Survey: Morality increasingly considered a barrier to health-care access in Canada

By Mario Canseco
November 17, 2022

…. This month, 56 per cent of Canadians disagree with health-care professionals having the ability to object to providing services if they have a moral or faith-based objection to abortion. This represents a seven-point increase from our previous survey in February 2020 (49 per cent). The proportion of Canadians who would not be upset if a doctor chose not to facilitate an abortion fell by seven points, from 39 per cent to 32 per cent.

In no region do we see more than two in five residents agreeing with the notion of a doctor walking out on a patient seeking to terminate a pregnancy on account of moral beliefs.

Continued: https://biv.com/article/2022/11/survey-morality-increasingly-considered-barrier-health-care-access-canada

26.11.2022

USA – The next abortion fight could be over wastewater regulation

Abortion opponents plan to use environmental laws to curb access to pills used to terminate an early pregnancy

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
11/23/2022

Abortion opponents and their allies in elected office are seizing on an unusual strategy after suffering a wave of election defeats — using environmental laws to try to block the distribution of abortion pills.

The new approach comes as the pills mifepristone and misoprostol, which people can take at home during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. and virtually the only option for millions of people in states with laws that have forced clinics to close since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/23/abortion-pills-opponents-environmental-laws-00070603

Indiana – She made headlines for providing abortion care to a 10-year-old. Now she’s fighting to protect patient privacy.

A judge will decide if the Indiana attorney general who is investigating Dr. Caitlin Bernard can seek her patient records.

Jennifer Gerson
November 22, 2022

Weeks after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Dr. Caitlin Bernard made national headlines when she disclosed that she had provided an abortion to a 10-year-old girl who had been raped. That attention landed Bernard in the middle of an investigation by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita into whether she properly documented the abortion and if she violated privacy laws. Now a judge will decide whether Rokita can seek other patients’ medical records as part of the investigation.

Monday night concluded the second part of an emergency hearing scheduled to determine whether Bernard will be granted a preliminary injunction to block Rokita from continuing to subpoena medical records from Bernard and her medical partner as part of his ongoing investigation into her. Rokita’s investigation continues even after Bernard proved that she had properly documented the abortion and that she had not violated patient privacy laws when she told reporters about the 10-year-old.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/11/indiana-doctor-caitlin-bernard-patient-privacy-records/

22.11.2022

USA – Setting the Record Straight on Abortion and Maternal Health

The Turnaway Study’ was published in 2020 to much acclaim. Now the integrity of a paper criticizing it is being investigated.

Colleen Flaherty
November 14, 2022

Frontiers in Psychology, a peer-reviewed open-access journal published by Frontiers Media, is investigating a recent paper criticizing a landmark study on abortion and maternal well-being.

Frontiers published an expression of concern—separate from the review article itself—last month, after readers pointed out that the article had been edited and peer reviewed only by scientists with antiabortion views. The editor and three out of four reviewers are affiliated with one antiabortion group in particular.

Continued: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/11/14/journal-investigating-antiabortion-paper

14.11.2022

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health

Carol Hogue

Charlotte Lozier Institute

Committee on Publication Ethics

Frontiers in Psychology

Jamie Barclay

Priscilla K. Coleman

Turnaway study

The midterms were a resounding win for abortion rights — with one exception

So you voted because of abortion? Here’s what it got you.

By Dylan Scott
Nov 9, 2022

Democrats sought to make the 2022 election a referendum on reproductive rights, and they appear to have been successful: Not only did ballot measures on abortion rights come down repeatedly on the pro-abortion rights side, but the outcomes of important state races should also provide protection for abortion access in states across the country.

In several states, a change in the balance of power within the state legislature or in the governor’s seat would have given Republicans new opportunities to pass new restrictions on abortion across the country.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23444732/2022-midterm-elections-results-abortion-rights-nebraska-north-carolina

09.11.2022

abortion in the midterms

Elizabeth Nash

Guttmacher Institute

‘This is a state of emergency’: the US billboards using art to urge abortion access

In states across the US with restricted access to abortions, artists have designed billboards to insist on voters to prioritise women’s health in time for the midterm elections

Adrian Horton
Mon 7 Nov 2022

For the next few weeks, passersby in 14 US cities, many in states with curtailed or tenuous abortion access, will see clear, strikingly positive messages responding to the reproductive health crisis in the US.

