Further Reading on Politicization of Abortion in America

Abortions Surge in China; Officials Cite Poor Sex Education

By MARK McDONALD

July 30, 2009

HONG KONG — More than 13 million abortions are performed each year in China, according to statistics disclosed by Chinese health officials on Thursday, a marked increase from 2003, the most recent statistics available.
When unreported and medication-induced abortions are counted, the actual number is substantially higher, according to physicians and medical researchers quoted by the state-run newspaper China Daily on Thursday...
But the rise in the numbers is significant. In a joint report, the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute put the number of abortions in China in 2003 at 9 million, out of a total of 42 million worldwide that year.
Chinese officials said a low level of sex education among young people was the reason for the widespread use of abortion.
More than 70 percent of callers to a pregnancy phone line at a Shanghai hospital knew almost nothing about contraception, China Daily reported.
|MORE

LETTERS:    Abortion and the Killing of Dr. Tiller

July 29, 2009

To the Editor:
I provide abortions in Buffalo, and deal daily with hate-filled protesters like those you describe. Reporting about abortion must move past the fantasy that the anti-choice movement is made up of reasonable people who believe abortion is murder and are peacefully trying to stop it. And the lie that those who kill abortion providers are unconnected to the larger movement, or that there is a common ground where both sides can work to decrease abortions.
Those in the anti-choice movement are almost always opposed to the only real way to decrease unplanned pregnancies: birth control. [My emphasis] And after each murder of an abortion provider, they redouble efforts to vilify other providers.
Instead of allowing them to express phony regret for Dr. George Tiller’s murder, as they did for Dr. Barnett Slepian’s here in the Buffalo area, they should be asked: If Roe v. Wade is overturned, should women who obtain abortions be prosecuted for murder? And as countries with the highest abortion rates are those where it is illegal, why do you support criminalizing abortion?

Katharine Morrison
Buffalo, July 26, 2009

|MORE Letters

Witness Tells of Doctor’s Last Seconds

By MONICA DAVEY

July 28, 2009

WICHITA, Kan. — Dr. George R. Tiller was standing beside a refreshment table inside his church, discussing his fondness for doughnuts, when a man walked up, pressed a gun against the doctor’s head and fired, a fellow church member recalled Tuesday. |MORE

Ipas -- Saving Women's Lives "

Future Choices TV episode
aired July 2009

Unsafe abortion is a global tragedy. Anu Kumar of Ipas minces no words in telling us that such a travesty is entirely unnecessary. In “Ipas — Saving Women’s Lives,” she describes how Ipas cares about these women, and why you should, too.

In conjunction with “Ipas — Saving Women’s Lives,” , several pertinent items about abortion in developing countries:

• About Ipas:

  Founded in 1973, Ipas is a global NGO dedicated entirely to ending preventable deaths and disabilities due to unsafe abortion. Through local, national and global partnerships, Ipas works to ensure that women can obtain safe, respectful and comprehensive abortion care..." |MORE

  ipas_at_a_glance.pdf
  ipas_in_Africa.pdf
  Ipas_in_LatAm.pdf
  Ipas_in_Asia.pdf

• About Ipas' work:

  About Not Yet Rain, Ipas's documentary on abortion in Ethiopia |MORE

  "As Thunder Is Not Yet Rain, In Ethiopia, Legal Rights to Abortion Are Not Yet Accessible:" NPR on Not Yet Rain," |MORE

  In Ethiopia one in seven women die annually from pregnancy-related causes, and unsafe abortion accounts for more than half these maternal deaths. |MORE about Ethiopia

• About abortion:

  "The Deadly Toll of Abortion by Amateurs:" Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality - at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll. |MORE

  "Abortion: We Said It" by Anu Kumar, Oct 2007 : "...a wide-ranging and open discussion about abortion is long overdue. Each year unsafe abortion claims 66,500 lives and injures 5 million more women and girls." |MORE

  "Abortion is a human rights issue..." |MORE

  Sexual violence and abortion: "In countries where abortion is legally restricted, abortions following rape and incest are likely to be performed unsafely [leading to] health complications and even death." |MORE

  Nearly half of induced abortions worldwide are performed in unsafe conditions, mostly in Africa. |MORE in Fast Facts on Abortion

• About Helms Amendment

  "The Helms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act was passed in 1973, prohibiting the use of [U.S.] funds for the performance of an abortion 'as a method of family planning; or to 'motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.' The Helms Amendment has been over-interpreted by the U.S. government to ban a range of activities." |MORE

• Dissuading Women

Guttmacher Donor Update
<listadmin@guttmacher.org>
June 12, 2009

The Guttmacher Institute reminds us that "The campaign to dissuade women [from seeking abortion] dates back decades." But in fact there is little evidence that such a dissuasion campaign is effective in reducing abortion rates. Strategies to deter women from seeking to end unplanned pregnancy by abortion include mandated waiting periods or ultrasound exams.

