Sunday, May 31, 2009

Saddest News.

New York Times
5/31/09

WICHITA, Kan. — Authorities said they had a suspect in custody Sunday afternoon in the shooting death of George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who was one of the few doctors in the nation to perform late-term abortions.

Dr. Tiller, who had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion and had survived a shooting more than a decade ago, was shot inside his church here on Sunday morning, the authorities said. Dr. Tiller, 67, was shot with a handgun inside the lobby of his longtime church, Reformation Lutheran Church on the city’s East Side, just after 10 a.m. (Central Time). The service had started minutes earlier.

Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion, particularly in Kansas, where abortion opponents regularly protested outside his clinic and sometimes his home and church. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent but recovered.

Dr. Tiller had also been the subject of many efforts at prosecution, including a citizen-initiated grand jury investigation. In the latest such effort, in March, Dr. Tiller was acquitted of charges that he had performed late-term abortions that violated state law.

Shortly after Sunday’s shooting, police said they were searching for a man who had fled in a powder blue Taurus. By mid-afternoon, they said someone had been taken into custody, but offered no additional details.

“This is going to be a larger search than maybe just Wichita,” said Brent Allred, a police captain, who said that the FBI and state police had been called to the scene. Few parishioners remained at the church, a modern, red brick facility that seats about 500 people. Police cars surrounded the building.

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group that has led opposition to Dr. Tiller’s methods, denounced the killing on Sunday, as did other national groups opposed to abortion. “Our prayers go out to his family and the thousands of people this will impact,” Mr. Newman said in a telephone interview from his home in Wichita.

“Operation Rescue has worked tirelessly on peaceful, non-violent measures to bring him to justice through the legal system, the legislative system,” Mr. Newman said. “I’m a tireless advocate and spokesman for the pre-born children who are dying in clinics everyday. Mr. Tiller was an abortionist. But this wasn’t personal. We are pro life, and this act was antithetical to what we believe.”

Leaders of national abortion rights organizations, meanwhile, expressed outrage. Some described Dr. Tiller as one of the only doctors in the nation who performed third-trimester abortions when the life or health of a mother was at stake, and said that his death would make it even harder for women in such circumstances to end their pregnancies.

“Dr. Tiller was a fearless, passionate defender of women’s reproductive health and rights,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, based in New York, which had worked on a legal case related to Dr. Tiller. “It’s time that this nation stop demonizing these doctors, and start honoring them.”

At St. George Orthodox Christian Church, next door to Dr. Tiller’s church, members said they had often been concerned about being so close to a church that often was the scene of protests because of Dr. Tiller’s presence. Dr. Tiller had attended the church for a long time, they said, and had contributed significantly to construction of the current facility, which was built in about 1996.

“This is a God-fearing community,” said Mickey Cohlmia, who was at services at the neighboring church on Sunday morning and said she was horrified that such a thing had happened in Wichita, a city of about 358,000 in southern Kansas. “How does this scar everybody in his church?”

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Favorite New Blog: The Abortioneers

http://abortioneers.blogspot.com/

The Abortioneers is a fantastic new blog (created January 2009) about the ins and outs and ups and downs of direct service in the field of abortion care. It contains a variety of voices expressing the multi-faceted vicissitudes of the contemporary prochoice/direct care experience. It's at the top of The Coat Hanger Project's favorite blogs list - check it out!!!

UN Committee Concludes That Abortion Law in Northern Ireland Should Be Amended

Safe and Legal Abortion Rights in Ireland
Tuesday 27 May 2009

UN Committee concludes that abortion law in Northern Ireland should be amended

For the third time in ten years, another United Nations human rights monitoring body has recommended that the abortion law in Northern Ireland should be amended and better protection afforded to women’s human rights. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the monitoring body of the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights met in Geneva on the 12 and 13 of May 2009, to examine the UK and Northern Ireland government. In its concluding observations, the Committee recommended that the abortion law in Northern Ireland should be brought into line with the rest of the UK.

It stated:
“The Committee calls upon the State party to amend the abortion law of Northern Ireland to bring it in line with the 1967 Abortion Act with a view to preventing clandestine and unsafe abortions in cases of rape, incest or foetal abnormality.”

Reacting to the Committee’s recommendations, Dr Audrey Simpson, fpa Director Northern Ireland said:
“Once again the ongoing discrimination of Northern Ireland women has been acknowledged in Europe. It is totally unacceptable for the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly to continue to ignore UN human rights monitoring bodies. It is a blatant disregard for women’s human rights in relation to their reproductive health.”

Response to Obama’s speech at Notre Dame on "common ground" and abortion

revcom.us
By Sunsara Taylor

In the weeks leading up to Barack Obama’s delivery of the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, the national eye was drawn once again to the question of women’s right to abortion. Anti-abortion Catholics and Christian fundamentalists, many of whom have been at the heart of some of the most violent tactics against doctors, women and clinics, descended on the campus. They trespassed. They got arrested. They put up billboards. More than 70 bishops condemned Notre Dame’s decision.

