Turkey: PM likens abortion to murder

www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ghRk6T37kn927jhIvh8Uk6Riptqg?docId=CNG.36fb559df99f10c4f48da787ec944761.8a1

Fury of Turkey’s women as PM likens abortion to murder

By Fulya Ozerkan (AFP)

ANKARA — Some 300 women are to protest to the Turkish government Tuesday after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sparked fury among women’s rights advocates by likening abortion to murder.

Activists have expressed outrage at the premier’s remarks, branding him a “woman’s enemy.”

The representatives from women’s associations will meet Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Sahin, who has supported Erdogan’s stance.

Erdogan, who also opposed recourse to Caesarean deliveries, sparked the row when he told a population conference on Friday he considered abortion a conspiracy to curb his country’s economic growth.

Appealing to women not to use the right to terminate a pregnancy, he said, “You either kill a baby in the mother’s womb or you kill it after birth. There’s no difference.”

The prime minister further fanned the flames when he told women’s branches of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that “Every abortion is an Uludere,” referring to a botched attack on Kurds by Turkish warplanes in December that claimed 34 lives.

In Istanbul, dozens of women protested at the weekend, unfurling banners reading, “Is the right to abortion the prime minister’s business?”, “Uludcere is murder, not abortion,” and “It’s our womb, we have Caesarean delivery or abortion.”

Women’s organisations accused the Turkish premier of making politics over women’s bodies and urged him to address priority issues that concern women.

“Caesarean births and abortion have legal footing in Turkey. The prime minister’s attempt to change the country’s agenda by attacking women is a grave mistake” said Canan Gullu, head of the Federation of Women’s Associations.

“In such a party congress, the prime minister should have talked about women’s problems including unemployment, domestic violence, or their inadequate standing in political life, instead of making politics over women’s bodies,” she said.

Female deputies from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) also joined the fray, urging Erdogan to “give up standing guard over women’s vaginas.”

Erdogan, whose governing Justice and Development Party takes its roots from Islam, has repeatedly called on women to have at least three children.

In 2004, his government backed a law criminalising adultery but had to abandon it after intense pressure from the European Union.

The prime minister’s latest salvo however has raised concerns at a possible government bid to ban abortion in Turkey that has been legal since 1983, allowing women to terminate a pregnancy in the first 10 weeks.

Sahin defended Erdogan, saying he was referring to unwanted pregnancies which could have been avoided by family planning methods.

“It is every family’s most natural right to plan the number of children they want to have,” she said. “It is out of the question for us… to interfere in this right.”

Initially abortion was permitted only to save the life or preserve the health of a pregnant woman and in cases of foetal impairment but growing rates of illegal abortion prompted the government to liberalise the law in the 1980s.

The latest figures show abortions on the rise throughout the country, from around 60,000 in 2009 to nearly 70,000 in 2011.

Sahin also backed Erdogan’s criticism of the high number of Caesarian births in Turkey, where they now represented half of all deliveries.

“The World Health Organisation says this rate should not exceed 15-20 percent. If you take a look at the European Union averages, this rate is not over 20 percent,” she said.

Howver, in a statement posted on its website, the Turkish Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology said the world as a whole had seen an increase in C-section delivery rates.

 

UK: The Myth of the ‘Repeat Abortion’ is Both Ridiculous and Dangerous

The Daily Telegraph breathlessly reports that the National Health Service is spending £1 million a week on carrying out “repeat abortions”; that is, on women who have had abortions in the past. Some particularly crafty ladies have gotten away with up to nine free abortions!

Is it problematic that the NHS is spending that much money on abortions? Yes, because that means women are having trouble accessing the contraception they need to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancy, an issue that the Telegraph actually reported on three days ago in an article called, “Women finding access to contraception ‘difficult’”. The article reported that four in ten women who unintentionally became pregnant had problems getting contraception, and that areas where it’s hard to access contraception have higher abortion rates.

It’s incredibly frustrating that the reporter who wrote the “repeat abortion” piece did not once refer to the statistics that were published just days before by the same fucking paper. Instead, she warps numbers and quotes pro-life sources to push the idea that the number of “repeat abortions” is indicative that, as one antiabortion supporter is quoted as saying, “abortion is being seen by many as a form of contraception. But is this surprising when we live in a society which says it’s all right to have an abortion once. If it’s fine once, why not two, three or four times.” That quote makes me want to go DAHKJDHASJHADAHKDA. But, instead, let’s break down the reasons why this article is bullshit.

