Progress on Women's Rights: Missing in Action
This report reviews Canada's implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and finds that while progress has been made in access to education, it also highlights the areas where inequality has persisted and worsened - particularly in terms of violence against women, political representation, economic security, access to social services, and the additional barriers to equallity faced by Aboriginal women and girls, racialized women, women with disabilities and women from sexual minorities.

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4 Charts That Illustrate The Bleak State Of Abortion Rights In The U.S.

On Tuesday, NARAL Pro-Choice America released its annual report, “Who Decides?“, to provide an overview of the status of abortion rights across the country. The group didn’t give the U.S. very high marks. Twenty five states scored a failing grade on NARAL’s reproductive rights report card, giving the country an average score of just a “D.” The new scorecard comes on the heels of a separate report that awarded the U.S. an only slightly more generous “C-” grade on similar measures of reproductive health.

“In 2013, once again, we saw a litany of attacks against reproductive freedom in state legislatures across the country,” the group’s president, Ilyse Hogue, writes in a preface to the report. “In an environment of constant attacks on reproductive freedom, we play a lot of defense.”

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Reproductive Rights in New York

New York State once led the nation in advancing women’s rights. Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to re-establish that pre-eminence with an omnibus agenda on women’s equality. The most important piece of that agenda would essentially enshrine in state law existing federal protections for abortion rights.

Antiquated language in the state’s abortion law bans the procedure after 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the woman’s life is at risk. Federal rulings also require an exception to protect a woman’s health. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would bring New York into line with those standards. 

This is important because complications severely affecting a woman’s health often arise later in pregnancy. Although New York’s law cannot be enforced because it is superseded by federal law, as a practical matter, some New York doctors fear prosecution and, as a result, some women are forced to leave the state to get the care they need. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal is a crucial move at a crucial time. A strong law would help inoculate New York’s abortion laws against future watering down of reproductive rights at the federal level. 

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This is an editorial in the New York Times.  Tom

John Koster, GOP House Candidate: 'The Rape Thing' Does Not Excuse Abortions

John Koster, a Republican congressional candidate in Washington state, said Sunday that "the rape thing" is not a good enough reason for a woman to have an abortion, the Associated Press reported.

Asked at a campaign fundraiser whether he supports abortion rights in some situations, Koster replied that he only supports abortion in cases where a woman's life is in danger.

"Incest is so rare, I mean, it's so rare," he said. "But the rape thing-- you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept the child, gave it up for adoption, and she doesn't regret it."

He added, "On the rape thing, it's like, how does putting more violence onto a woman's body and taking the life of an innocent child that's a consequence of this crime -- how does that make it better? You know what I mean?"

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Sandra Fluke: GOP positions 'offensive, obsolete relic' of past

Sandra Fluke on Wednesday offered a dire vision of the future if Mitt Romney is elected president, one where rape would be redefined, women would be forced to have ultrasounds against their wishes, and access to birth control would be controlled by men.

Calling GOP positions “an offensive, obsolete relic of our past,” Fluke told delegates at the Democratic National Convention that “we know what this America would look like and in few shorts months that’s the American we could be, but that’s not the America that we should be, and it’s not who we are.”

Fluke was referring to a host of Republican moves, including measures to narrow the definition of rape to include only those that are “forcible," as well as attempts by Republicans in some states to force women seeking abortions to undergo a vaginal ultrasound and efforts to curb funding for Planned Parenthood, a leading source of contraception for poor and younger women.

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Three Rulings Against Women’s Rights

At a time when abortion rights and women’s access to affordable contraception are threatened by political attacks, judges in three newly decided federal cases failed to preserve constitutional protections for women.

On Monday, Judge James Teilborg of the United States District Court in Phoenix upheld an Arizona law signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in April that bans all abortion procedures at 20 weeks from a woman’s last menstrual period, which is about 18 weeks after fertilization. 

It is the most aggressive of the previability abortion bans passed recently by a handful of states. It defies binding Supreme Court precedent that prevents states from banning abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb, which generally occurs at about 24 weeks. 

To get around that pesky barrier, Judge Teilborg erroneously characterized Arizona’s outright ban as a permissible “regulation” that limits only “some” previability abortions. To make that argument, he relied, in part, on the fact that the ban contains a dangerously narrow exception for a “medical emergency.” 

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Jindal Signs Anti-Choice Bill, Likens Women Who Receive Abortions To Criminals

Yesterday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) appeared at the First Baptist Church of West Monroe to sign HB 636, a measure that “requires women to be informed of their specific legal rights and options before they undergo an abortion procedure.” Abortion providers will now have to post signs around their facilities stating that “it is illegal to coerce a woman into getting an abortion, that the child’s father must provide child support, that certain agencies can assist them during and after the pregnancy and that adoptive parents can pay some of the medical costs.” The law also creates a Department of Health and Hospitals website and a mobile platform to deliver information “about public and private pregnancy resources” for avoiding abortions.

Jindal said he couldn’t understand why anyone would oppose the bill, comparing the new notices to Miranda warnings for women who receive abortions — a constitutionally protected procedure — to criminals:

“When officers arrest criminals today, they are read their rights,” he said. “Now if we’re giving criminals their basic rights and they have to be informed of those rights, it seems to me only common sense we would have to do the same thing for women before they make the choice about whether to get an abortion.”

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