Canada – 36 Canadian senators call for New Brunswick to ensure access to abortion

By Karla Renic, Global News
Posted September 30, 2020

On Tuesday, 36 senators from across Canada signed a call for access to reproductive rights in New Brunswick after Premier Blaine Higgs said funding Clinic 554 would be a “slippery slope.”

Fredericton’s Clinic 554, which serves as an abortion clinic, a family practice and a resource for LGBTQ2+ patients across the province, is set to close at the end of the month as a result of the lack of funding.

Continued: https://globalnews.ca/news/7368407/canadian-senators-new-brunswick-access-to-abortion/

30.09.2020

Canada Health Transfer funds

Canada – It’s hard enough to get an abortion in New Brunswick—closing Clinic 554 won’t help

by Tegwyn Hughes
Posted on August 17, 2020

This article is the first in a two-part series about Clinic 554 and health care in New Brunswick.

In the Greater Toronto Area, there are nine locations where someone can access abortion services. In the entire province of New Brunswick, there are only four. Come September, that number could shrink to three, worsening the already poor access to abortion care in the province.

Clinic 554, New Brunswick’s only independent clinic that offers abortions—as well as family medicine, trans-inclusive care, and contraception counselling—is set to close permanently at the end of September. Advocates for the Fredericton, N.B. clinic, as well as former patients, are urging the provincial government to save it, but the Progressive Conservative leadership hasn’t budged.

Continued: https://the-pigeon.ca/2020/08/17/clinic-554-1/

Pro-choice activists launch abortion initiative in Poland

Pro-choice activists launch abortion initiative in Poland
Abortion Without Borders to offer women advice and funds to seek treatment abroad

Shaun Walker, Central and eastern Europe correspondent
Tue 10 Dec 2019

An international group of pro-choice campaigners will launch an initiative in Poland this week to provide advice and funding for women to travel abroad to have abortions.

Poland has some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, and proposals backed by the rightwing government to introduce a total ban on abortions in 2016 were scrapped only after large-scale protests.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/10/pro-choice-activists-launch-abortion-initiative-in-poland

USA – How billionaire philanthropy provides reproductive health care when politicians won’t

How billionaire philanthropy provides reproductive health care when politicians won’t
How philanthropists brought us modern contraception — and where we’d be without them.

By Kelsey Piper
Sep 17, 2019

There’s a new backlash against billionaire philanthropy. Some of its leading voices have argued that “every billionaire is a policy failure” and that it’d be better if billionaires didn’t exist at all — even if that meant the disappearance of philanthropy by billionaires.

The conversation has done a lot of valuable work, encouraging more scrutiny of charitable activity, pointing out where philanthropy is a fig leaf for misconduct, and forcing institutions to grapple with when it’s wrong to accept money that was unethically acquired.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/17/20754970/billionaire-philanthropy-reproductive-health-care-politics

USA – What’s It’s Like to Work at an Abortion Call Center

What It’s Like to Work at an Abortion Call Center
Amid growing abortion restrictions, the relationship between phone advocates and clients is a mix of customer service and counseling

Lux Alptraum
Sep 10, 2019

On a nondescript street in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, sits a squat one-story building, the kind found in suburban office parks around the country. Past its doors is a maze of rooms with walls painted in welcoming shades of pink, purple, and yellow. In the heart of the operation, a group of workers sit in their cubicles, taking phone calls from clients around the country — and, on occasion, around the globe.

The staff are not offering tech support or assisting someone in tracking down a lost package. They’re helping the many clients of the Women’s Centers — a network of five abortion clinics located in New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

Continued: https://elemental.medium.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-an-abortion-call-center-8d99cc62b191

The impact of U.S.’s abortion policies on international diplomacy

The impact of U.S.’s abortion policies on international diplomacy

On August 29, 2019
WIIS Blog, Women Peace & Security
By Hannah Proctor, Research Fellow, WIIS Global

Throughout 2019, conservative states in the U.S. have been adopting increasingly restrictive abortion laws in an effort to undermine, and eventually abolish, the Roe v. Wade decision, which guaranteed the right to abortion based on the right to privacy. These laws and the mindsets that accompany them have far-reaching consequences that go beyond U.S. borders.