In the very first sentence, we learn that, “in some cases,” women are getting up to nine abortions! Wouldn’t that statistic make even the most pro-choiciest of pro-choicers somewhat concerned? Later, however, we learn that only 85 women across the entire country had an abortion for the eighth time in 2010. Sorry, Telegraph and antiabortion advocates everywhere, but that’s a negligible amount of people. It’s also unspecified whether these women took RU486; they may not have even had surgery.

The only other numbers we get are that, in 2010, “189,000 terminations took place, with more than 64,000 of them being performed on someone who had already undergone the procedure.” That’s a far less incendiary — and far more vague — statistic, isn’t it?

We also learn that “five out of every six repeat terminations being requested by a woman who is unmarried.” THANKS! That’s really important information, definitely more crucial than, say, information on access to contraception. Would it be okay if more married women wanted abortions?

The Department responded to the statistics by saying that there’s no evidence that proves women are using abortion as a method of birth control and that abortion rates have increased only slightly in the last ten years. In the Telegraph article that ran a few days before, Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said:

“There has been much government focus on ‘problems’ with abortion services, despite evidence that women receive high quality care when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. At the same time, real and pressing problems with women’s access to the contraception they need to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy in the first place appear low down the list of government priorities.

Policy to guide family planning services, which could help prevent these pregnancies, is now a year overdue.

Women need access to high-quality contraceptive services that are not restricted on the basis of age or location, with straightforward access to abortion care when their method lets them down.

We call on policy-makers to deliver a sexual health strategy that empowers healthcare professionals to deliver the contraception and abortion services that women in the 21st Century need and deserve.”

The Telegraph leans conservative and is clearly pro-life; remember their recent undercover investigation in which they purportedly filmed doctors agreeing to “illegal abortions” on the basis of a baby’s sex? If you read the piece, it’s clear that the doctors were just trying to do their job without judging their patients: “I don’t ask questions. If you want a termination, you want a termination,” one doctor said. This nonjudgmental attitude is apparently not okay with theTelegraph, which is bent on convincing the country that women are wily sluts who want to get dozens of abortions so they can sleep around and, on the off-chance they decide to have a child, “illegally” decide its sex.

The paper’s plight would be laughable and pathetic if it wasn’t so terrifying: if the takeaway for readers is that women are carelessly getting tons of abortions — I mean, seriously, this whole thing reminds me of the genius Onion Abortionplex article that some people didn’t realize was satire — that will only hurt the women who desperately need access to contraception in the real world.

 

Colombia: Attempted Shooting of Pro Choice Rights Lawyer Raises Questions of Political Will

www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-becker/women-colombia_b_1503584.html

Posted: 05/13/2012 1:07 pm

Mónica Roa did not think twice when the lights went out in her office at 5:00 p.m. last Monday. Power outages are a common occurrence in Bogotá, so Roa, a well-known human rights attorney, and two colleagues continued on with their meeting. But at 6:30 pm, a bullet hit the window next to Roa’s desk, sending glass shards into the room. As she raced to the stairwell to alert others, she heard another shot. Her bodyguard, who was outside when the attack happened, counted six shots in total.

In all likelihood, the attack against Roa was timed with this week’s sixth anniversary of Colombia’s landmark Constitutional Court decision revising one of the world’s most prohibitive abortion laws. Roa, the program director of the international rights group Women’s Link Worldwide, had filed the closely-watched case, which eventually liberalized the no-exceptions law and allowed for abortion in the instances of rape, incest, severe fetal abnormality, or when there is a risk to the life or physical or mental health of the woman.

The country watched spellbound as the first person to seek an abortion under the new law came forward — an 11-year-old girl who had become pregnant after being raped by her step-father. Her grandmother had heard about the change in the law and brought her to a local hospital. Women’s Link Worldwide represented the girl as the hospital, which had been unaware of the legal change, at first resisted and then sought to make sense of its new obligations.