“Abortion is Healthcare,” says one billboard in Louisville, Kentucky, where the right to abortion is on the ballot this week, around two pink stethoscope cords in the shape of a uterus. In New Orleans, a sign blares “THANK GOD FOR ABORTION” in stark black and white, an angel flying off the top right corner. In Atlanta, site of two of the most closely watched midterm races this year, a background of lush green leaves underscores blooming text composed of tropical flowers: “ABORTION IS LIFE.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/07/abortion-billboards-us-roe-v-wade-midterms-art

08.11.2022

abortion is healthcare

art and abortion

Michele Pred

pro-choice billboards

SaveArtSpace

Vote for Abortion Rights

USA – Don’t Report Your Abortion Patients to Law Enforcement

— Self-managed abortion does not legally need to be reported

by Jamila Perritt, MD, MPH, and Jill E. Adams, JD
November 5, 2022

State-based abortion bans throughout the country have been choking off access to abortion care, including clinic-based and telehealth care. While these laws are designed to directly target abortion providers with civil and criminal penalties, they also indirectly increase the likelihood that other people may fall prey to the criminal legal system, particularly those who self-manage their abortion and those who support them. Although only two states have laws prohibiting self-managed abortion, politically and ideologically motivated police and prosecutors in other states are more than willing to warp existing laws and misapply them in order to punish people seeking to manage their own care. As a result, more people will be unjustly interrogated, arrested, and prosecuted for allegedly ending their own pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/101581

05.11.2022

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

American Public Health Association

criminalization of abortion seekers

If/When/How

Jamila Perritt

Jill E. Adams

law enforcement and doctors

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

reporting patients to law enforcement

reporting patients to police

self-managed abortion

After Roe, abortion’s underground railroad gains steam

A network of activists is helping women terminate pregnancies in countries where the procedure is banned.

BY CARLO MARTUSCELLI, EMILY SCHULTHEIS, MANDOLINE RUTKOWSKI AND JAKUB KORUS
OCTOBER 29, 2022

RIGA — If you want to get an abortion in Poland, Kinga Jelinska is happy to help. Legally terminating your pregnancy is almost impossible in the Eastern European country. Abortion is only allowed in the case of rape or incest, or when it threatens the life of the woman.

That’s where Jelinska comes in. She’s the co-founder and executive director of Women Help Women, an Amsterdam-based nonprofit that helps provide women with the pills needed for an at-home medical abortion. The service Jelinska’s group provides falls into a legal grey zone; self-induced abortion is illegal in a number of countries, but in Poland, it’s not explicitly banned.

Continued: https://www.politico.eu/article/roe-v-wade-europe-abortion-pill-illegal-underground-network/

Savita Halappanavar should not have had to die for reproductive rights to change

Ireland owes Savita Halappanavar a great debt and a great deal of gratitude for making this country safer for other women, writes Liz Dunphy.

FRI, 28 OCT, 2022
LIZ DUNPHY

Wax dripped like tears from flickering candles which burned brightly around a photo of Savita Halappanavar at a vigil for her in Cork in the days after her death.

The people cried too. Women and men, teenagers, parents holding their young children in their arms and by the hand, knowing that Savita could have been them, their daughter, their mother, their sister, their friend.

Continued: https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40993598.html

28.10.2022

Liz Dunphy

Savita Halappanavar

Simon Harris

Lesson from Latin America for U.S. abortion rights movement

Top jurists map out paths taken by Mexico, Colombia to landmark legalization rulings

BY Liz Mineo, Harvard Staff Writer
October 26, 2022

Mexico and Colombia recently legalized abortion in landmark rulings that offer a stark contrast to the Dobbs decision that overturned the right to the procedure in the U.S. A recent event at Harvard Law School looked at the three seismic legal shifts and produced insights that could, organizers say, yield lessons for the U.S. abortion rights movement.

Justices Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena of the Supreme Court of Mexico and Natalia Ángel Cabo of the Colombian Constitutional Court last week laid out the factors that led to the rulings in their respective countries in a panel on reproductive justice sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Continued: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/10/lesson-from-latin-america-for-u-s-abortion-rights-movement/

26.10.2022