However, on March 17, when graduation day finally arrived, Obama received a standing ovation upon entrance, a glowing introduction from the Catholic president of the university, and repeated cheers as he spoke.

In his speech, Obama called for “fair-minded words” on both sides of the abortion issue. He called on people to express their differences but not to demonize those who think differently than themselves. He called for “common ground” and pointed to where he felt this could be found, as well as some of the challenges he sees in achieving it.

To many, these were reasonable words. To many, the response to him by the overwhelming majority of the student body—together with a significant number of prominent Catholic figures—represents motion in a positive direction.

But, when Obama speaks of “common ground” on abortion, he is not standing on some neutral “middle ground”—he is accepting the terms of the anti-abortion movement and adapting aspects of a pro-choice position into that framework while gutting the heart of the abortion-rights position. In so doing, he is legitimizing and strengthening a viciously anti-woman program while both abandoning the much needed fight to expand access to abortion and birth control and giving up the moral and ideological basis on which the pro-choice position stands.

Much of what is wrong with Obama’s approach is concentrated in a few key sentences of Obama’s speech, where he speaks directly to the question of abortion:

“Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoptions more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”

First, and very importantly, abortion is not a “heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make.” A great many women are not conflicted at all about their abortions. Many feel relief and even joy at having their lives and their futures more fully back in their control.

This is as it should be. The simple fact is that a fetus is not a baby, it is a subordinate part of a woman’s body. A woman has no moral obligation to carry a fetus to term simply because she gets pregnant. And a woman who chooses at whatever point and for whatever reason to terminate a pregnancy, should feel fine about doing so and should be able to.

When it comes to abortion, there really is only one moral question: Will women be free to determine their own lives, including whether and when they will bear children, or will women be subjugated to patriarchal male authority and forced to breed against their will?

By denying the experience of the many women who feel positively about their abortions, Obama is undermining the legitimacy of this response and reinforcing all the many voices in society that tell women they should feel heart-wrenched for terminating a pregnancy.

As for the fact that many women do feel conflicted or even deeply guilty about getting an abortion, this doesn’t prove that abortion is a morally complex issue any more than the fact that many women feel guilty or ashamed after being raped makes rape a morally complex issue.

To understand where these feelings of guilt come from, where they do exist, it is necessary to pull back the lens from the individual woman to see the larger culture and forces shaping their responses.

Women have been told—for centuries in every major religion and almost every culture—that the most meaningful thing they will ever do is bear children. Women are conditioned—and expected—to plan their lives around when they will have children, and, once they do, to evaluate every major decision from the framework of how it will affect their children. Women who do not subordinate their own dreams and aspirations to the raising of their children are openly considered selfish and routinely demonized.

On top of this, there have been decades of relentless ideological assault on abortion that has been orchestrated from the highest levels of government and power. Women have been told that they are “murderers” if they choose to abort—by Christian fundamentalists at the doors of women’s clinics across the country, by talking heads on the major media and by blockbuster movies and TV dramas that invariably portray abortion, at “best,” as a desperate and regrettable act. Women have been told there is something wrong with them if they don’t feel guilty.

All this conditions the guilt that women feel, where that is part of their experience. But none of this means that there is anything about abortion that women should feel guilty about.

From here, Obama moves forward, stating that “common ground” can be found by working “together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions” and to “reduce unintended pregnancies.”

But, as I wrote previously, “To talk today of reducing the number of abortions is to talk about strengthening the chains on women. The goal should NOT be to reduce the number of abortions. The goal should be to break down the barriers that still exist in every sphere of society to women’s full and equal participation as emancipated human beings. In this society, right now, that means there will be—and therefore should be—more abortions.

“This is because there are many, many women who want abortions who are unable to get them due to the tremendous legal, social and economic obstacles that have been put in their way. These obstacles include parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods, anti-abortion fake clinics that disorient and delay women, the fact that 84% of counties have no abortion providers at all, and countless other cruel and humiliating restrictions.”

Right now, as you read, real women’s lives are being foreclosed and degraded due to lack of accessible abortion services.

As for reducing unintended pregnancies, it would be truly wonderful if all young people received frank and scientific education about their bodies, their sexuality, and how to form healthy and mutually respectful emotional and physical relationships. It would be truly wonderful if birth control were widely and easily available and its use was popularized. This would be the best and most effective way to reduce unintended pregnancies. However, this is not something that the forces behind the “pro-life” movement will agree to. The same biblical scripture that drives these forces to try to force women to carry every pregnancy to term, also drives them to oppose birth control. There is not a single “pro-life” organization that supports birth control.