According to “All That’s Old Is New Again: The Long Campaign to Persuade Women to Forego Abortion,” by Guttmacher's Rachel Benson Gold such tactics do not 'substantial reduce abortion rates. Gold argues that these restrictive policies are premised on the false notion that women seeking an abortion do not understand what an abortion really is and would behave otherwise if they did. Moreover, research indicates that such policies are largely ineffective in actually persuading women not to have an abortion. Still, the organized antiabortion movement—rather than helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place—has dedicated its considerable resources to promoting these restrictions as an interim step toward banning the procedure outright.' |MORE

• Is there a next generation of abortion providers?
        As if the threat of violence and divisive politics weren't enough, getting trained is almost impossible

By Kate Harding
June 15, 2009
Salon.com

"I vividly remember our abortion training in medical school -- kind of like some people remember experiencing a bad car accident, or a train derailing," says Carolyn, a 28-year-old New England OB-GYN who provides abortions...|MORE

• Not All Abortions Are Equal

By ROSS DOUTHAT
OP-ED COLUMNIST
New York Times
Published: June 8, 2009

The case of Dr. George Tiller, murdered just over a week ago in the lobby of his church, helps explain why so many people believe that abortion should be available at any stage of pregnancy...

Over the last week, there’s been an outpouring of testimonials, across the Internet, from women (and some men) who lived through these hard cases. They help explain why Tiller thought he was doing the Lord’s work, even though that work involved destroying something that we wouldn’t hesitate to call a baby if we saw it struggling for life in a hospital bed. They help explain why so many Americans defend his right to do it.

|MORE

• Hyde Amendment Restrictions Impose Harsh Costs on Low-Income Latinas

By Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas and Liza Fuentes
RH Reality Check
Created May 14 2009 - 8:00am

Last week President Barack Obama released his budget for fiscal year 2010. The document allocates hundreds of billions of dollars to initiatives designed to help struggling families navigate the treacherous waters of recession. The president wisely called for funding cuts to programs consistently proven ineffective, including abstinence-only sexuality education. Regrettably, he forgot to remove an archaic provision that, today more than ever, thwarts the economic survival and undermines healthy living for low-income women across America, the so-called Hyde Amendment. Latinas, more likely to be poor and uninsured, top the list of those affected by the restrictions posed by this law.

The Hyde Amendment, one of the first and most enduring efforts from right-wing extremists to deny reproductive freedom to women, has for more than 30 years prohibited the use of federal funds to subsidize access to abortion for low-income women who receive Medicaid. |MORE

• "Women's Health Matters!"

Future Choices TV episode
aired May 2009

In the face of continued attacks on reproductive rights, New York’s laws need to be strengthened to protect women’s health and safety, asserts Tracey Brooks, President & CEO of Family Planning Advocates of New York, in “Women’s Health Matters.” Unless we press our state legislators to enact the Reproductive Health Act, New York women risk losing some basic reproductive rights which we need to protect women's health and safety.

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Forced to abort?

Legislators are moving to address the problem of forced abortion in [not China]  Missouri... As Missouri resident Pamela Merritt writes at RHRealityCheck, HB 46 & 434 (passed in the House, stalled in the Senate by Democratic filibuster)

• (1) heaps requirements onto the "informed consent" procedure for abortion (e.g.: "Provide the pregnant woman with printed or video materials from the Department of Health and Senior Services that describes the anatomical and physiological characteristics of the unborn child's brain and heart functions, extremities, various methods of abortion, risks associated with each method, possibility of causing pain to the unborn child, alternatives to abortion, and that the father of an unborn child is liable to provide child support, even if he has offered to pay for an abortion") and
• (2) creates the crime of coercing an abortion.

Coercing how? Say, if someone threatened to pass you over for promotion, fire you, or revoke your education scholarship -- or hurt you, or kill you -- because you're pregnant. |MORE

"In a way, the American antiabortion movement has had more of an impact abroad than at home."

Michelle Goldberg expands on this assertion in her book, "The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World." In the book, Goldberg "illustrates how U.S. policies act as a catalyst for or an impediment to women's rights worldwide and puts forth a convincing argument that women's liberation worldwide is key to solving some of our most daunting problems," Van Deven writes. According to Goldberg, women's "intimate lives have become inextricably tied to global forces," and when writing the book, she found how U.S. movements were "branching out into global issues." |MORE

Contraceptive Fudge

Although HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt in his final version of a proposed regulation that aims to protect health workers who refuse to participate in abortions based on religious beliefs dropped a sentence that could have included contraception in the definition of abortion, Leavitt also has "chosen to leave open the possibility that the regulation will be applied that way," columnist William Saletan writes in a Slate opinion piece. "In that case, it would protect a provider's right to withhold oral contraception, which theoretically could prevent implantation of an embryo," Saletan writes, adding, "Pharmacists and Catholic hospitals are already waging legal battles to assert this right." |See full article

