Wisconsin to Ban Some Abortion Coverage, Re-focus Sex-education

Wisconsin - Wisconsin lawmakers have approved controversial measures to block the state's new health insurance exchange from covering abortions and require sex education classes to emphasize abstinence as the preferred method of birth control.


Both bills, which were voted through the Republican-controlled Assembly by 61-34 late Tuesday, now head to the desk of Republican Governor Scott Walker, who is widely expected to sign them.

The laws ban private insurers from offering abortion coverage in the plans they offer through the state-run exchange where thousands of Wisconsin residents will buy subsidized coverage under President Obama's healthcare overhaul.

Two Democrats, Peggy Krusick and Tony Staskunas, and one independent, Bob Ziegelbauer, joined Republicans in supporting the abortion bill, which opponents said would necessarily impair women's health by limiting access to abortions for those who require them.

A handful of Democratic representatives wore Planned Parenthood T-shirts as they voted unsuccessfully against the measure.

Also late Tuesday, the Assembly passed a bill that repeals the so-called "Healthy Youth Act" passed last session by Democrats that provided "comprehensive sex education."

Once Walker signs the measure, it will require schools that offer a human development and growth curriculum to emphasize abstinence as the preferred method of birth control and emphasize the role and "socioeconomic benefits" of marriage.

The measure would also remove information on contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration from the required curriculum.

Democrats argued the bill would neglect science-based teaching and put children at risk from sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy.

Last week, lawmakers in Utah passed a measure that would ban public schools from teaching contraception as a way of preventing pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Supporters of the measure in both Utah and Wisconsin argued that sex education was best left up to parents.

UK Abortion Clinic Targeted by US Religious Group

By Meera Selva

London - One of Britain's main abortion providers said Wednesday that a campaign run by a U.S.-based religious group is intimidating women who use its services.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service said activists from the 40 Days for Life group have been holding vigils outside one of their central London clinics and had on occasion filmed people coming in and out of the building. A spokeswoman said she asked the activists to stop filming but they refused.

The spokeswoman, who requested anonymity because she said she had received hate mail, said the protests were bigger than many other anti-abortion protests.

"We've always had sporadic outbursts down the years, but I think we are seeing something, seeing protest on a scale we haven't seen before," she said.

Robert Colquhoun, a campaign director of 40 Days for Life's London campaign, said its members are carrying out a peaceful Christian prayer vigil outside BPAS's central London clinic.

The 40 Days for Life movement began in Texas in 2004, and has now spread around the world. Its members hold vigils outside abortion clinics for a 40-day period.

"It's totally unfounded to say we want to intimidate women," Colquhoun said. "We are there to pray and to show there is love in the community out there."

Colquhoun said the group did not intend to film people using the BPAS clinic but some activists did have cameras to film passers-by who were insulting them.

Britain's debate over abortion has become louder in recent years. A number of young, socially conservative lawmakers were elected to the House of Commons after the last election, including many who support more restrictive abortion laws.

Lawmaker Nadine Dorris tried unsuccessfully last year to bar abortion providers such as BPAS from counseling women about their decisions on whether to terminate their pregnancies. She wanted the counseling services to be provided by an independent body.

Dorris's campaign failed but it drew attention to providers such as BPAS and Marie Stopes International, which between them carry out around half of Britain's 200,000 annual abortions.

Last week, a man was arrested for hacking into the BPAS website and stealing sensitive data, but police did not indicate that the man is linked to those holding the vigil.

Britain's Abortion Act, first drafted in 1967, allows surgical abortions up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy. It also permits abortions after 24 weeks if doctors believe the mother's life is in danger or there is strong evidence that the fetus would be born with a severe disability. Two doctors must approve every referral to an abortion clinic.

Argentine Women Refused Legal Abortions in Cases of Rape

By Marcela Valente

Buenos Aires - For over 90 years, a law in Argentina has allowed women who become pregnant as a result of rape to have an abortion. However, hospitals often refuse to carry out the procedure, instead referring the women to the justice system.

Argentine law penalises doctors who carry out abortions and the women who have them, with certain exceptions.

The 1921 criminal code states that abortion is not punishable when a doctor performs it because the life or health of the mother is in danger, or "if the pregnancy is the result of rape or sexual assault of a feeble-minded or demented woman."

Nevertheless, cases periodically crop up where sexually abused or raped girls, teenagers and women are referred to the justice authorities for a decision about a procedure that in fact does not require authorisation.

