Tag: Abortion rights

In El Salvador, a nightmare I can’t even read about without quaking with fury.

Cristina Quintanilla was 18 years old in October 2004 when, seven months pregnant with her second child, she collapsed in pain on the floor of her family home. “I felt like I was choking, like I couldn’t breathe,” she says, shaking at the memory.

Quintanilla, who lives in San Miguel, El Salvador, fell unconscious and, bleeding heavily, was taken to hospital by her mother. When she woke up, dizzy from blood loss and anaesthetic, and having lost her child, she says she was startled to find a police officer, not a doctor, by her bed.

Because she’s a woman and she had a miscarriage, so OBVIOUSLY she committed a crime.

“It was strange because doctors wear white but he was wearing blue … He said, ‘From this moment on, you are under arrest.’ This confused me even more.”

Quintanilla says she was interrogated while still under the effect of anaesthetic, handcuffed and brought from hospital to a cell in a police jail, accused of having killed ker child. Within 10 months, she was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. “It was another huge tragedy in my life. I had a son, who was three years old. How could I ever be with my child, with my family, with a sentence [like this]?”

See? That’s why I can’t read it and stay calm. THIRTY YEARS IN PRISON FOR HAVING A MISCARRIAGE.

El Salvador has one of the world’s strictest abortionlaws, with abortion a crime even when a woman’s life is at risk. Human rights activists say this has created a system of persecution in the country’s hospitals as well as its courts, where any woman – and particularly a poor, young woman who loses her baby – is suspect.

Dozens of women like Quintanilla have reportedly been prosecuted and imprisoned on homicide charges after suffering miscarriages, stillbirths, or obstetric emergencies away from medical attention.

Because when in doubt, persecute a woman.

According to the Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto (Citizens’ Coalition for the Decriminalisation of Abortion), 129 women were prosecuted for abortion-related crimes in El Salvador between 2000 and 2011, with 49 convicted (23 for abortion, 26 for homicide).

In a report published with the Centre for Reproductive Rights, the Agrupación says: “Enforcement of the country’s abortion law has had serious consequences in hospitals and healthcare centres, where any woman who comes to an emergency room haemorrhaging is presumed to be a criminal.”

In many of the cases documented, health workers had reported women to the police.

As if miscarriage simply didn’t exist!

High-profile backers of El Salvador’s abortion ban include senior figures in the Catholic church, National Republic Alliance party and the influential lobby group Sí a la Vida (Yes to Life).

While Beatriz’s case was being debated, José Luis Escobar, archbishop of San Salvador, reportedly suggested it would be inhuman and “against nature” for her to have an abortion, saying: “Sure, [Beatriz] has health problems, but she’s not in grave danger of death. Since we need to consider both lives we need to ask, whose life is in greater danger. We think that the foetus is in greater danger.”

How I wish there were a technology that could make some archbishops and cardinals pregnant against their will. How.I.wish.

One from the Center for Reproductive Rights:

A Dallas hospital has chosen to discriminate against two good doctors rather than protect women’s health.

Two weeks ago, the hospital revoked the doctors’ admitting privileges, specifically because—and they said as much—they provide abortion services.

That’s illegal, and we are fighting against the hospital’s decision in court.

Here’s what the hospital told them:

“[Your] practice of performing [abortions] is disruptive….[and] creates significant exposure and damages to [our] reputation within the community.”

What on earth? “Disruptive”? What is this, kindergarten? And how does it damage the hospital’s reputation, unless the hospital cares only about its reputation among Catholic priests and other anti-abortion fanatics. I don’t think hospitals are supposed to make medical decisions on frivolous arbitrary personal grounds like that.

Right now, Texas law requires doctors providing abortion to have admitting privileges at a local hospital—a requirement with far-reaching and dangerous consequences.

As we’re seeing in Dallas, hospitals can discriminate against providers. And if enough providers are denied privileges, clinics will close. Women seeking essential reproductive health care will have nowhere to turn.

This is no hypothetical “worst-case scenario.” Patients in McAllen, TX, for example, must drive 300 miles roundtrip just to see a doctor since their only local clinic has been forced to close.

