Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

Bush, McCain, Palin: Anti-Abortion But Hardly Pro-Life

NY Times Op-Ed Column: Can This Be Pro-Life?, by Nicholas Kristof:

The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa.

Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along with more women dying in childbirth.

The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. Senator Obama supports U.N.-led efforts to promote family planning; Senator McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.

European Court of Human Rights to Rule on Ireland's Abortion Laws

Wall St. Journal: When Justices Prefer Not to Judge: Court May Pass on Abortion Again, by Paula Park:

A European court may decide whether a woman has a basic right to abortion to preserve her health. Or, some observers fear, it may avoid the issue, as it has in the past.

The European Court of Human Rights was established to uphold rights to life, privacy, freedom of speech, religion and the like. The court has one justice from each of the 47 nations that signed the European Convention on Human Rights. It rules on cases that applicants bring when they feel they cannot get adequate legal redress in their home countries.

But for years the court has essentially turned a blind eye to Ireland's abortion laws, considered among the most restrictive in Europe. Critics say that helps perpetuate an inequitable patchwork of rules across the region.

Australian Supreme Court Grants Abortion for 12-Year-Old

The Australian: Abortion ordered  for 12-year-old girl by Queensland Supreme Court, by Michael McKenna:

DOCTORS have been ordered to perform an abortion on a 12-year-old Queensland girl who is 18 weeks pregnant after a suspected rape.

In a landmark decision, Supreme Court judge Margaret Wilson ordered the termination after accepting medical advice that the continuation of the pregnancy posed serious dangers to the mental health and wellbeing of the girl, whose intellectual age was deemed by an obstetrician to be that of a six-year-old....

In Queensland, it is illegal for doctors to carry out an abortion unless it is performed to save a woman's life. It is also believed to be the first time that a Queensland court has ordered the use of the drug misoprostol in a sanctioned abortion.

Abortion Provider's Receipt of Order of Canada Medal Continues to Ignite Controversy

Bloomberg: Montreal Archbishop Returns Medal After Abortion Doctor Honored, by Doug Alexander:

Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Montreal, is returning his Order of Canada medal because the award was also bestowed on abortion doctor Henry Morgentaler this year.           

``This announcement generated a great deal of criticism on the part of those who do not share Dr. Morgentaler's views regarding the respect for human life,'' Turcotte said in a Canada NewsWire statement. ``I feel obliged in conscience to reaffirm my convictions regarding the respect for human life, from conception to death.''

See also this post on Morgentaler's receipt of the award.

Mexican Supreme Court Upholds Legal Abortion in Mexico City

L.A. Times: Mexican Supreme Court upholds legalized abortion law, by Ken Ellingwood:

In a lopsided ruling, Mexico's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a year-old law in Mexico City legalizing abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The court rejected arguments by abortion opponents that the law violated the Mexican Constitution, whose protections they said covered embryos. A majority of justices said overturning the law would block the right of women to end pregnancies in the early weeks.

The vote was 8 to 3 to uphold the measure, approved in April 2007 by Mexico City's leftist-dominated government. Opponents needed support from at least eight of the 11 justices to overturn the law.

Mexico's Supreme Court Likely to Uphold Legalized Abortion in Mexico City

NY Times: Mexico Court Is Set to Uphold Legalized Abortion in Capital, by Elisabeth Malkin:

MEXICO CITY — A majority of Supreme Court justices have said Mexico City’s law legalizing abortion does not violate the Constitution, making it likely that the court will uphold the controversial measure.

Since deliberations began this week, 8 of the 11 justices spoke in support of the law.

Its passage last year was considered historic in this Catholic country and in a region where almost all countries severely restrict abortion or ban it.

The law allows unrestricted abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Mexico City Struggles to Make Newly Legalized Abortions Available

NY Times: Mexico City Struggles With Law on Abortion, by Elisabeth Malkin & Nacha Cattan:

When Mexico City’s government made abortion legal last year, it also set out to make it available to any woman who asked for one. That includes the city’s poorest, who for years resorted to illegal clinics and midwives as wealthy women visited private doctors willing to quietly end unwanted pregnancies.

But helping poor women gain equal access to the procedure has turned out to be almost as complicated as passing the law, a watershed event in this Catholic country and in a region where almost all countries severely restrict abortions.

Since the city’s legislature voted for the law in April 2007, some 85 percent of the gynecologists in the city’s public hospitals have declared themselves conscientious objectors. And women complain that even at those hospitals that perform abortions, staff members are often hostile, demeaning them and throwing up bureaucratic hurdles.