"Abortion is a medical procedure. Doctors, not judges, should decide whether it needs to be done," Natalia Gherardi, a lawyer and head of the Latin American Group for Gender and Justice (ELA), told IPS.

In spite of the legal ban, between 460,000 and 600,000 abortions a year are performed in this country, according to NGOs, and an estimated 100 women die every year from clandestine abortions performed in unsanitary conditions.

Aware of the difficulties in obtaining approval of a law legalising abortion, women's organisations have long campaigned for at least an effective right to abortion in cases in which it is already legal.

Gherardi said "there is great uncertainty among doctors on how to interpret the article" in the law that establishes which cases of abortion are not punishable. And their confusion is understandable, given what happens when cases are referred to the justice system.

Some judges authorise the abortion; others rule that authorisation is unnecessary; and some judges rule, against the law, to prevent the procedure.

To avoid the referral of these cases to the justice authorities, in 2007 the Health Ministry issued a Technical Guide for the Comprehensive Care of Non-Punishable Abortions.

The guide book acknowledges that "for many decades" women have been prevented from exercising their right, enshrined in the criminal code, "to have access to an abortion in authorised circumstances."

"The state is obliged to guarantee the exercise of that right," says the guide, which adds that hospitals "have the legal obligation to carry out the procedure, and are not required to call for judicial intervention and/or authorisation" before acting, even in cases of under-age girls.

Nevertheless, there are regular instances of girls attending a hospital with their parents and being denied an abortion. The most recent case to have come to light occurred in January, in the province of Entre Ríos, where an 11-year-old girl who had been sexually abused became pregnant.

Doctors at the public hospital insisted on judicial authorisation, and a judge refused permission for the procedure. Furthermore, the provincial health minister, Hugo Cettour, publicly said that if the girl was capable of conceiving, she was capable of being a mother.

In the face of this pressure, and even more pressure from both the Catholic and evangelical churches, families give up the right to legal abortions. "This almost always happens to women who are poor or marginalised," Gabriela Filoni, a lawyer, told IPS.

Filoni is in charge of the regional litigation programme of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights (CLADEM), which in conjunction with other organisations succeeded in taking one of these cases to the international arena.

As a result of their intervention, in 2011 the United Nations Human Rights Committee ordered the Argentine state to provide "reparations, including an indemnity" to a mentally disabled young woman who was denied an abortion.

"The time period allowed for the state to respond has expired. We know the government asked for an extension, but what we want is a public policy or a legal measure that would prevent a repeat of these cases," said Filoni.

The 2006 case involved a 20-year-old woman identified in the records as LMR, in Guernica in the province of Buenos Aires, who has a mental age of between eight and 10 as certified by her physicians. The young woman was raped by her uncle, and became pregnant. But when her mother took her to the hospital for an abortion, the doctors refused and sent her to another facility.

At the second hospital, the bioethics committee met and referred the case to the justice system. A court denied permission for the abortion, and the ruling was upheld on appeal.

The provincial Supreme Court finally recognised the young woman’s right to a legal abortion. Furthermore, the court stated that judicial authorisation should not have been required in the first place.

But even then, the hospital refused to carry out the procedure, claiming this time that the pregnancy was too advanced. In the end, the family had to arrange an illegal abortion to terminate a 20-week pregnancy.

By this time, LMR's mother and sister had both lost their jobs because they stayed by her side throughout the whole process, and they had been harassed by Catholic groups applying pressure to prevent the abortion.

"Authorisation was not necessary in this case, yet the health providers washed their hands of the matter, and the problem here is that referring the case to the justice system takes time, and the pregnancy continues to advance," said Filoni.

In a survey carried out by Ibarómetro, a polling firm, seven out of 10 respondents asked about the case of the 11-year-old girl in Entre Ríos said she should have been given a legal abortion.

When asked about the legalisation of abortion, 60 percent of respondents said it should be a woman's right, and access should be guaranteed by the state.

Abortion Safer Than Giving Birth: Study

By Genevra Pittman

New York - Getting a legal abortion is much safer than giving birth, suggests a new U.S. study published Monday.

Researchers found that women were about 14 times more likely to die during or after giving birth to a live baby than to die from complications of an abortion.

Experts say the findings, though not unexpected, contradict some state laws that suggest abortions are high-risk procedures.

The message is that getting an abortion and giving birth are both safe, said Dr. Anne Davis, who studies obstetrics and gynecology at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, and wasn't involved in the new study.