At its core and from its inception the “pro-life” movement has been driven by the biblical mandate that women must leave it up to god to decide how many children they have. This mandate is rooted in the Christian mythology of “original sin” and its repercussions.

As the Bible tells it, “god” created man (Adam) first, and then made a woman (Eve) out of his rib. These two lived in innocent bliss in the “Garden of Eden” until a serpent tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam to eat the “forbidden fruit.” For this “original sin,” Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise and ever since—so the myth goes—mankind has had an evil nature which has led to all the horrors humankind has inflicted on each other ever since.

Flowing from this—and central to the “right-to-life” movement—a special additional curse is put on women. Right there, in Genesis, the “Lord” is quoted as saying to women, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Later, the Bible articulates that women can only redeem themselves by submitting to men and bearing children: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, providing they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.” (1 Timothy 2: 13-15)

There can be no “common ground” with this view, even in the aim of preventing unwanted pregnancies. And, by seeking to find “common ground” here, Obama is just moving the ball further down the court towards enforced motherhood; he is leading pro-choice people away from the fight that needs to be waged for abortion while at the same time setting the stage for another losing battle around sex education and birth control.

What’s perhaps even more outrageous is the fact that Obama—rather than challenging the mandate embedded within the “original sin” mythology that women become obedient breeders—himself cites and legitimates this farcical and very harmful myth. Earlier in his speech, Obama offers a non-explanation as to why “common ground” is often hard to find between, among others, “the soldier and the lawyer” who “both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm” and between “the gay activist and the evangelical pastor” who “both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts.” He says, “part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of men—our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin.”

No. “Common ground” is not hard to find because we demonize those who are fighting to subjugate women, those carrying out torture and war crimes against detainees, or those who want to deny fundamental rights to gay people. “Common ground” is not difficult to find because we have big egos or are too prideful or insecure.

“Common ground” is difficult to find because those who uphold women’s right to abortion are coming from a point of view that is completely antagonistic to those who are trying to take away this right. In the same way, those who condemn torture are coming from a view that is antagonistic to justifying, covering up and continuing that torture. And those who recognize the basic rights and humanity of gay people as well as the need for real education about safe sex are coming from a view that is completely antagonistic to the biblical motivation that sees any sex outside of procreation as an abomination.

As I stated earlier, there is no such thing as a “neutral middle ground” between antagonistic positions. Even the illusion of “common ground” can only be achieved when one side capitulates to the terms of the other side. This is exactly what Obama has done.

When it comes to abortion, the “common ground” Obama is putting forward is one where everyone accepts the notion that there is something morally wrong with abortion and where the legitimacy and the very existence of women who are perfectly okay with their abortions is erased. At a time when abortion is very hard to access for a great many women and the freedom to abort is undermined by the mountain of guilt and shame that is heaped on women for even considering this option, Obama’s “common ground” is one which abandons the fight for abortion access and retreats instead to a rear-guard battle to reduce unintended pregnancies without ever even mentioning birth control.

Finally, Obama tips his hat entirely to the anti-abortion position when he says we can unite to “provide care and support for women who do carry their child to term.” Here, in one phrase he accepts the unscientific, anti-abortion rhetoric that refers to fetuses as children. Flowing from this, a woman who chooses to terminate is killing her “child.”

In many ways, the approach Obama has taken to abortion—and what he mapped out in his speech—could prove even more dangerous to women’s rights and women’s lives than the religious fascists who were gathered at the gate. This is because Obama is dragging along many women and men who ought to know better—who, if there were outright attacks on the legality of abortion very well might be up in arms, but who are being lullabied to sleep by Obama’s calm and reasonable tone as he barters away women’s fundamental rights.

It is imperative that people see this speech, and Obama’s position overall, for what it truly is. It is not a reasonable middle ground, but a step-by-step waltz into a world with fewer and fewer rights for women and less and less ground to stand on to resist. It is urgent that people bring forward a new framework: one that values the lives of women above fetuses, one that sees the positive value in women being enabled to live full social lives including by controlling their own reproduction, one that recognizes that this is good for society as a whole.

Mexico Anti-Abortion Laws On The Rise

Huffington Post
MEXICO CITY, May 22 (IPS) - In the last 13 months, 12 of Mexico's 32 states have approved amendments to their state constitutions defining a fertilised human egg as a person with a right to legal protection, and seven other state parliaments are taking steps in the same direction.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say it is a massive conservative reaction to a law decriminalising abortion up to 12 weeks' gestation that went into force in the Mexican capital in April 2007.

The law was upheld in August 2008 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that it did not violate the Mexican constitution.

Behind the wave of reforms of state constitutions, according to critics, is a pact between the hierarchy of the Mexican Catholic Church and the leadership of the most traditional political parties to curb social movements advocating the legalisation of abortion.

"I have no direct evidence, but we have repeatedly heard allegations" that such a pact exists, María Mejía, head of Catholics for the Right to Decide (CDD), told IPS.