Argentina: Recent Abortion Confidentiality Decisions

Via Martín Hevia (Escuela de Derecho, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella) and Mercedes Cavallo (LLM Candidate and Sexual and Reproductive Health Law Scholar, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, 2008-2009):

On June 4, 2008, the Argentine Criminal Division VI of the Criminal Federal Chamber passed a sentence named “Luque” on professional secrecy of doctors in abortion cases. In a nutshell, the decision held that if a medical professional in the practice of his or her profession reports an abortion, no criminal process can be initiated against a woman who caused her own abortion or allowed someone else to cause it.
The decision sheds light on a debated issue in Argentine law. Every time an Argentine doctor has to assist a woman with an abortion, a legal dilemma arises. The dilemma comes from the conflict between two articles in the criminal code. Art. 156 protects professional secrecy - unless there is a “fair cause” that would justify violation of secrecy. In turn, Art. 277 punishes government employees who find out about a crime and do not report it.

The legal debate can be traced back to 1966, when the Criminal Federal Chamber ruled in “Natividad Frías” that if a medical professional assists a woman who has had an abortion, the report of the crime does not implicate the woman, but it does implicate the perpetrators, co-perpetrators, instigators and accessories. “Natividad Frías” was a “plenary” decision – that is, a joint decision by the different divisions that aims at unifying the Chamber’s understanding of an issue of law, so that the plenary decision works as a legal precedent for future cases heard by lower courts and the Chamber at stake.

Despite some decisions against it, “Natividad Frías” has been seen as the leading case and is followed by most Argentine judges.

Against “Natividad Frías,” in 2007 the Criminal Division VII of the Criminal Federal Chamber passed a sentence named “GN”, a departure from judicial precedent by a key chamber which shocked the citizens and the media. The pillars of “GN” were:

1-    The fundamental right at stake is the right to life of the foetus.
2-    The health of the patient is guaranteed anyway, beyond the judicial intervention.
3-    The woman who seeks medical support is not testifying against herself, because the criminal process has not begun by the time she tells a doctor she has had an abortion.
4-    When the foetus’s right to life is at stake, there is “fair cause” and, therefore, a legal justification to breach the duty of confidentiality between doctor and patient. The foetus’s right to life is hierarchically higher than the woman’s right to privacy.

The decision in “GN” created some confusion in the media about whether women seeking medical attention after having an abortion would be prosecuted or not. The decision in “Luque,” then, clarified the point as the judges of Criminal Division VI of the Criminal Federal Chamber went back to principles from “Natividad Frias”. The main arguments in “Luque” were as follows:

1-If a medical professional reports an abortion, no criminal process can be initiated against a woman who caused her own abortion or allowed someone else to cause it.
2-Women who visit a medical center asking for help do so due to a critical medical condition prompted by an abortion. They do so against their will, driven by desperation and necessity.
3- According to Article 18 of the Argentine National Constitution, no one can be forced to testify against herself. Women who have had an abortion and visit a hospital advise doctors of their condition only because they are in urgent need of medical help.
4- According to Article 177 of the National Criminal Procedure Code, the medical professional is protected by professional secrecy. Thus, doctors have no legal duty to report the crime.
5- There is a conflict of rights. On the one hand, the right of the State to prosecute the commission of – what the Argentine Criminal Code takes to be - crime. On the other hand, the right to privacy of women. 
6- Evidence obtained through a violation of a constitutional right is against the law.

To conclude, the “Luque” judgement restored “Natividad Frías” and established that the Chamber’s general criterion is the protection of the confidentiality. Such decisions prevent maternal death due to complications after abortion, since women in that situation need not fear prosecution if they seek professional help. However, the problem of clandestine abortions remains unsolved and in the meantime thousands of women die per year.

Links to reports in local newspapers:
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/informaciongeneral/nota.asp?nota_id=1024528
http://www.criticadigital.com/index.php?secc=nota&nid=6244

Iranian Woman Sentenced to Death for Forced Prostitution

Via Equality Now:

Women's Action 29.2: Iran: Kobra Najjar Faces Imminent Execution by Stoning for Prostitution

Equality Now is urgently concerned about Kobra Najjar, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery who lost her final appeal for amnesty. Iranian women’s rights activists working on her case report that Kobra has exhausted all domestic legal remedies and that her execution by stoning could happen any time.