Because it’s Texas.

There’s a later update:

Update: A state judge just temporarily reinstated the two doctors’ admitting privileges. But the fight is far from over. The case is still moving forward. 

The Texas Taliban strikes again.

So let’s check in with the ACLU on the subject of religious interference with access to birth control. There’s Texas for instance…

Yesterday a federal appeals court upheld a Texas law that has left large parts of the state without an abortion provider. Women who already are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table for their families must now travel hundreds of miles to obtain abortion care. For many, the obstacles will be too burdensome to overcome.

For example, one woman in the Rio Grande Valley who showed up to her appointment the day the law took effect was devastated to learn that she could not have an abortion in her area. She was happily married with several children, but she could not afford another. In tears, she said that she did not have enough money to travel north and had no choice but to carry the pregnancy to term.

Triumph! Victory! Score for the people who value the fetus more than the woman whose body is incubating it. So she has several children and can’t afford another, so what, she should be forced to have that another one. God wants it that way.

How did this happen?

Despite overwhelming opposition, lawmakers in Texas passed a bill that requires doctors who provide abortion to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? After all, we all are concerned about women’s health. But just a quick look below the surface reveals that the law has nothing to do with women’s health and everything to do with forcing women’s health centers to shut their doors.

You might start by asking who proposed this law. Was it a medical organization? Nope. A doctors’ groups? Nope. All of the major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Texas Hospitals Association, all opposed this law. Rather, this bill came from Americans United for Life (AUL), a group dedicated to making abortion if not illegal, then impossible to get. AUL has touted restrictions like these as great ways to shut down abortion providers.

And tellingly, this law only applies to doctors who provide abortion. It doesn’t apply to doctors who provide other types of outpatient procedures, even those that carry far greater risks than abortion. But the appeals court overlooked this evidence and overlooked evidence demonstrating the devastating effect this law has on Texas women.

Because that’s what they want. The devastating effect on women isn’t an unfortunate side effect, it’s the goal.

Catherine Briggs of LifeSiteNews (yes, the anti-abortion site) seems to have missed the point of a certain fundraising campaign by a wide margin.

In the world of social media, instant news has become a way of life.  Thanks to Twitter and the diffusion of information at less than a moment’s speed, the DC Abortion Fund’s latest outrage has nowhere to hide.

In a move that can only be described as tasteless and sickening, the DC Abortion Fund has offered a gift of a coat-hanger pendant to anyone who signs up to donate $10 a month or more to their organization.

Far from being a disgusting joke, the DCAF is serious about this reward for their loyal donors.  The organization’s motto itself features a coat-hanger dangling from the end of its last word.

Yes, and?

The pendant isn’t what’s tasteless and sickening, it’s the policy that would lead to more and more coat-hanger abortions that is tasteless and sickening. LifeSiteNews’s policy. The policy that opposes legal abortion.

A striking thing that Gilliel said in a comment on Greta’s post Having a Reasonable Debate About Abortion yesterday:

And here’s another thing that’s been driving my blood pressure up and I will bold the beginning so that people

READ THIS:

I have been pregnant three times which resulted in two kids. My first pregnancy turned Wahoonie-shaped around week ten and I needed an abortion (which is never counted as an abortion-abortion, but as a reasonable medical intervention because reasons. Probably because I suffered enough since I actually wanted to be pregnant very much). I had two wonderful kids afterwards.

To act as if the death of that embryo was somewhat comparable to one of my children, actual people with personalities, characters, wishes, likes, dislikes, a central nervous system, even breaking a bone, let alone dying is so deeply fucked-up and beyond belief offensive that I hardly have words for it.

Surely that’s right.

Parents mourn miscarriages of wanted pregnancies, of course, but they’re mourning a potential, not an actual, and there is a difference.

In better news, however – on March 7 the Council of Europe’s Committee of Social Rights ruled that conscientious objection cannot stand in the way of women receiving the reproductive healthcare services guaranteed by Italian law.