That was just the start of the struggle to implement the law. Women’s rights activists say the Constitutional Court ruling and subsequent case law are exceptionally clear in defining how the decision should be implemented. However, the country’s most powerful legal officer, Procurador General and author ofThe Gender Ideology: Tragic Utopia or Cultural Subversion, Alejandro Ordoñez, has been throwing up roadblocks to enforcing the decision, rooted in his personal religious beliefs.

Especially unsettling is a criminal complaint filed against Roa earlier this year by Ordoñez’s deputy Ilva Miriam Hoyos. The charges against Roa appear to be a response to a new case that has now reached the Constitutional Court by Women’s Link Worldwide along with over 1,200 Colombian women. The case requests that the Procurador and his deputies give true and accurate information on sexual and reproductive rights, complying with the Constitution and the jurisprudence of the Court. News of the Hoyos complaint was leaked from the press office of Ordoñez, pointing to his participation in the persecution of a private citizen.

Women’s Link recently launched a campaign that seeks to spotlight the need to have a Procurador who complies with his/her Constitutional duties and defends the rights of all Colombians.

Ordoñez’s position is up at the end of 2012; however, he is seeking another four-year term. Ordoñez’s staunch conservatism presents an embarrassing challenge for Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who TIME Magazine recently featured on its cover as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. There is quiet speculation that President Santos could eventually be favored for the secretary general position at the United Nations.

The UN is clear on abortion. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has strongly disapproved of restrictive abortion laws, especially those that prohibit and criminalize abortion in all circumstances. It has also confirmed that such legislation does not prevent women from obtaining unsafe illegal abortions and has framed restrictive abortion laws as a violation of the rights to life, health and information. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Human Rights Committee, and the Committee against Torture have all expressed similar concerns.

Approximately 25 per cent of the world’s population lives under legal regimes that prohibit all abortions except for those following rape or incest, as well as those necessary to save a woman’s life. The 2006 high court decision launched Colombia as a regional and global beacon in advancing reproductive rights. Any harm to citizens like Roa, and any legal backsliding on women’s rights would only be a poor reflection on the country and its promising leadership.

Follow Barbara Becker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/equalshot

 

France: blog about abortion experience

Here is a blog in France where women talk about their abortion experience: “I had an abortion – and I feel well, thank you”

http://blog.jevaisbienmerci.net/

 

Colombia: Women with abortion rights turned away by doctors

www.trust.org/trustlaw/news/colombian-women-with-abortion-rights-turned-away-by-doctors-activist

11 May 2012 16:26

Source: Trustlaw // Anastasia Moloney

By Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA (TrustLaw) – Doctors and hospitals in Colombia are getting away with refusing to provide abortions to those women legally entitled to them, says a human rights activist who spearheaded a campaign to liberalise the country’s abortion law.

In May 2006, human rights lawyer Monica Roa brought a case before Colombia’s constitutional court to get the country’s blanket ban on abortion partially overturned. The court ruled abortion was allowed in cases of rape, incest, fetal malformation, or if the life of the mother or fetus is in danger.

The law states doctors have the right to refuse to perform an abortion on the grounds of conscientious objection, but they still have a legal obligation to refer a woman to a colleague who will provide the procedure.

But referrals are still not a widespread practice, said Roa, programmes director at global women’s rights group Women’s Link Worldwide.

“Very few doctors understand what accessing their right to conscientious objection actually means and implies,” she told TrustLaw. “Non-compliance with the constitutional decision has not been sanctioned and punished.”

Only one health-service provider has been fined for refusing to provide a legal termination since the abortion law was introduced, she added.

BACKSTREET ABORTIONS

Health authorities across Colombia report that only 1,102 legal abortions have taken place since the new abortion law came into effect in 2006.

“All the attempts to overturn the court’s decision since then have been defeated and the law is still strong and binding, which is important,” Roa said. “But women still have not been able to access their abortion rights without obstacles and without being stigmatised,” she added.

“Overall, more women know more about their rights and the abortion law but they don’t know how to make it happen.”

Of some 400,400 abortions carried out in the country annually, only 322 are legal procedures performed in health facilities, according to the New York-basedGuttmacher Institute, a nonprofit sexual health research group.

