Despite ample evidence that there is no link between abortion and suicide, a federal appeals court decides its okay for South Dakota to require doctors to lie to women.
Weekly global roundup: Reproductive Health Bill still looms as a promise in the Philippines; the UN hears testimony of rape in Syria; US Christian Right camps out in Africa; Abortion ban in the Dominican Republic impedes a teen's cancer treatment.
The answer is not to promote contraception in order to reduce unsafe abortion, as the FP Summit did. The answer is to promote contraception to reduce unwanted pregnancy and provide safe abortion to every woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy.
For those of us trying to discern whether the rights of women will truly be at the center of this Family Planning Initiative, as promised by DFID and the Gates Foundation in response to our months of advocacy, there were moments of disquiet.
Steph Herold will be on to talk about her new project chronicling women’s abortion stories. Mississippi’s battle over the last abortion clinic ends on a strange note, for now, and the nation actually has a somewhat productive conversation about rape jokes.
It’s time to set aside politics and recommit ourselves – as a city, a state and a nation – to family planning and sexual health. As recently as the 1980s, these were civic ideals that united us. If the global community can revive them in 2012, so can we.