Kobra is a victim of domestic violence who was forced into prostitution by her abusive husband in order to support his heroine addiction. He was murdered by one of Kobra’s “clients” who sympathized with her plight. Kobra has already served 8 years in prison as an accessory to her husband’s murder. The man who murdered her husband also served 8 years in prison and is now free after paying blood money and undergoing 100 lashes, while Kobra faces imminent stoning to death for adultery - the prostitution her husband forced upon her.

Click here to take action.

Ethical Concerns Raised by 70-Year-Old Woman's Birthing of Twins Via IVF

MSNBC: New IVF dilemmas make old fears seem quaint, by Arthur Caplan:

Omkari Panwar has given new meaning to the idea that 70 is the new 60. Or perhaps 70 is the new 30?

Earlier this month, the 70-year-old mother of two daughters and grandmother to five gave birth via Cesarean section to twins, a boy and girl, at a hospital in India’s Uttar Pradesh state after undergoing infertility treatment. If her age can be verified — she has no birth certificate — she would become the oldest woman ever to give birth.

Dr. Caplan discusses the separate ethical concerns raised by the birth -- the parents' age (the father is in his mid-70s) as well as their reasons for seeking IVF: to have a boy (they already had two daughters).  The couple got their boy... but they got a girl too.  I'm not sure I'd like to be her.

H/T: Kimberly Mutcherson

Catholic Groups Urge Pope to Lift Ban on Contraception

Reuters UK: Catholic groups ask pope to end contraception ban, by Philip Pullella:

ROME (Reuters) - More than 50 dissident Catholic groups published an unusually frank open letter to Pope Benedict on Friday saying the Church's ban on contraception had been "catastrophic" and urging him to lift it.

   

The letter was published as a paid half-page advertisement in Corriere della Sera, Italy's largest newspaper, on the 40th anniversary of the late Pope Paul VI's controversial encyclical "Humanae Vitae," which enshrined the ban.

Australians Protest Pope's Position on Birth Control

The Canberra Times: Condoms All Round as Annoying Law Dashed, by Malcom Brown:

RACHEL EVANS and Amber Pike handed out condoms on the steps of Sydney's Federal Court yesterday - flushed with a ruling that struck out a World Youth Day law that made it a crime to annoy participants in the Catholic event.

The NoToPope Coalition protesters object to several Catholic moral teachings and Ms Evans - emboldened by the court triumph - immediately went and handed more condoms to Catholic pilgrims posing for photographs outside a nearby church.

Senate Increases AIDS Funding and Advocates Respond

Washington Post: Senate Agress to $50 Billion AIDS Plan, by Paul Kane:

On an 80 to 16 vote, the Senate dramatically increased the U.S. contribution to a global fund to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. President Bush, who requested $30 billion over the next five years, has agreed to the larger amount for a program he started in 2003.

"We've made tremendous strides, but our work is not nearly finished. Two million people died last year of HIV-AIDS. Over two and a half million people died of malaria and TB," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). He praised Bush's "bold" support for AIDS funding, launched in the 2003 State of the Union address, calling it his greatest achievement as president.

Once a politically contentious issue, fighting AIDS has become popular at both ends of the ideological spectrum. During the debate, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, praised former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), a conservative icon who died July 4, for his decision in 2000 to support global AIDS funding.

Center for Health and Gender Equity: It's Broke, But They Won't Fix It: The Senate Authorizes a Global AIDS Relief Package that Comes Up Short, by Serra Sippel:

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 80 to 16 to reauthorize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a five-year, $48 billion global initiative to combat HIV/AIDS,tuberculosis and malaria.

The Senate missed a golden opportunity to epitomize the generosity of the American people by making U.S. global HIV/AIDS relief more effective, compassionate and fiscally responsible. As a result, millions of people are at greater risk of HIV infection.

Report Shows Peruvian Women Are Being Denied Therapeutic Abortions

Human Rights News: Peru: At-Risk Women Denied Legal Abortions:

The Peruvian government’s deliberate refusal to streamline procedures and approve guidelines for legal abortion is endangering the lives and health of women and girls who are often forced to use unsafe solutions for risky pregnancies, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The 52-page report, “My Rights, and My Right to Know: Lack of Access to Therapeutic Abortion in Peru,” documents the difficulties women face in accessing therapeutic abortion – those needed to save the life of the woman or avoid serious health risks – in Peru’s public health system. While no reliable statistics are available on how many women have been turned away from a legal abortion, in interviews with women, healthcare providers, rights activists and government officials, Human Rights Watch found that women in general lack accurate information about their right to a legal abortion, and public health care professionals are often unclear about the intent of laws guaranteeing women access to legal abortions.