This means women are still putting their lives at risk by having backstreet abortions.

“Too many women are still using the clandestine routes,” said Roa.

Conservative social attitudes are a key obstacle preventing women from receiving legal abortions, Roa said.

The Catholic Church in Colombia and conservative political parties and groups are vocal and influential opponents of abortion under any circumstances.

Women’s Link Worldwide is urging the Colombian government to provide better access to family planning services and improve sex education in schools.

“There’s been a lack of leadership at the national level in getting the education, health and justice sectors to work together in an integral way to grant better access to contraception pills and sex education in schools, including reproductive rights,” Roa said.

(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)

 

Hong Kong: Abortions fear over hospital closure threat

www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a0a0/?vgnextoid=3c202a655ed17310VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=Hong+Kong&s=News

Forced shutdown of a private care centre that carries out nearly half of city’s terminations may lead to women seeking unsafe or illegal surgery, say rights campaigners

Christy Choi
May 06, 2012

 

The closure of a private hospital that carries out almost half of Hong Kong’s abortions could lead to women seeking illegal or unsafe terminations, it is feared.

Last year around 5,000 abortions were performed at the Hong Kong Central Hospital in Mid-Levels.

The rest were carried out at either public or private hospitals or by the Family Planning Association (see the accompanying table for the cost of abortions at these institutions).

According to the latest official figures, 11,230 abortions were performed in the city in 2010.

The 50-year-old Lower Albert Road hospital is widely used because of its competitive rates.

But its landlord, the Hong Kong Anglican Church, wants to redevelop the site. It means the hospital is likely to close, sparking fears that the city’s already stretched medical sector will be unable to meet the demand.

The Development Bureau has already approved the church’s redevelopment plans, but final approval is still pending.

“We’ll have to close if we can’t find another site,” said hospital executive manager Wendy Tam.

A former chairwoman of the Women’s Commission, Sophia Kao Ching-chi, said a contingency plan was needed to ensure affordable abortion facilities. “There is a demand and that demand needs to be met,” she said. The hospital charges HK$8,000 for an abortion, making it the only affordable option for women past 10 weeks pregnant.

The Union Hospital in Sha Tin charges twice to four times as much for an abortion depending on the difficulty of the surgery and the quality of aftercare and room and board.

Public hospitals perform only about 500 operations a year because of strict criteria for who is eligible. Abortions are legal up to 24 weeks in Hong Kong, but two doctors must certify it is necessary.

“If these places [at Hong Kong Central Hospital] were to disappear overnight, where are these women to go?” asked women’s rights advocate Liu Ngar-fun. “This is going to affect their choices. You don’t want to drive abortion underground.”

Luna Chan Lui, chief operating officer for PathFinders, an NGO that works with migrant mothers, expressed concern over illegal abortions, which can cause infections, injury, infertility and even death. She said underground abortion clinics moved around the city to avoid detection and were used by local women and domestic helpers.

“My girls say there are usually eight or so other girls sitting there waiting. It costs about the same as the Family Planning Association, HK$3,000-4,000, but you don’t have to make appointments and you don’t have to get the two doctors’ approval or go to meetings.”

Price and convenience also encourage women to travel to the mainland for the procedure. Others say they have been sold abortion drugs, which are illegal.

The Family Planning Association is the only place where termination without surgery is available.

Of 311 women interviewed in a 2007 survey by the association, 43.4 per cent said they had a termination on the mainland. Only 3.9 per cent said they had an illegal abortion in Hong Kong. The city used to have one of the highest abortion rates in the world, with 29 per cent of babies conceived aborted in 2001, but the number has now fallen by half.

The hospital has been locked in a dispute since the church announced its redevelopment plans in 2009.

A church spokesman said he was aware the hospital carried out a high proportion of the abortions in Hong Kong, but insisted it had nothing to do with moves to evict the hospital.

christy.choi@scmp.com

 

 

Botswana: Women’s reproductive rights – the right to choose

www.gazettebw.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13274:womens-reproductive-rights–the-right-to-choose&catid=21:columns&Itemid=2

 

 

Written by MARTIN DINGAKE

Wednesday, 02 May 2012 09:42

 

The campaign for the legalisation of abortion in Botswana has taken unprecedented levels in the recent past. The Assistant Minister of Local Government Ms. Tshireletso has called on government to consider legalising abortion. There is another dimension to this issue. It relates to reproductive rights of women and their right to determine when to bear children. Liberty relates to the right to do what is permitted by law.

