JANUARY 21, 2021
By Emma Batha
(Thomson Reuters Foundation) - President Joe Biden’s decision to scrap a “deadly” Trump-era policy banning funding for aid groups that discuss abortion could unleash billions in dollars for life-saving services in developing countries, women’s rights groups said on Thursday.
“It’s very, very good news. It sends a strong message that reproductive rights are human rights,” said Evelyne Opondo, Africa director at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
US medical adviser’s speech to WHO signals major turnaround on global health policy by Biden administration
Michael Safi, The Guardian
Thu 21 Jan 2021
The Biden administration will repeal anti-abortion restrictions on American aid and join the international vaccine-sharing scheme Covax, Anthony Fauci has announced in remarks signalling a major turnaround in US global health policy.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced the changes in a speech to the World Health Organization on Thursday morning after being chosen to head the US delegation to the global health group in one of the first acts of Joe Biden’s presidency.
BY MOIRA TAN
JANUARY 20, 2021
In this op-ed, Moira Tan, a 23-year-old Washington, D.C.-based reproductive justice organizer and legal scholar, explains how access to the abortion pill can help young people. She is a member of the Young Womxn of Color 4 Reproductive Justice Leadership Council and a volunteer with Collective Action for Safe Spaces DC.
Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade (1973), challenges to abortion continue to deluge the political landscape. From Louisiana to Kentucky to Colorado and Oregon, none of us young people organizing for abortion access in our communities are left unscathed by the relentless attacks on the constitutionally-affirmed procedure. There are unnecessary waiting periods, the proliferation of deceitful clinics, age restrictions, and more, with hundreds of bills and regulations introduced every year at the state and federal levels.
Continued: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/president-biden-abortion-pill
Biden vowed to repeal the ‘global gag rule,’ but Trump’s ‘anti-woman rhetoric’ isn’t necessarily going away
Urooba Jamal
Jan. 19, 2021
In 2019, Melvine Ouyo, a health policy expert and reproductive rights activist, attended a conference in her city of Nairobi, where antiabortion campaigners were protesting the event. Shortly after that, Ouyo said, she met a pregnant 14-year old girl who had no information about how she could access a safe abortion if she chose.
Ouyo said she believes that if the Trump administration’s “global gag rule” — a U.S. foreign aid policy that restricts funding for abortion-related services — had not been in place, the campaigners wouldn’t have had such a prominent platform, and the girl would have had more information about her reproductive health options.
"We have a ton of work to do to undo the harm over the last four years," said Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson.
Jan. 18, 2021
By Chloe Atkins, NBC News
President-elect Joe Biden is poised to roll back several of the Trump administration's most restrictive sexual and reproductive health policies, including limits on abortion.
Reproductive rights advocates expect Biden to quickly overturn Trump-era rules, like banning federal funds for foreign and national health organizations that promote and provide abortion and giving employers more freedom to deny free contraceptive coverage for their workers.
by Martha Paynter
Jan 18, 2021
On January 7, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association filed a lawsuit against the Higgs government in New Brunswick, challenging the constitutionality of the province’s restrictions to publicly-insured abortion services. Section 2.a.1 of Regulation 84-20 of the N.B. Medical Services Payment Act, enacted in 1984, states that abortion is “deemed not to be entitled services” for provincial payment unless it is provided in an approved hospital facility. Other services similarly banned from public payment include cosmetic surgery and breast augmentation. The regulation effectively excludes abortion care provided by Clinic 554, the former Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton, from public coverage. The federal government has reprimanded New Brunswick for being the only province in the country that refuses to fund clinic-based abortion, a move that violates the Canada Health Act.
As a registered nurse working in abortion care and research, I recognize there are many potential advantages to going to a clinic for abortion care, such as a welcoming environment; more specialized staff; and reduced travel time, since many clinics also provide related services like ultrasounds and bloodwork collection. But in New Brunswick there are two additional, critical benefits.
By Samantha Schmidt and Caroline Kitchener
Jan. 16, 2021
Derrick Evans walked with his phone out in front of him, camera facing forward, as he advanced on the patient in the abortion clinic parking lot. Surrounding the car, clinic volunteers tried to shield the patient with umbrellas and their own bodies. It was no use: On this February morning in 2019, Evans captured the patient on Facebook live, streaming to tens of thousands of followers.
“You will not do this in secret in West Virginia,” Evans said. He wore a “Make America Great Again” hat, as he did every week when he protested outside the Women’s Health Center, the only abortion clinic left in the state.
Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/16/derrick-evans-abortion-clinic/
The Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday puts abortion patients’ health at risk.
Jan 14, 2021
Rewire News Group Staff
The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration Tuesday in a ruling that puts abortion patients’ health at risk—the first abortion-related ruling with Amy Coney Barrett on the bench.
The decision in FDA v. ACOG reinstates a federal policy that requires medication abortion patients to pick up their abortion medications in person. Providers had challenged the policy because of the pandemic and a federal court had blocked it. The ruling puts that policy back in place.
The court issued its first abortion decision since Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed.
By LEAH LITMAN
JAN 14, 2021
On Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court released its first abortion decision since Senate Republicans confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor. The court’s unexplained, unsigned order allows the government to restrict access to the abortion pill. It also provides a strong signal that the new court is willing to indulge restrictions on abortion, even though it did not bother to explain why. Some may be inclined to write off the court’s decision since the incoming Biden administration could change the specific regulation at issue in the case, which required women to pick up mifepristone in person from a medical facility. But the decision serves as a standing invitation to states to impose yet more draconian restrictions on abortion.
Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/the-supreme-court-abortion-pill-order.html
It’s no coincidence several “pro-life” activists were in DC last week.
BECCA ANDREWS, Mother Jones
Jan 14, 2021
A week after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, we’re learning more and more about the people who charged the building. And recent reporting from Vice, Jezebel, and others reveal there were quite a few anti-abortion extremists at the pro-Trump rally, if not in the Capitol afterward as well. You’re probably thinking, hmm, ok, that makes sense—and it does! But the overlap of these universes cannot simply be boiled down to the fact that Trump supporters are more likely to strongly oppose abortion.
The violence we saw at the Capitol—and the inflammatory rhetoric and disinformation that led up to it—in fact mirrors what’s been plaguing the debate around abortion for several years.
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