Rwanda Circumcises Soldiers to Fight HIV/AIDS

Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), RWANDA: Military to Lead the Way in Male Circumcision

The soldiers in the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) will be the first men to benefit from a government policy to use male circumcision as a tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS, according to senior health officials.

Early in 2008, the Rwandan Ministry of Health declared its intention to include circumcision – scientifically proven to reduce a man's risk of contracting the virus from an infected sexual partner by as much as 60 percent – in its HIV prevention programmes. The voluntary circumcision programme is expected to start in August.

"We will use the military as role models for the rest of the population – they are adult enough to give consent, and if young men see that soldiers are willing to suffer the pain of circumcision, they will also get the courage to do it," said Dr Agnes Binagwaho, executive secretary of Rwanda's national AIDS commission (CNLS).

In Countries Where Abortion Is Illegal, Desperate Women Turn to Internet

The Press Association: Fear Over Abortion Pills Website:

Women living in countries where abortion is restricted - including Northern Ireland - are using the internet to buy medication enabling them to perform an abortion at home, it emerged.

A medical study found more than one in 10 customers on one of the most well-known websites needed a surgical procedure after taking the medication.

Women in more than 70 countries, including Northern Ireland, have used the internet site Women on Web to purchase the drugs for £55 a time. Anti-abortion campaigners have labelled the development "worrying".

Penelope Andrews on Recognition of Polygamous Marriages in South Africa

Penelope Andrews (CUNY/Valparaiso) has posted 'Big Love?' The Recognition of Customary Marriages in South Africa on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This Comment contextualizes the issue of polygamous marriages within the South African constitutional paradigm, one committed unequivocally to the principle of equality. This Comment analyzes how South African law, European in origin, had to incorporate the laws and institutions of indigenous communities within the national legal framework, as part of the overall transformative legal project underway in the country since 1994. By focusing on the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, this Comment examines such incorporation, while questioning its effect on the overall project of constitutionalism, human rights, and equality.

World Bank Urges Improved Access to Contraception

Reuters: World Bank urges more focus on contraception:

More emphasis is needed on family planning issues in poor countries, the World Bank said on Thursday, citing new data that it said showed 51 million unplanned pregnancies occur because women lack access to contraceptives.

In a report released ahead of World Population Day on Friday, the World Bank said another 25 million pregnancies in developing countries occur because contraceptives are incorrectly used or because birth control measures fail.

Canada: Abortion Rights Pioneer Morgentaler Named Member of Order of Canada

The Vancouver Sun: Honour for Morgentaler outrages abortion foes, by Cassandra Drudi:

Dr. Henry Morgentaler was named a member of the Order of Canada on Tuesday, an appointment that threw fuel on the bitter abortion debate and was slammed by one of the highest-ranking members of the Catholic Church as debasing the award.

Morgentaler's name is reflected in the landmark decision, R. v. Morgentaler, that legalized abortion in Canada.  See: Canada: Access to abortion still limited 20 years after landmark ruling.  Morgentaler is a Polish-born physician and a Holocaust survivor. More from the Vancouver Sun:

Almost single-handedly, Morgentaler pushed abortion rights on to the national agenda when he opened an illegal abortion clinic in Montreal in 1969. At one point, he was jailed for 10 months when a lower court acquittal was overturned by a higher court. The issue culminated in a landmark ruling in 1988 in which the Supreme Court struck down anti-abortion provisions of the Criminal Code on the grounds they violate a woman's constitutional right to "security of person."

See also: Canadian Press: Morgentaler proud to 'finally' receive Order of Cda, says Cda set global example

Abortion Becomes Less Taboo in the Middle East

L.A. Times: Number of Abortions Rising in Middle East, experts say, by Borzou Daragahi:

BEIRUT -- Unmarried and pregnant, Ranya gathered up her courage and confided to a friend that she was considering a drastic step: an illegal abortion.

She braced for criticism. But to her surprise, her friend disclosed that she had had one too....

Despite legal and religious restrictions against abortion in much of the Arab world, changing social values and economic realities as well as demographic shifts have contributed to an apparent increase in the number of the procedures in the Middle East.

"There's definitely an increase compared to 10 to 15 years ago," said Mohammed Graigaa, executive director of the Moroccan Assn. for Family Planning. "Abortion is much less of a taboo. It's much more visible. Doctors talk about it. Women talk about it. The moral values of people have changed."