 

The Penal Code (Amendment) 1998 proscribes the process of terminating a pregnancy. The law has made it highly difficult for women to terminate pregnancy. This has meant that women have to resort to street abortion to assert their reproductive rights and make a deliberate decision whether or not to keep the pregnancy.  Abortion is illegal in Botswana and there is a need to demand law reforms to “allow access to safe abortive measures” and this regard, the call by the Minister should be applauded. The restrictive criteria for legal abortions and the continued criminalisation of abortion pushes women into unsafe abortions and early deaths. It is given that many women are dying out there from complications arising following backyard abortions. Rape victims end up giving birth to unwanted babies because of the cumbersome process to have the abortion sanctioned. Many women who are rape victims and who for one reason or another are unable to report rape case are left to deal with the trauma of rape and live to see the products of rape grow in their wombs.

 

Statistics from Zimbabwe for example are worrying. According to the 2007 Zimbabwe Maternal And Perinatal Mortality Survey, 26,000 to 84,000 women suffer from disabilities caused by complications during pregnancy and child-birth each year.

 

The fact that abortion is illegal means it is not a right for women to abort. According the Penal Code (Amendment) of 1998 provides that abortion is legal only when the life of the mother and her physical health is endangered by the continuation of the pregnancy; where there is serious risk that the child to be born will suffer from physical or mental defects of such a nature that it will be permanently or seriously be handicapped and where there is reasonable possibility that the foetus conceived is as a result of unlawful intercourse. But, even in such circumstances where the law provides for legal abortion, the process and legal procedures are lengthy, and often results in traumatic experiences for women. There are instances where women are forced to give birth because of delays in procuring a legal abortion. By the time they receive authorisation, it is medically dangerous to terminate the pregnancy.

 

Due to the restrictive nature of abortion laws, there is a high prevalence of illegal abortions taking place in the country. There is need to decriminalise abortion to allow access to safe abortive measures thus reducing the number of women conducting illegal abortions. Women empowerment also means giving them the right to choose with respect to their body when to conceive and when conceived, whether or not to keep the pregnancy.

 

Fabulous comment on the recent situation in Ireland

www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/colette-browne/reluctant-politicians-need-to-get-real-and-change-law-on-abortion-191633.html

Reluctant politicians need to get real and change law on abortion

By Colette Browne

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

IF Labour is wondering why its support has suffered a vertiginous drop since last year’s election it need only look to its TDs’ shameful contributions to last week’s Dáil debate on abortion for answers.

One by one they got to their feet and waxed lyrical about their sympathy for women who find themselves forced to travel abroad for an abortion, fulminated about the appalling failure of successive governments to do anything to resolve the legal quagmire that enmeshes this most controversial of issues, declared their unwavering support for legislation to finally give effect to the X Case judgment — and then promptly voted against a Bill that would do just that.

Now, let’s get a few things straight. It may come as a surprise to hear this but women in this country have had a constitutional right to an abortion, if their lives are at risk, for nearly 30 years, since the constitutional amendment was passed in 1983.

A High Court judge, in the X Case in 1992, said the failure of government to enact legislation to give legal effect to that right was “inexcusable”. Six years later another judge, in the C case, said she didn’t want the High Court to become a “licensing authority” for abortion — vulnerable women constantly forced to mount costly legal actions to determine their right to an abortion.

The response of government, in 2002, was to try to pass a constitutional amendment that would have removed the right of suicidal women to an abortion. They would rather have let them die. Thankfully, the Irish people rejected that amendment.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said the State’s failure to implement a framework to allow a woman unambiguously determine her right to a lawful abortion was a breach of her human rights.

The judgment is binding and while the court could not tell the State how to comply with its obligations under international law it did pointedly note that Ireland is almost alone in the Western world in not having enacted legislation to clearly define in statute the conditions governing access to abortion.