The Dog in the Manger: HHS’s Continuing Conscience Crisis

August is supposed to be the silly season in Washington, but on August 21 things got very serious for providers of reproductive health care services, when the Bush Administration announced that it was going ahead with a controversial “Provider Conscience Regulation” proposed, then rescinded, then revised, by the Department of Health and Human Services. |See further Nancy Berlinger's 8/26/08 column in Bioethics Forum

An affront to women and families

A last-ditch effort to redefine birth control as abortion isn't a matter of conscience; it's just unconscionable

Michael Leavitt feels misunderstood, or so he hints on his blog. The Bush-appointed secretary of health and human services isn't sure how some people, somehow, got the crazy idea that the government intends to redefine birth control as a form of abortion. READ MORE in The Oregonian's editorial August 12, 2008

Redefining abortion:
Federal officials considering a rule allowing health care workers to refuse to provide contraceptives

The Bush administration has consistently opposed providing funding for international birth control programs, but until now has not tried to limit the use of contraceptives inside the United States.

That could change in the president's final months in office. Read more: Houston Chronicle editorial 8/10/08

Birth Control: They're at it again

The Bush administration has heard the outrage over a proposed regulation that would dishonestly define birth control as abortion. Read MORE in SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL 8/10/08

Treating the Pill as Abortion,
Draft Regulation Stirs Debate

Set aside the fraught question of when human life begins. The new debate: When does pregnancy begin?

The Bush Administration has ignited a furor with a proposed definition of pregnancy that has the effect of classifying some of the most widely used methods of contraception as abortion. Read more: Wall Street Journal 7/31/08.

Repairing the Damage, Before Roe

Jun3 3, 2008
By WALDO L. FIELDING, M.D.

With the Supreme Court becoming more conservative, many people who support women’s right to choose an abortion fear that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave them that right, is in danger of being swept aside.

When such fears arise, we often hear about the pre-Roe “bad old days.” Yet there are few physicians today who can relate to them from personal experience. I can. |MORE

[April 9, 2008
Ipas press release]

A federally funded Johns Hopkins University project, Popline, made a recent decision to remove an Ipas publication on abortion and human rights from a vast database of publications maintained as an international web-based resource for health researchers and the general public. Administrators further decided to block searches on the term "abortion" for visitors to the website, a decision reversed on April 4th by the Dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health when the issue reached the media. [See earlier article below.] The Ipas publication, the Winter 2008 issue of A: The Abortion Magazine, was not re-instated.

Ipas regards the singling out of this publication for exclusion from more than 26,000 items on the Popline database that relate to abortion as another instance of excessive and politically-motivated government interference in free speech and academic freedom.

"As Americans, we count on decisionmakers at every level in our government to hold the line in protecting basic principles. Countless government-funded programs and publications have been subject to the same intimidation and censorship by this Administration, which has even extended to intrusion in science-based work of the World Health Organization. Such interference must end," says Ipas President Elizabeth Maguire." See further

NARAL Pro-Choice New York has developed a comprehensive resource that provides New York women with information about all of their reproductive choices. The "Book of Choices" presents a woman facing unintended pregnancy with all of the information she needs to make the decision for herself and her family. See further

Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them." Read this compelling article by Anna Quindlen in the Aug. 6, 2007 issue of Newsweek.

 

Slides provided by Guttmacher graphically display the trend and meaning of abortion rates since Roe.

During the interview Dr. Finer frequently cites Guttmacher Institute's 2006 study of abortion trends, "Abortion in Women's Lives."
This report is among many which Dr. Finer has authored in his extensive work with Guttmacher.
It is important, Dr. Finer asserts, to understand that not only is U.S. abortion decline close to stalling but, worse, disparities in unintended pregnancy grow within individual states and within particular population subgroups. See further a new analysis by the Guttmacher Institute.

Adolescents and poor women are more likely than other women to have trouble obtaining an abortion early in pregnancy, when the procedure is safest and least expensive according to a study by Lawrence Finer, Ph.D., of the Guttmacher Institute published in the October 2006 issue of Contraception. Once pregnancy is suspected, most women who want an abortion act fairly quickly and are able to obtain an abortion in the first trimester.
However, Dr. Finer and his colleagues report that two groups of women — adolescents and poor women — have greater difficulty obtaining an early abortion, but for very different reasons: Teens are hampered by a lack of knowledge about the symptoms of pregnancy, while poor women's financial constraints are often an obstacle to timely receipt of services.

New Study Notes Role that Government Has Played in Widespread Incidence of Repeat Abortions. Read abstract of Guttmacher published early November 2006.