"We wouldn't tell people, 'Don't have a baby because it's safer to have an abortion' -- that's ridiculous," she told Reuters Health. "We're trying to help women who are having all reproductive experiences know what to expect."

An induced abortion -- like any other medical procedure -- requires getting informed consent from the woman, said Dr. Bryna Harwood, an ob-gyn from the University of Illinois in Chicago who also didn't participate in the new research.

That means women understand and acknowledge the risks of their different options.

What makes it complicated, Harwood added, is when the law interferes and requires doctors to state information that isn't always balanced or medically sound -- usually exaggerating the risk of abortion.

The researchers on the new study combined government data on live births and pregnancy- and abortion-related deaths with estimates on legal abortions performed in the U.S. from the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts sexual and reproductive health research and education.

Dr. Elizabeth Raymond from Gynuity Health Projects in New York City and Dr. David Grimes of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, found that between 1998 and 2005, one woman died during childbirth for every 11,000 or so babies born.

That compared to one woman of every 167,000 who died from a legal abortion.

The researchers also cited a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which found that, from 1998 to 2001, the most common complications associated with pregnancy -- including high blood pressure, urinary tract infections and mental health conditions -- happened more often in women who had a live birth than those who got an abortion.

In their report, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, Raymond and Grimes write that the findings aren't surprising given that women are pregnant for a lot longer when they decide to have a baby and so have more time to develop complications.

Harwood said previous studies have also shown the safety of legal abortions.

Most abortions have typically been done surgically, she told Reuters Health. But since the abortion drug mifepristone was approved for use in the United States in 2000, the number of medically-induced abortions has been on the rise.

Both methods are now considered equally safe, she said, with the main risk -- though very small -- coming from medication- and procedure-related infections.

Depending on the state, however, doctors legally must go over the risks of abortion in language that may be misleading, researchers said, with skewed lists of possible complications. Others require a 24-hour waiting period in between the counseling and the abortion itself.

Harwood said that laws regarding what's said between the doctor and a woman seeking an abortion often hamper doctors' attempts to inform patients in a balanced way.

"It is certainly an impediment to have the state dictate my informed consent process beyond the usual," Harwood told Reuters Health.

"Abortion care and pregnancy care should not really be any different than consenting people for any other procedure."

Davis agreed that state-mandated discussions have no place in abortion counseling. She said she was glad to see the new report, which helps dispel "misinformation" and "lies" about abortion risks included in some state laws -- such as the idea that abortion is linked to cancer.

"Women who are having abortions are having a safe, common surgical procedure or taking medication for the same reason," she told Reuters Health.

"They should feel confident that the medical care they're having is safe, long-term and short-term.

Embryo Personhood Amendment to Be Voted on in Mississippi

Jackson, Mississippi – Voters in Mississippi were asked to vote on whether or not a state constitutional amendment should give personhood to a fetus. If it passes it will be the first win in the battle to make abortions illegal.

If it passes it will find itself at odds with Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing a woman to get an abortion. It seeks "to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof" as a person.

Backed by Personhood USA the measure “could send shockwaves around the country if it wins” said Keith Mason, the group's co-founder. It's also trying to put similar bills on ballots in Florida, Oregon, Montana, and Ohio. A similar tactic in Colorado failed twice – once in 2008 and again in 2010.

Republican governor Haley Barbour is one of the many pro-life people who is raising questions about the actual consequences. "Some very strongly pro-life people have raised questions about the ambiguity and about the actual consequences — whether there are unforeseen, unintended consequences. And I'll have to say that I have heard those concerns and they give me some pause," he said last week.

The split is also felt between religious groups. The Mississippi Baptist Convention is backing the ban while the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi and the General Conference of the United Methodist Church oppose it. Another religious group, the Catholic Diocese of Jackson is remains neutral on the issue. Mississippi's State Medical Association is also taking a neutral stance while other medical groups are against it.

The amendment could make birth control illegal and deter physicians from performing in-vitro fertilization due to possible criminal charges if the embryo doesn't survive, say opponents. They also claimed supporters are forcing their religious views on others by forcing women to go through with unwanted pregnancies.

Currently tough regulations on abortions and only one clinic performing them makes Mississippi a good proving ground for social conservatives who want to get in state abortion bans throughout the country.

Both Democrat and Republican candidates for governor are supportive of the abortion ban measure.

Update: Thankfully Mississippi voters struck down the proposed legislation.