Remember, this is not abortion on demand. Or even abortion for health reasons — no matter how serious those health issues may be. The ECHR ruled that the State’s preferred practice of exporting desperately ill women for abortions was perfectly fine. The only thing this ruling relates to is access to an abortion when that abortion will save the life of the mother.

Still, the Government felt compelled to create yet another stumbling block before legislation could even be contemplated and long-fingered action by creating an expert group to discuss how best to bring itself into line with the court’s judgment.

The reasons for this are purely political and have nothing to do with women or their best interests. TDs are simply too craven to accept the implications of the ECHR ruling so they have outsourced the decision to a quango that will be cynically used to deflect criticism when it eventually reports back and recommends legislation.

Then , of course, there will be another endless delay before legislation is drafted and, if the Government manages to get around to it before the end of its term, it may be enacted.

Incredibly, last week was the first time in the history of the State that an abortion Bill was debated in the Dáil, but TDs like Michelle Mulherin still insisted that those supporting it were moving too fast — as if a 30-year delay wasn’t long enough.

The faux controversy surrounding the Bill, the only purpose of which was to grant women an abortion if one was required to save their life, was truly horrifying and reveals the naked contempt with which women are treated by the body politic.

Imagine if politicians had been debating a Bill that offered life-saving treatment for diabetics, or asthmatics or cystic fibrosis patients and it had been defeated in favour of waiting an indeterminate length of time for a report and subsequent identikit legislation? There would have been outrage, deservedly so, but because the debate concerned women, and their right to an abortion, politicians were too cowardly to act.

It really was nauseating but the behaviour of Labour TDs, only one of whom, rebel TD Patrick Nulty, supported the Bill, was particularly odious.

At least those TDs implacably opposed to abortion didn’t betray their conscience. They opposed this abortion Bill and they’ll oppose the next one. It was Labour TDs, with their mealy-mouthed words of support and their patronising extensions of thanks to the proposers of the Bill for raising the issue, who abandoned their principles when they casually torpedoed it.

Support for last week’s Bill, a highly restrictive piece of legislation that would have required the opinion of two doctors before an abortion could be performed to save a woman’s life, is a no-brainer. The real debate we need to have in this country is extending that right to women whose physical or mental health is seriously harmed by their pregnancy.

Currently, most Irish women cannot avail of a medical abortion, a pill taken over the course of a number of days, because of the logistics of travelling abroad. They have to opt for a day procedure, a surgical abortion, which, for safety reasons, cannot be performed as early as a medical abortion.

So, women are forced to wait for up to two months, while their pregnancy progresses, before they can leave the country for a much more invasive procedure. They are also less likely to access vital after-care services, once they return to Ireland, because of the stigma attached to their decision to travel for a procedure that, if performed here, could result in a conviction and a life-sentence.

THEN there are the women who discover, much later in their pregnancy, that the foetus has a genetic condition that means it will not survive the birth. They too are told, tough, to continue with the pregnancy and endure the birth. Why? Because a succession of male-dominated governments have presumed to tell women how they should react to that devastating news and feel perfectly content removing any vestige of personal autonomy from one of the most difficult decisions they will ever have to make.

This isn’t an area in which the State should be meddling at all. It is a personal medical decision that should be taken by women in conjunction with their partners and their doctors. Instead, women are reduced to the status of insentient incubator and instructed to grin and, literally, bear it by the self-dubbed pro-life lobby — whose concern for life doesn’t seem to extend past the moment of birth.

The 4,500 women who are unwilling or unable to comply with this diktat every year are shipped, out of sight and out of mind, beyond our puritanical shores — their silent sacrifice deemed an acceptable price to maintain the State’s illusory veneer of moral rectitude.

The abortion law on the statute books is 151 years old while the constitutional ban was introduced when a prescription was required to buy condoms and homosexuality and divorce were illegal. Ireland has changed. It’s time the law did too.

 

Malawi: New President Banda Could Dramatically Improve Women’s Lives

www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/04/18/in-malawi-banda’s-succession-to-presidency-could-save-millions-women’s-lives

by Jessica Mack

April 24, 2012 – 9:55am

Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika died of a heart attack suddenly this month, enabling Vice President Joyce Banda to succeed the helm. This will almost certainly change – and perhaps save – the lives of millions of Malawian women.