According to María Luisa Sánchez, director of the Information Group on Reproductive Choice (GIRE), what is happening is a kind of "revenge" on the part of conservative groups. "These reforms are absurd and put women at risk," she told IPS.

The states where constitutions have been reformed are governed by President Felipe Calderón's conservative National Action Party (PAN) or by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for seven decades.

The amendments of the state constitutions have not, so far, been accompanied by changes to the regional criminal codes, which for the most part allow abortion in the case of rape or danger to the mother's life.

But the possibility remains that the criminal codes will be brought into line with the constitutional reforms, Mejía said.

Mexico is a federal nation in which each state has its own constitution and criminal code, although these cannot run counter to the national constitution and criminal code.

In this country of over 107 million people, an estimated 880,000 abortions are carried out annually, according to a study presented in 2008 by the Colegio de México, the Mexico office of the Population Council and the Guttmacher Institute in the United States.

The study found that an average of 33 abortions a year are performed for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. This figure is higher than the average reported for developing countries, which is 29 abortions a year per 1,000 women of reproductive age.

Most abortions are performed clandestinely, even in cases where they are legal, because the authorities and public health centres put up such barriers that the right to therapeutic abortion under certain circumstances becomes non-existent.

A PAN lawmaker for the central state of Querétaro, Fernando Urbiola, told IPS that the recent reforms of the state constitutions "are simply due to the need to be consistent with the principle of defending human life, which begins at conception."

In Querétaro, which is governed by the PAN, Urbiola chairs the Commission on the Family in the state parliament, and is promoting a modification of the state constitution so that it will protect the fertilised egg from the time of conception. The change could be approved before the end of the year.

Urbiola argues that "unborn children" urgently need legal protection, on a par with any other person, until death. In his view, the wave of reforms will also close the door to euthanasia and recognise men's right to keep alive the eggs they fertilise.

GIRE's Sánchez said that her group is coordinating a series of demonstrations with women's movements in the various states, to urge the Supreme Court to rule on the wave of constitutional changes in the states.

"We hope that the Supreme Court will take up the issue again and give more weight to the right of women to decide about their lives and bodies. The Court must hold another debate and ratify its earlier ruling," said Sánchez.

In the August 2008 ruling, in response to a lawsuit arguing that the decriminalisation of abortion in the capital, governed by the leftwing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled that the law did not violate the constitution.

The Supreme Court verdict was repudiated by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and other conservative sectors.

However, the Calderón administration accepted the decision, although it had previously demanded, through the Attorney-General's Office, that the Mexico City law be repealed.

Now GIRE is asking the Attorney-General's Office to take up the issue again, this time to bring a suit before the Supreme Court alleging the unconstitutionality of the reforms against abortion approved by the states.

According to Mexican law, the Supreme Court deals with cases at the request of the Attorney-General's Office or the state National Human Rights Commission, or on its own initiative.

Mejía, of Catholics for the Right to Decide, also wants the Supreme Court to deal with the issue, but she recognised that this is very unlikely to happen in the short or medium term.

Since April 2007, when abortion in the first three months of pregnancy was decriminalised in Mexico City, just over 20,000 women have exercised this right in public health centres. Nearly 80 percent of them were from the capital.

According to official statistics, 47 percent of the women who requested an abortion in Mexico City were between the ages of 18 and 24, and 21 percent were aged 25 to 29. Nearly seven percent were under 18, and the remainder were over 30.

The great majority of the women who had abortions said they were Catholic, like 90 percent of Mexicans.

Mejía and Sánchez both said that it is illogical for only some women in Mexico to have the right to an abortion, and called for the same rights to be available for all women.

Furthermore, they both said that abortion should be removed from the criminal codes and should be dealt with instead as a public health issue.

No woman is happy to make the decision to have an abortion and no woman seeks an abortion for pleasure, which is "something conservatives just don't understand," and that is why they close the doors to women and their rights, and even worse, threaten them with imprisonment, Mejía said.

The state criminal codes lay down different penalties for women who have abortions, except for victims of rape or when the mother's life is endangered. In some cases, foetal malformation is also accepted as a legal reason for abortion.

In the state of Veracruz, for example, abortion carries a prison sentence of six months to four years; in Jalisco it is four months to one year, in Guanajuato from six months to three years, and in Baja California Sur from two months to two years.

Studies indicate that clandestine abortions are the fourth or fifth cause of death among Mexican women, and that obtaining permission for an abortion is complicated and, in many cases, impossible.

After the August 2008 Supreme Court resolution, GIRE legal adviser Pedro Morales called on state legislators to move from "prohibitive and punitive regimes on abortion to permissive laws compatible with the fundamental rights of women."

Instead, 12 states moved in the opposite direction and made it even more difficult to get a legal abortion, and another seven states may soon follow suit.