The milestone decision on conscientious objection and abortion delivered by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Social Rights is welcomed by the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPF EN). IPPF EN lodged a collective complaint[1] against Italy which stated that the weak regulation of health personnel’s conscientious objection violates the right to health protection. IPPF EN is pleased to announce that the claim has been successful – and in time for Saturday 8th March, which is International Women’s Day.

The Committee’s decision supports the position held by IPPF EN, LAIGA and the Italian lawyers Marilisa D’ Amico and Benedetta Liberali. They clearly state that conscientious objection cannot stand in the way of women receiving the reproductive healthcare services guaranteed by Italian law. The Italian State is obliged to make sure women get access to abortion services – as and when required. “A woman’s request to abortion cannot be treated as a lottery, dependant on the luck of the patient, her wealth or where she lives,” saysVicky Claeys, the Regional Director of IPPF EN.

…

The Committee confirms that women face numerous challenges regarding abortion services in Italy. For example, waiting times are excessive and sometimes conscientiously objecting health personnel refuse to provide the necessary care before or after abortion. Furthermore, in some areas, there is an imbalance between the need for pregnancy termination and the number of non-objecting competent health personnel available. This means, even though the Italian law should guarantee access to reproductive health care for everyone, women cannot access abortion in all parts of Italy. There are huge difficulties, particularly in the south of Italy and Lombardy.

Therefore IPPF EN welcomes the Committee denouncing the ‘territorial and economic discrimination’ that women face when searching for available abortion services providers.

Now for Italy to do something about it.

Why is it a problem when medical personnel are allowed to refuse to perform abortions because of their “sincere religious beliefs”? Well one reason – though only one – is cases like one that happened in Rome in October 2010.

Valentina Magnanti was forced to abort her dead foetus in a toilet in Rome’s Sandro Pertini hospital, abandoned by all medical staff and with only her husband to assist her. This is what can happen when medical staff are allowed to follow their “consciences” and refuse to participate in abortions.

She has a rare genetically transmitted disease, but she couldn’t get tested early in her pregnancy because of a horrible law passed by the Berlusconi government in 2004. She had to wait until the fifth month, only to find out that the fetus did indeed have the disease.

Her gynaecologist refused to help her. She finally found a gynaecologist at the Sandro Pertini hospital who would sign the necessary paperwork. After being admitted to the hospital, she was given drugs to induce the abortion and was told that she would feel no pain.

“Instead… It was hell. After fifteen hours of excruciating pain, between spasms of vomiting and moments when I passed out, with my husband always at my side, not knowing what to do, going to the doctors and nurses asking them to help me, to no avail, I gave birth in the hospital toilet. With only Fabrizio by my side.” No one came to help her. “Perhaps because during the period between being admitted to hospital and giving birth, the shifts had changed, and all the doctors on duty then were objectors.” While she was in agony, a group of anti-abortion activists came in, “carrying copies of the gospel and making threatening comments.”

That’s one reason.

Valentina was caught between two laws: one which denied her the right to assisted conception, leaving her with no option but an abortion, and another which allowed medical personnel the right to refuse to go to the aid of a suffering patient having an abortion. 70% of Italian medical personnel are “objectors”, and in the Lazio region – capital, Rome – that rises to 90%, making it very unlikely that Valentina’s experience is an isolated case.

Are 90% of Lazio’s doctors and nurses really fervent Catholics? Or for some is claiming the right to “freedom of conscience” simply the path of least resistance to a successful career? Exactly what kind of conscience allows doctors and nurses to leave a woman in agony on a bathroom floor as she loses the baby she has longed for for years?

Did you catch that? 90% of medical personnel in Rome refuse to participate in abortions.

If men got pregnant…

Thousands of people got together in Madrid today to voice their opposition to government plans to take away abortion rights.

Under pressure from the Catholic Church, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government announced on December 20 it would roll back a 2010 law that allows women to opt freely for abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

The new law — yet to pass parliament, where the ruling People’s Party enjoys an absolute majority — would allow abortion only in cases of rape or a threat to the physical or psychological health of the mother.

