UK – Anti-abortion activists ramping up protests outside clinics after failure to introduce buffer zones

Exclusive: ‘They also hand out baby toys whose limbs have been removed which are covered in fake blood. They sometimes spit from their mouths at clients,’ says clinic manager

Maya Oppenheim, Women’s Correspondent

May 4, 2024

Anti-abortion activists are ramping up protests outside clinics in the wake of the government’s failure to introduce “buffer zones” outside medical centres, healthcare providers have warned.

MPs voted in favour of nationwide buffer zones outside abortion clinics in England and Wales in October 2022 but the Home Office has failed to roll them out. MSI Reproductive Choices, the UK’s leading abortion provider, called for the government to bring in the safe zones immediately. They are supposed to stop anti-abortion demonstrators standing outside or in close vicinity.

Continued; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/anti-abortion-protestors-buffer-zones-b2538099.html

USA – Anti-Abortion Activist Bragged About ‘Dumpster Diving’ for Fetuses

Police found five fetuses inside the home of Lauren Handy, who was indicted for allegedly blockading a clinic.

By Carter Sherman
April 1, 2022

The anti-abortion activist accused of storing fetal remains in her home has spent years tweeting about scouring abortion clinic grounds for fetuses and then burying them.

Lauren Handy, indicted Wednesday for allegedly blockading an abortion clinic, has not hidden her interest in creeping around abortion clinics. In a Twitter thread published in October 2020, Handy said that, by 2016, she was “regularly dumpster diving” at a Maryland abortion clinic to retrieve fetuses for a “proper burial.”

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/epx9dn/lauren-handy-fetuses-dumpster-diving

Anti-Abortion Activist With Five Fetuses Has Worried DC Clinic Workers for Years

The group affiliated with activist Lauren Handy claims to have additional fetuses.

WRITTEN BY SYLVIE MCNAMARA
PUBLISHED ON APRIL 1, 2022

On Wednesday, police found five fetuses in the Capitol Hill home of Lauren Handy, a 28-year-old, self-described “Catholic anarchist” who is a fixture of the DC anti-abortion scene. Approached by a WUSA9 reporter, Handy declined to elaborate on the findings, except to say—quite correctly—that “people will freak out when they hear.”

The Handy-affiliated group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) emailed Washingtonian a press release late Thursday night that teases the existence of an unspecified number of “remaining aborted fetuses (that have not been turned over to police).” PAAU promises to reveal the number of remaining fetuses, in addition to answering other questions, at a press conference next week.

Continued: https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/04/01/anti-abortion-activist-with-five-fetuses-has-worried-dc-clinic-workers-for-years/

USA – Five sets of fetal remains found in anti-abortion activist’s home, DC police say

Lauren Handy claims she gained access to organ bank at university in Seattle but authorities have not disclosed source of fetuses

Jessica Glenza and Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Thu 31 Mar 2022

Five sets of human fetal remains were recovered from the Washington DC home of an anti-abortion activist after a raid, the capital’s Metropolitan police department confirmed to the Guardian on Thursday.

The activist, a woman named Lauren Handy, 28, is a leader of the group Progressive Anti-Abortion uprising (PAAU) and has described herself as a “Catholic anarchist” in the past.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/31/five-fetuses-found-anti-abortion-activists-home-dc

31.03.2022

Featured

News

anti-choice extremists

anti-choice fanatics

anti-choice stupidity

fetal remains

Lauren Handy

Progressive Anti-Abortion uprising

Tina Mankowski

United States

Anti-choice

The Battle Over the Future of the Anti-Abortion Movement if the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade

BY ABIGAIL ABRAMS/WASHINGTON, D.C., TIME magazine
MARCH 25, 2022

On a cold, clear weekend in January, tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists convened in Washington for their annual gathering, the March for Life. The mood was triumphant. In the next few months, the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to pare back or overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established the constitutional right to abortion. Anti-abortion activists have been fighting for this moment for nearly a half century. For three days surrounding the march, they danced and prayed and tearfully embraced in the streets.

But under the surface, the weekend was fraught with tension. For decades, the well-organized, largely grassroots movement has worked to unite a diverse cross-section of American society behind their cause: white evangelicals, as well as some Catholics, Black protestants, Hispanics, and conservative Democrats. Now, with their goal finally in sight, the different factions of the movement have disparate ideas of what a post-Roe world might look like, and how the movement should channel its considerable political power toward achieving those visions.

Continued: https://time.com/6160143/anti-abortion-roe-wade-supreme-court/

25.03.2022

Commentary

Featured

Americans United for Life

anti-choice fanatics

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice restrictions

anti-choice white supremacy

Bailey Travis

Catherine Glenn Foster

Cherilyn Holloway

constitutional amendment to ban abortion

crisis pregnancy centers

Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa

incremental approach to banning abortion

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Mary Ziegler

Michael Knowles

Mike Madrid

National Abortion Federation

National Pro-Life Summit

New Wave Feminists

Patriot Front

Pro-Black Pro-Life

Republican Accountability Project

Roe v. Wade

Sarah Longwell

six-week ban

Students for Life of America

USA – This Is the Anti-Abortion Movement’s Next Big Move

Anti-abortion activists are already pushing for a world where a fetus has more rights than pregnant people.