Banda, the country’s first female Vice President and leader of the opposition party, had been embroiled in a political struggle for months as Bingu had tried to remove her. Bingu’s move to edge her out was part of his tightening grip overall, foreshadowing what could have been another stubborn and potentially bloody transfer of power after 2014 elections, and almost certainly not to Banda.

With all due respect to the late Bingu, his death opened a rare window for reform Malawi, and golden opportunity – especially for Malawi’s women. Joyce Banda is a widely-respected and heralded champion for women’s rights and health, and has never been shy to speak her mind about it.

Banda is Southern Africa’s first female head of state, and the continent’s second (after Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf). Isobel Coleman at the Center for Foreign Relations recently called her “a remarkable person who despite the odds, just might be able to put Malawi on a positive path,” as compared to her “disaster” of a predecessor. Banda left an abusive marriage as a young mother of three, and went on to found several small businesses and organizations for women before being elected to Parliament in 1999.

She is a woman of both voice and action. Almost immediately upon taking office, she issued a directive to the Ministry of Health to appoint two OB/GYN specialists to the Ethel Mutharika Maternity Hospital to support deliveries there. In a recent press conference, she said she would do anything in her capacity to ensure that the country’s maternal mortality rate is reduced. Banda herself suffered excessive bleeding after giving birth, and nearly lost her life. Though the United Nations estimates that maternal mortality in Malawi was nearly halved between 1998 and 2008, still 3,000 women a year die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth. Just 42 percent of married women report modern contraceptive use.

Cultural taboos around women’s sexual and reproductive health, as well as the sheer inaccessibility of services define reality for many Malawian women. A lack of skilled personnel, whether doctors, midwives, or community health workers, to help women deliver safely is also a major factor in maternal deaths. Unsafe abortion is likely a major contributor as well. Abortion in Malawi is prohibited entirely, except to save a woman’s life, and even then spousal permission is required. Perhaps this is something Banda might be willing to step up and address. Systemic devaluation of women’s lives is a problem too, prompting Banda to single out village chiefs as gatekeepers for maternal health in the largely rural nation.

“They are the custodians of our culture and tradition. If you don’t include those chiefs, if you don’t integrate them, you can’t win in the area of maternal health.”

The year 2015 is the deadline to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight major targets to improving the lives and health of the world’s poorest. A recent report by the Malawian Government says the country is on-track to meet five of the eight goals, though MDG 5 – to improve maternal health – is not one of them. African leaders are under increasing pressure from their constituents and donors to turn things around for women in their countries and there are few glimmers of hope. Banda could make huge waves on this issue in just a short while.

Banda is not only an advocate for women’s health, but economic empowerment too. In 1997, she won the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger. Landlocked Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its economy relies heavily on agriculture, and women farmers form the engine that runs it. Banda has noted that women in Malawi are conspicuously absent when it comes to economic decision-making, and that it is critical to put more of the country’s money in the hands of its mothers. If anyone can do that, it looks like she can.

Banda is also a staunch supporter of girls’ education. Last year, in a Q&A with the Global Post, she told the story of a childhood friend forced to leave high school after the $12 school fees became too high.

“I went on to go to college and I became the vice president of Malawi. She is still where she was 30 years ago. The vicious cycle of poverty kept her there and took away her options. I made up my mind … whatever would happen in my life, I would try to send girls to schools.”

Such clarity of vision forward and backward is rare in a leader, but seems to be Banda’s defining trait.

She has already distinguished herself as a committed and articulate leader on women’s health and rights. Now with the reigns, in a historic twist of events, she can finally demonstrate what that vision, realized, can do for women.

Follow Jessica Mack on Twitter, @fleetwoodjmack

 

October Baby: anti-abortion movie funded by evangelical group

What October Baby lacks for in quality, it makes up for in heavy handedness. The stiff acting and bland writing would normally just makeOctober Baby a dull movie. But, coupled with ignorance and surprisingly good sales – $1.7 million in its first weekend – it also poses a threat to the narrative around choice by pushing a misleading and deceptive message about abortion.

The protagonist of October Baby is a college-aged woman, Hannah, who realizes she is adopted and the result of a failed late-term abortion. Her doctor speculates that this late-term abortion attempt is the cause of her health problems such as her bad hip and asthma.