Historically, conservative U.S. administrations have relied on two main pieces of legislation to enforce their anti-abortion positions globally:

Continued: https://www.wiisglobal.org/the-impact-of-u-s-s-abortion-policies-on-international-diplomacy/

Kirsten Gillibrand gave her opponents a history lesson on abortion politics at the debate

Kirsten Gillibrand gave her opponents a history lesson on abortion politics at the debate
Democrats have similar positions on abortion. The New York senator asked how hard they’ll fight.

By Anna North
Jun 28, 2019

Many candidates in this week’s Democratic debates talked about the future of abortion rights in America. But Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was one of few to talk about the history.

The exchange started with a question to Sen. Bernie Sanders about how he would preserve abortion rights if the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade were overturned before he became president. Sanders responded that his Medicare for All bill would cover abortion for anyone who wanted it.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/28/18942612/democratic-debate-june-2019-2020-kirsten-gillibrand

28.06.2019

USA – How Republican Policies Force Women to Choose Abortion

How Republican Policies Force Women to Choose Abortion

ZawnVillines
Thursday February 28, 2019

If you believe the social media posts, television screeds, and scare tactics of Republicans, women are murderous by nature. Given half the chance, they’ll undergo invasive surgery to kill a baby for the sheer joy of it. If their unwanted baby is somehow born alive, they’ll happily ask a doctor to snuff out its life.

It’s a nightmarish vision that runs counter to all reason and all evidence. For generations, women have stood at the forefront of every movement to protect human life and dignity. They commit fewer crimes. And though they spend, on average, significantly more time with their children, they’re far less likely to abuse them. When you really start digging into Republican views, it’s hard for them to mask their true feelings: they hate women. They don’t trust them. This depiction of women as infanticidal monsters also ignores hundreds of heartbreaking stories of women who choose to abort children they love, either to spare the child the misery of a few agonizing seconds of life on Earth, or because the child is already dead.

continued: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/28/1838316/-How-Republican-Policies-Force-Women-to-Choose-Abortion

USA – States Flout Abortion Coverage Requirements, Federal Investigators Say

States Flout Abortion Coverage Requirements, Federal Investigators Say

By Robert Pear
Feb. 17, 2019

WASHINGTON — Federal health officials are not enforcing requirements for Medicaid coverage of abortion in the limited circumstances where it is legal, congressional investigators have found.

At least 13 states are flouting a requirement to cover abortion-inducing pills, and one state, South Dakota, has for 25 years failed to provide the required coverage for abortion in cases of rape or incest, the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, said in a report made public this month.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/politics/states-abortion-coverage-medicaid.html

Trump’s reinstatement and expansion of the global gag rule has harmful effects for women, men, and children

Trump’s reinstatement and expansion of the global gag rule has harmful effects for women, men, and children

Jan 11, 2019
Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, Ernestina Coast, and Nicky Armstrong

Two years ago this month, President Trump reinstated and expanded the global gag rule – the perennial Republican policy which cuts US funding for any organisation worldwide which offers abortion services or counselling. Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, Ernestina Coast and Nicky Armstrong argue that not only will the measure – which covers a pot of nearly $10 billion in funding for NGOs – be ineffective in reducing the number of abortions, it will also harm women’s’ reproductive health as well as making other crucial health services less available to women, men, and children around the world.

Who influences whether women in poorer countries can access abortions and other sexual health services? It may surprise you, but the US president has an important part to play. This is because of the so called “global gag rule”(GGR), a US foreign policy that cuts family planning and reproductive health assistance to any healthcare provider overseas which offers and provides abortions.

Continued: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2019/01/11/trumps-reinstatement-and-expansion-of-the-global-gag-rule-has-harmful-effects-for-women-men-and-children/

11.01.2019