Mar 10, 2022
Caroline Reilly, Rewire News

For decades, anti-abortion lawmakers have operated under the false pretense that their only target was abortion providers. Pregnant people, depicted mostly as victims of the predatory abortion industrial complex—or some other unhinged, alarmist framework—were safe from their wrath.

But their tone has shifted as of late. The concept of fetal “personhood,” which defines life as beginning at conception, has become mainstream, and those advocates are pushing for the laws around abortion to reflect that.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2022/03/10/this-is-the-anti-abortion-movements-next-big-move/

Religious zealots only show why abortion should be legal

By Suzanne McLaughlin
22nd August

LAST week a 10-year-old Brazilian girl wearing a little flowery dress and cheap
flip-flops was bundled into a car boot clutching her fluffy toy frog. She was
driven through a back door to a hospital guarded by military police past a
throng of right-wing and religious extremists in order to have a termination.

Abortion is allowed in Brazil in just three instances: to save a woman’s life,
if it is the result of rape and if the child is dead. This little girl was
living through two of these circumstances. She was a victim of rape and her
life was in imminent danger and so the judge in her home area ruled that the
abortion should go ahead.

Continued: https://www.thenational.scot/news/18669689.suzanne-mclaughlin-religious-zealots-show-abortion-legal/

Brazil: outcry as religious extremists harass child seeking abortion

Ten-year-old girl was forced to fly more than 900 miles to north-eastern city of Recife for the procedure after being raped

Tom Phillips and Caio Barretto Briso in Rio de Janeiro
Mon 17 Aug 2020

Scores of Brazilian women have taken to the streets to protect a 10-year-old child who was being persecuted by religious extremists for trying to legally undergo an abortion after being raped, allegedly by her uncle.

The girl, from São Mateus, a small town in the south-eastern state of Espírito Santo, was admitted to hospital on 7 August complaining of abdominal pain and doctors confirmed she was pregnant.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/brazil-protest-abortion-recife-hospital

USA – 2018: Alarming escalation in anti-abortion trespassing, obstruction, and vandalism

2018: Alarming escalation in anti-abortion trespassing, obstruction, and vandalism
National Abortion Federation Releases 2018 Violence & Disruption Statistics
May 24, 2019

Today, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) released its 2018 statistics on violence and disruption against abortion providers. As anti-abortion politicians continue to test the U.S. Supreme Court by passing unconstitutional anti-abortion laws and executive rules, those who oppose abortion are testing their local law enforcement. While NAF recorded a decrease in stalking, burglary, and assault and battery in 2018, NAF members reported an alarming escalation in incidences of obstruction, vandalism, and trespassing.

“Anti-choice individuals and groups have been emboldened by the rhetoric of President Trump, Vice President Pence, and other elected officials and we are seeing this play out in more instances of activities meant to intimidate abortion providers and disrupt patient services,” said The Very Reverend Katherine Ragsdale, Interim President and CEO of NAF. “Demonizing health care providers and women who rely on them for abortion care has become one of the go-to tactics for anti-choice politicians. Those lies have consequences and it is not the anti-choice politicians who are facing those consequences; it is those who are denied abortion care and the providers targeted by threats, harassment, and violence who are. It is time for the demonizing of abortion providers and their patients to end.”

Continued: https://prochoice.org/2018-alarming-escalation-in-anti-abortion-trespassing/

Italy – How the so-called pro-life movements are attacking women

How the so-called pro-life movements are attacking women
The city council of Verona has approved a motion supporting local anti-abortion associations, and has declared Verona "a city in favor of life".

Cinzia Sciuto
Oct 17, 2018

Why this story matters:

"Constitutional democracy was not born out of rights, but out of promises. It was not created containing, for example, the right to divorce, the right to terminate a pregnancy, or equal rights and obligations between spouses, and civil unions. In short, when we denounce the assault on these freedoms, we must keep in mind that these were not granted to us by constitutional democracy, but it is constitutional democracy that gave us the opportunity to pursue them" -- writes political scientist Nadia Urbinati in "La Repubblica" this week.

This means that enjoying those rights necessarily implies a constant struggle to defend them, to never consider them acquired once and for all. There are two reasons for this. The first is that, by definition, freedom is never fully acquired. For example, the laws on divorce and abortion in Italy, despite having represented veritable social revolutions, are nevertheless compromises leaving ample room for improvement.

Continued: https://newsmavens.com/news/smoke-signals/2036/how-the-so-called-pro-life-movements-are-attacking-women

17.10.2018