Yemen: Young Girls Defy Child Marriage

NY Times: Tiny Voices Defy Child Marriage in Yemen, by Robert F. Worth:

One morning last month, Arwa Abdu Muhammad Ali walked out of her husband’s house here and ran to a local hospital, where she complained that he had been beating and sexually abusing her for eight months.

That alone would be surprising in Yemen, a deeply conservative Arab society where family disputes tend to be solved privately. What made it even more unusual was that Arwa was 9 years old.

Within days, Arwa — a tiny, delicate-featured girl — had become a celebrity in Yemen, where child marriage is common but has rarely been exposed in public. She was the second child bride to come forward in less than a month; in April, a 10-year-old named Nujood Ali had gone by herself to a courthouse to demand a divorce, generating a landmark legal case.

NY Times Magazine Examines Declining Population in Europe

NY Times Magazine cover story: No Babies?, by Russell Shorto:

...In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the “replacement rate” — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level. At various times in modern history — during war or famine — birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to “low” or “very low” levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, José Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari — the authors of the 2002 report — saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: “lowest-low fertility.”...

Romania: 11-Year-Old Incest Victim Permitted Abortion

BBC News: Romanian girl permitted abortion:

An 11-year-old Romanian girl who is 21 weeks pregnant after being raped by an uncle will be able to have an abortion, even though it is forbidden by law.                   

A government committee said the procedure should go ahead due to the exceptional circumstances of her case.                   

Alabania: Fading Custom of "Sworn Virgins" Allowed Women to Live as Men

NY Times: Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man, by Dan Bilefsky:

KRUJE, Albania — Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

Romanian Government to Decide on Abortion for 11-Year-Old Incest Victim

China Daily: Romanian gov't to decide on 11-year-old girl abortion:

BUCHAREST, Romania  -- Romania's health minister said Wednesday a government committee will decide this week whether an 11-year-old who was raped by her uncle can go to Britain for an abortion or must continue the pregnancy.

The case, which surfaced earlier this month, has bitterly divided the medical community, child rights groups and the public.

The girl is 20 weeks pregnant, which is over the legal limit for abortions in Romania.

Materials from the Marie Stopes Global Safe Abortion Conference now available online

Online videos, audios, powerpoints and notes of the proceedings of the Marie Stopes Global Safe Abortion Conference held in London last October are now available here, including:

"Expanding Access to Legal Abortion: The Policy Guideline Trend"
Keynote Presentation by Joanna Erdman
Powerpoint
Video
Session 6
Media coverage (Argentine newspaper article)

"Accommodating Women's Differences under the Women's
Anti-Discrimination Convention"
Presentation by Rebecca Cook
Session 8.29:
Powerpoint
Minutes

"The Legal and Ethical Context of Conscientious Objection"
Presentation by Bernard Dickens
Session 8.32:
Powerpoint
Minutes

Via Linda Hutjens (Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Programme, Univ. of Toronto).

 

Survey Shows Majorities Worldwide Oppose Criminalizing Abortion

AlterNet: Criminal Penalties for Abortion Rejected Across the Globe, by Jill Filipovic:

When you live in a country where abortion rights remain a contentious issue in every election and anti-choice activists are emboldened enough to demonstrate against the birth control pill, there are a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about the future of reproductive freedom. But internationally, there's a glimmer of good news: Around the globe, individual citizens support abortion rights, even when their own governments criminalize abortion.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed men and women in 18 countries that collectively make up 59 percent of the world's population. In 17 out of the 18 countries, a majority of respondents rejected criminal penalties for abortion. In nine of the 18 countries, majorities said that abortion is an individual decision that governments should butt out of. Of those nine countries which thought the government should intervene in abortion rights, only a majority in one -- Indonesia -- supported criminal sanctions for women who terminate their pregnancies.