Hannah proceeds to go on a trying-to-be-quirky but actually maudlin coming-of-age road trip to find her biological mother. The trip is packed full of slow-motion crying scenes and temper tantrums.

Of course a person has license to be wrought after learning she was adopted at the age of 19 and her parents have kept it a secret all that time. But, Hannah is downright infantile – reflecting the GOP’s seeming perception that women are children that need to be watched over. Hannah regularly stomps off from mild disputes with arms crossed and falsetto whimpers, while the men in her life level reasonable concerns in even tones. The girl literally pouts in her father’s car while he and her romantic interest, Jason, have an argument about her future.

Can I point out again that this is a 19-year-old college student? Yet her father spends most of the movie telling her friends how they are allowed, or rather not allowed, to behave around Hannah.

I haven’t even gotten to how abortion is directly discussed in the movie. But, how women are treated and men are elevated to the status of patriarch and protector is what the choice debate is all about. GOP leaders don’t think women can make choices for themselves and that they need to be protected – not just from spooky outside forces – but from themselves. Jason is always there to provide a condescending pat on the head. What more could a dopey girl want in a man? Certainly not someone who wants an egalitarian relationship not dictated by archaic standards. (Spoilers: Jason finally goes on a giggly date with Hannah because her patriarch called him and said the two should get together. So many gals love it when their parents set up their dates for them, right? No need to be an autonomous individual then.)

To the issue of abortion!

On her road trip, after getting out of being arrested by pulling that notorious “I’m the result of a failed late-term-abortion” card, a cop tells Hannah that while searching for her mother she should “hate the crime, not the criminal.” Sure, the guy is speaking somewhat metaphorically, but coming from a cop it sure makes abortion sound like a crime. Which, may I remind you Red States of the USA, it is not!

A scene that is supposed to be emotionally pivotal occurs when Hannah meets a nurse who was present during her abortion attempt/birth. Cue the crying montage! Cut to nurse weeping alone in her cheap apartment. Cut to Jason lurking protectively outside the complex. Cut to Hannah tearing up the card with her bio-mother’s phone number, before cutting to a scene where she stares intently at the poorly taped up card.

But, back to the scene prior to crying: the nurse relays that she was made to do horrible things at the clinic she worked at for a doctor who had been the recipient of threats of violence. She tells Hannah that her biological mother was a woman who wanted to get an education and insinuated she got the abortion at 24 weeks because of convenience. Less than two percent of abortions happen after 20 weeks. And, late-term abortions are not doled out casually. In most states there needs to be threat to life and health of the mother, or the fetus needs to be non-viable for a late-term abortion to be legally performed.

The nurse wraps up about the bio-mom by saying that she did get that education and career after all. And, we in the audience are supposed to bellow: At what cost? This made my eyes roll so loud that I got “shhhd” by other audience members. Ok my eye-rolling didn’t get shushed, but it seemed plausible.

I counter that straw man (big ole’ patriarchal dominating straw man by the way) with facts. Women get abortions – regardless of the laws on the books, and women are safer when abortion is legal. (So, that should make the paternalistic women-protecting GOP happy, right?) About 30 percent of women will get an abortion before the age of 45. And, in countries where abortion is illegal and harder to obtain, women get them at higher rates and experience greater risk to their health than where abortion is legal. As mentioned earlier, women don’t get late-term abortions because they are silly fickle things who don’t have a solid man to help them make up their minds. Women get later abortions because their health is threatened or the fetus isn’t viable. Instead of insinuating that abortion is criminal, we should be making sure the procedure is accessible at an earlier stage of pregnancy and safer at later stages of pregnancy when women do have to make that difficult decision.

October Baby was produced and supported with funding from evangelical groups like Focus on the Family. The directors, brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin, said that this wasn’t meant to be a political movie, but rather intended to inspire thoughtful discussion. But, in their false representation of abortion they’re amplifying fear rather than appealing to viewers’ higher cognitive reasoning.

Despite their stated purpose, the directors are playing the same simplistic game the GOP has been playing in trying to reduce a complicated issue down to fear tactics and misplaced sentimentality.