Other than that, laydeez, tough shit – you’re stuck with it unless god sends you a miscarriage. No whining. It doesn’t matter if you’re poor and can’t afford it, if you’re in school and don’t feel ready to be a mother, if your husband or boyfriend just left you, if you just have absolutely no desire at all to have a child – you are stuck with it. If you don’t like it you should have plugged that sinful thing up with cement.

The move has outraged pro-choice campaigners, who say the legislation would roll back the decades in Spain, returning to conditions similar to those of a more restrictive 1985 law or even the 1939-1975 dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

“I would never have imagined we would find ourselves back here, fighting for something we thought we had won,” said 57-year-old protestor Maria Pilar Sanchez.

“We don’t want to turn the clock back 40 years. Having an abortion used to be a crime in Spain. We don’t want to return to that.”

You don’t, but the fascists and the Catholics and the falangists and the “family values” bullies do.

Opposition politicians joined the march, including United Left party leader Cayo Lara, who said the proposed law represented only “the most fundamentalist sectors of the religious hierarchy and the most fanatic Francoists”.

The new bill would toughen the conditions for aborting in cases of malformation of the foetus, which the current law authorises freely up to 22 weeks.

Because that’s a decision for legislators, not for the woman who has to take care of the eventual baby.

In Spain, Rajoy’s government has repeatedly postponed the abortion reform, reportedly struggling with internal dissent, after promising in its 2011 election campaign to tighten the rules.

The delay has drawn cries of impatience from the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy.

Last April, the head of Spain’s Catholic Church, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, said the 2010 law had “led to a rise in the number of abortions to terrifying levels”.

Well clearly it’s the job of a Cardinal to decide whether women can get an abortion or not. Cardinals are ideally placed to decide that because they are officially unmarried and childless and celibate, all of which makes them experts on what’s best for women who don’t want to be pregnant right now.

Proponents of the bill have called their own demonstration for Sunday in Madrid to fight what they call a “phobia of family”.

Oh yeah? Have they said anything to the church about that? The church is officially family-phobic. The church is an institution based on all-male all-bachelor all-celibate rule. It’s run by men who are officially permanently outside of families. That’s more family-phobic than anything else I can think of.

There’s also the fact that wanting to be able to decide for oneself when and if to marry and when and if to have children is not the same thing as affirmatively wanting never to marry and never to have children. There’s also the fact that even affirmatively wanting never to marry and never to have children isn’t necessarily the same thing as being family-phobic: it can be a matter of just not wanting it for oneself, while still thinking it’s a great thing for people who do want it, and/or a matter of wanting forms of family that don’t involve child-rearing.

I hope their demonstration tomorrow is a complete dud.

The NY Times reports, to the surprise of no one who has been paying attention, that all these new anti-abortion measures passed by states have made abortion much harder to get. Well they would, wouldn’t they.

A three-year surge in anti-abortion measures in more than half the states has altered the landscape for abortion access, with supporters and opponents agreeing that the new restrictions are shutting some clinics, threatening others and making it far more difficult in many regions to obtain the procedure.

Right. That was the idea, wasn’t it.

The new laws range from the seemingly petty to the profound. South Dakota said that weekends and holidays could not count as part of the existing 72-hour waiting period, meaning that in some circumstances women could be forced to wait six days between their first clinic visit and an abortion.

Ok that’s one I hadn’t heard of. Brilliant. So if a woman needing an abortion has the bad luck to be unable to get an appointment until the Friday before a holiday Monday, she has to wait until the following Friday.

Laws passed last year by Arkansas and North Dakota to ban abortions early in pregnancy, once a fetal heartbeat was detected, were hailed by some as landmarks if quickly rejected by federal courts. But bans on abortion at 20 weeks, also an apparent violation of constitutional doctrine, remain in force in nine states.

In Roe and later decisions, the Supreme Court said that women have a right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb — at about 24 weeks of pregnancy with current technology — and that any state regulations must not place an “undue burden” on that right.