Student Scholarship: The Right to Abortion in Taiwan

Hsiaowei Kuan (Penn Law) has posted Abortion Law and Abortion Discourse in Taiwan: Rights, Social Movements and Democratization on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

My dissertation tells a story of the abortion right in Taiwan: how abortion was not a right either before or after its legalization, how it became a right after the mobilization of social movements and democratization, and finally, what sort of right it is today. Abortion was legalized in Taiwan in 1985, for the purposes of population control and social and economic development of the nation. The legalization debates of the 1980s (the Old Abortion Debate), did not include a rights discourse. Twenty years later, when new abortion bans were submitted to the Legislature for review, a fresh round of debate (The New Abortion Debate) began in which a rights discourse emerged. My dissertation compares the abortion discourses of the Old Abortion Debate with the New Abortion Debate. I examine in what way they are different and, in particular, whether the use of the language of rights increased. Based on an empirical analysis of legislative records, I conclude that the quantity of abortion rights discourse significantly increased in Taiwan in the period of the New Abortion Debate. I explore the factors that appear to have contributed most to the emergence of the rights discourse. I argue that structural change in the legislative forum and the ideological change in the concept of rights altered the political atmosphere, creating the possibility of adopting rights discourse in the New Abortion Debate. However, the framing of feminist proabortion movement affected the abortion rights discourse more directly. Feminists framed women's abortion right as a right to abortion autonomy rather than what North Americans refer to as a private choice or a freedom. Under the strong influence of feminists, abortion autonomy has become the dominant perspective in the abortion rights discourse in Taiwan.

Doctors in Uganda Say Abortion Should Be Made Legal

allAfrica.com: Uganda: Doctors Want Abortion Made Legal, by Chris Ocowun:

PARLIAMENT should pass a law allowing induced abortion among young school girls in the war-ravaged north to reduce the high death rate of expectant mothers, medical doctors in Gulu have appealed.

"Fewer girls die of abortion in countries where it is legal compared to countries like Uganda where the practice is prohibited. Maternal mortality rate would reduce by 15% or more," said Dr. Charles Engenye, a gynaecologist of Gulu regional referral hospital.

Australia: Failed contraception main reason for abortions

News.com.au: Faulty contraception main reason for abortions:

TWO-THIRDS of all pregnant women seeking abortions in one Australian state are doing so because their contraception methods failed.

The study, to be published today, looked at the experiences of 3400 women who presented at a southern Adelaide clinic for abortions in the past decade.

Between July 1996, and June 2006, nearly 70 per cent of the 3434 women who presented for an abortion were using contraception.

About 36 per cent were using barrier methods such as condoms, a further 28 per cent were using hormone methods such as the pill, while 3 per cent were using natural family planning methods.

The study authors from Flinders University, Wendy Abigail, Charmaine Power and Ingrid Belan, said the findings ``dispel the myth'' that women use abortion as a method of contraception.

See also this post: Abortion as a "Form of Birth Control"

The Importance of Contraception in Humanitarian Emergencies

United Nations Population Fund: Contraception Can Save Lives in Humanitarian Emergencies, by Shannon Egan:

In Afghanistan, where fertility and maternal death rates are among the highest in the world, restricted access to certain conflict areas makes it nearly impossible to deliver contraceptives to woman who would like to have fewer and safer pregnancies. After natural disasters, supply chains are often disrupted. And in Darfur women and young people trying to locate family planning services and information may wind up as survivors of sexual violence or worse: dead.

UK: MPs vote on abortion time limit and other bills

The Press Association: Commons vote on abortion time limit:

MPs are squaring up for a Commons showdown over the abortion laws as a sustained attempt is mounted to cut the time limit for the first time in 18 years.

A series of Commons amendments will give MPs the chance to vote for a reduction in the current 24-week limit to between 22 and 12 weeks....

The "Pro-lifers" suffered a setback on Monday night when a series of amendments which they had tabled to the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill were comfortably defeated in the Commons.

One amendment banning the creation of "hybrid" human-animal embryos for the purposes of stem cell research was voted down by 336 to 176, while another preventing the creation of so called "saviour" siblings was defeated by 342 to 163.

However, with MPs from all parties again being given a free vote, many at Westminster believe that divisions on the time limit for abortions could be far tighter.

Canada: Emergency Contraceptive Approved for Over-the-Counter Sales

Reuters: Morning-after pill sold over the counter in Canada:

TORONTO (Reuters) - The so-called "morning after" pill Plan B has received full over-the-counter status in Canada, drug maker Paladin Labs Inc said on Thursday.

Paladin said that following a decision by the National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities, an umbrella group for Canada's provincial regulators, the emergency contraceptive will be available directly from pharmacy shelves.

Plan B, which is used after having sex to prevent unintended pregnancies, previously had behind-the-counter status, meaning that it was available from a pharmacist on request but did not require a doctor's prescription....

In the United States, women and men 18 and older can buy Plan B without a prescription if they show proof of age at a pharmacy. Girls under 18 still need a prescription.

Supreme Court Declines to Review Asylum Claim of Chinese Man Whose Wife Had Forced Abortion