks after a young asylum-seeker from El Salvador crossed into the U.S. from Mexico, she realized she was carrying a rape-related pregnancy.

The woman — who like the other women interviewed for this article aren’t being identified for security reasons — said she was sexually assaulted by the Mexican cartel that was holding her hostage in the dangerous border town of Reynosa, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, just a few miles from the U.S. border.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/mexican-cartel-sexual-violence-migrant-women-abortion-laws-rcna145164

27.03.2024

Commentary

Doctors Without Borders

Jennifer Harbury

mifepristone

migrant women and abortion

rape and abortion

self-managed abortion

Meta and Google accused of restricting reproductive health information

Report claims posts on abortion and contraception have been deleted while misinformation on the feeds of social media users in Africa, Latin America and Asia has not been tackled

Weronika Strzyżyńska
Wed 27 Mar 2024

Meta and Google are accused in a new report of obstructing information on abortion and reproductive healthcare across Africa, Latin America and Asia.

MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International) and the Center for Countering Digital Hate claim the platforms are restricting local abortion providers from advertising, but failing to tackle misinformation that undermines public access to reproductive healthcare.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/mar/27/meta-and-google-accused-of-restricting-reproductive-health-information

27.03.2024

News

Center for Countering Digital Hate

crisis pregnancy centres

MSI Reproductive Choices

As U.S. Faces a Rising Tide of Abortion Bans and Restrictions, France Enshrines Freedom of Access in the Constitution

The U.S. and France offer starkly different environments for women—but both countries share a strong feminist tradition. How do we explain their radically different abortion trajectories?

3/27/2024
by SHOSHANNA EHRLICH and LAURA FRADER, Ms. Magazine

In 2023, seeking “to avoid a U.S.-like scenario for women in France, as hard-right groups are gaining ground,” President Emmanuel Macron promised a constitutional amendment affirming women’s right to abortion and to control over their own bodies. The amendment subsequently passed by a crushing majority of 780 to 72 votes and was inserted ceremoniously into the French Constitution on March 8, 2024, International Women’s Day.

In celebration, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with the message “My Body, My Choice.” This global first came approximately 50 years after the French Parliament first voted to decriminalize abortion with the passage of the Veil Law, named for feminist minister of health Simone Veil, who championed the reform.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/03/27/france-abortion-usa-bans-constitution-right/

50 years after the former Yugoslavia protected abortion rights, that legacy is under threat

By Darko Bandic And Jovana Gec, The Associated Press
Mar 27, 2024

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — With vigils outside clinics, marches drawing thousands and groups of men kneeling to pray in public squares, religious and neo-conservative groups have been ramping up pressure to ban abortions in staunchly Catholic Croatia.

The fierce debate has fueled divisions in the European Union nation of about 3.9 million people where abortion remains legal but access to the procedure is often denied, sending many women to neighboring Slovenia to end a pregnancy.

The movement is in stark contrast to Croatia’s recent past, when it was part of the former Yugoslavia, a Communist-run country that protected abortion rights in its constitution 50 years ago.

Continued: https://halifax.citynews.ca/2024/03/27/50-years-after-the-former-yugoslavia-protected-abortion-rights-that-legacy-is-under-threat/

Philippines: Making abortion a constitutional right

MAR 26, 2024
ANA P. SANTOS

The Philippine prohibitions on abortion are one of the strictest in the world. This is the story of one woman who didn’t let that stop her from getting an abortion.

France just made abortion a constitutional right. Compared to the United States, where Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court recognized and upheld the constitutional right to abortion, France has enshrined it in its constitution – the legal decree from which all other laws are founded. This means that the right to abortion in France cannot be overturned as it was in the reversal of Roe vs. Wade. France is the first country where women and pregnant people are explicitly guaranteed the right to terminate a pregnancy and make decisions about their bodies.

Continued: https://www.rappler.com/voices/thought-leaders/dash-of-sas-making-abortion-constitutional-right-philippines/

26.03.2024

Commentary

abortion story

Ana P. Santos

Center for Reproductive Rights

USA – Justices appear skeptical of call to restrict abortion pill

A decision, likely to come in June, would be a major victory for the FDA’s authority to regulate prescription drugs and for abortion-rights advocates who have sought to protect access to mifepristone.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and JOSH GERSTEIN
03/26/2024

The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical of an effort to restrict access to a widely used abortion pill — with conservative and liberal justices alike raising questions about whether anti-abortion doctors can prove concrete injuries that give them standing to sue and whether a national judicial ruling rolling back availability of the drug is justified.

During the roughly 90 minutes of oral arguments, two conservative justices likely to be pivotal votes in the case — Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — expressed repeated doubts about harms the anti-abortion physicians claimed they’ve faced in treating patients who’ve taken abortion pills and needed follow-up care. Those two justices also questioned whether curtailing access to the drug would address those alleged harms.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/26/scotus-restrict-abortion-pill-mifepristone-00149039

26.03.2024

News

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

Amy Coney Barrett

Chief Justice John Roberts

Elizabeth Prelogar

Erin Hawley

Ketanji Brown Jackson

USA – The Current Attack on Abortion Pills Will Fail. The Next One Will Be So Much Worse.

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN
MARCH 26, 2024

There are always a couple of tells when the most conservative Supreme Court in more than a century finds itself adjudicating a truly mortifying and meritless case. One is that it’s coming up by way of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, a court that so consistently shovels its worst constitutional garbage upward that the high court conservatives are often forced to reluctantly lob it back. Another tell is when the facts of the case are so laugh-out-loud insane that even conservative justices can’t bring themselves to adopt them or the underpinning legal reasoning with a straight face. There’s yet a third tell: when the conservative justices start injecting a bunch of nonsense and randomized pet peeves into oral argument to distract from how embarrassing it would be to discuss the merits of the actual case.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/mifepristone-supreme-court-alito-national-abortion-ban.html