In 2013 alone, 22 states adopted 70 different restrictions, including late-abortion bans, doctor and clinic regulations, limits on medication abortions and bans on insurance coverage, according to a new report by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

Well, you see, the meaning of the word “undue” has changed radically over the past 40 years. Also the word “24″ and the word “right.”

A dozen states have barred most abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy, based on a theory of fetal pain that has been rejected by major medical groups. Such laws violate the viability threshold and have been struck down in three states, but proponents hope the Supreme Court will be open to a new standard.

A partial test is expected this month, when the Supreme Court announces whether it will hear Arizona’s appeal to reinstate its 20-week ban, which was overturned by federal courts.

Many legal experts expect the court to decline the case, but this would not affect the status of similar laws in effect in Texas and elsewhere. Still, those on both sides are watching closely because if the court does take it, the basis of four decades of constitutional law on abortion could be upended.

And the laws and rules and shackles and burdens that keep women down could be made tighter and heavier.

The proliferation of state restrictions is recreating a legal patchwork.

“Increasingly, access to abortion depends on where you live,” said Jennifer Dalven, director of the reproductive freedom project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

She added, “That’s what it was like pre-Roe.”

Backward. Marching marching marching backward.

Spain has passed a new anti-abortion law to replace current legislation permitting the procedure without restrictions until the 14th week.

Justice minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón said on Friday that abortion will only be allowed in the case of rape or when there is a serious mental or physical health risk to the mother. Accredited fetal deformities that would endanger a child’s life if born will also be accepted.

He said 16- and 17-year-olds will once again have to obtain permission from their parents to have an abortion.

…

Gallardon’s ruling Popular party has always sided heavily with the Catholic church on moral and social issues.

With the Catholic church, and against women and people in general who want to be able to decide whether and when to have children.

Naturally, not everyone is pleased.

“These changes have more to do with politics and ideology than social realities today in Spain,” said Francisca García of the Asociación de Clínicas Acreditadas para la Interrupción del Embarazo, the umbrella group that represents 98% of the country’s abortion clinics.

“From all the data we’ve seen, the number of abortions in Spain is actually on the decline,” she said. “The People’s party is trying to satisfy the rightwing factions of its party.”

Given the economic crisis that has gripped the country, “there is little public demand for this initiative. These are secondary problems compared to the crisis,” said García.

According to the organisation, recent data it had analysed showed that of the 118,000 or so abortions that took place in 2011, nearly 100,000 would be illegal under the expected changes.

So that could mean 100 thousand women’s lives messed up every year, to say nothing of the men and children also affected by the woman’s inability to decide for herself.

Elena Valenciano, the deputy secretary general of Spain’s Socialist party, spoke out against the Catholic church in April, accusing it of trying to diminish women’s say over their own bodies.

“And women, that is to say mothers, don’t they have a word in this? Ministers, judges, bishops, scientists are going to decide what we should do with our motherhood. Yes, they know. We obey and shut up. Amen,” she vented on her Facebook page.

Women’s groups across the country echo her views. “This is a fight for control over women’s bodies,” said Yolanda Besteiro, president of the Federación de Mujeres Progresistas.

“For so many generations, so many Spanish women have fought for equality,” she said. “They have had some tremendous successes, including a past government that counted as many female ministers as male. But now it seems like their fight was worth nothing.”

Cheer up. There’s a new pope, and lots of people say he’s a real sweetie.

There’s the New York Times editorial on the Michigan case for instance. That takes it for granted.

The suit was brought on behalf of a Michigan woman, Tamesha Means, who says she was subjected to substandard care at a Catholic hospital — the only hospital in her county — after her water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy. Doctors in such circumstances typically induce labor or surgically remove the fetus to reduce the woman’s chances of infection. But according to the complaint, doctors acting in accordance with the bishops’ directives did not inform Ms. Means that her fetus had virtually no chance of surviving or that terminating her pregnancy was the safest treatment option.

But the summary of the HIQA report doesn’t take it for granted at all; it doesn’t even mention it. It ignores the fact that doctors in such circumstances typically induce labor or surgically remove the fetus to reduce the woman’s chances of infection, and simply talks about managing the infection.

That is fucked up.