A demonstrator in Buenos Aires wears a T-shirt with the slogan "my body, my rights," one of the slogans of the so-called green tide - the colour adopted by the movement for the legalisation of abortion, which is beginning to spread to other Latin American countries. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

Abortion has long been a contentious issue across the world, and the debate is only heating up, prompting women to stand up and speak out for their reproductive rights.

In response to increasingly restrictive policies, civil society is taking action to help protect abortion rights.

“The failure of states to guarantee reproductive rights is a clear violation of human rights,” said President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) Nancy Northup.

“The centre is committed to using the power of law to ensure that women and girls…are guaranteed access to sexual and reproductive health rights and services,” she added.

Human Rights Watch’s Senior Researcher Margaret Wurth echoed similar sentiments, stating: “No rape survivor should be forced into motherhood without the chance to consider a safe and legal abortion.”

Girls, Not Mothers

Latin American countries have some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. For instance, Nicaragua has a complete ban on abortion while Guatemala has an exception only when a girl or woman’s life is at risk.

Though the risk of maternal mortality increases when pregnancies occur in girls younger than 14, still many girls are forced to give birth.

According to CRR, over 2,200 girls between the age of 10 and 14 gave birth in 2018 in Guatemala.

In Nicaragua, eight of 10 sexual violence survivors are girls under 13 and the country has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Latin America with 28 percent of women giving birth before the age of 18.

Fatima was only 12 years old when she became pregnant after being raped by a man in her community in Guatemala. Though the pregnancy was risky, health care providers never offered her a legal abortion.

After more than a year of abuse by her priest, Lucia became pregnant at the age of 13 in Nicaragua.

Fatima and Lucia are now young women and two of four women who have brought their cases to the United Nations Human Rights Committee with the support of organisations such as CRR and Planned Parenthood Global in order to seek justice and demand access to safe and legal abortion.

“Too many young girls in Latin America, and around the world, have been put in situations that threaten their rights and put their lives at risk because they are not able to access abortion care,” said head of Planned Parenthood Global Leana Wen.

“Forcing young girls to continue a pregnancy no matter their circumstances or wants, is not only cruel, but will have devastating impacts for them, their families, and their communities,” she added.

People around the world have since showed solidarity the four women, posting #NinasNoMadres—they are girls, not mothers.

U.S. regresses

Access to abortion has also become a point of contention in the United States as a total of 27 bans have been enacted across 12 states so far in 2019.

Most recently, Louisiana signed a bill banning abortions once a heartbeat is detectable, known as a “heartbeat bill.”

A foetal heartbeat can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, often before many women know they’re even pregnant. The legislation does not include exceptions for rape or incest.

If the bill becomes law, any doctor who performs an abortion could face imprisonment for one to 10 years and/or a fine ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 dollars. 

Missouri has passed a similar bill with a penalty of up to 15 years in prison and the loss of a doctor’s professional license.

Missouri’s last and only abortion clinic was expected to close on Friday, but a judge granted a restraining order that temporarily allowed the clinic to continue. If the clinic had closed, Missouri would have been the first state in 45 years without access to abortion.

While abortion is still legal at the federal level, such moves threaten safe, accessible and affordable abortion care across the country.

“We are very concerned that several U.S. states have passed laws severely restricting access to safe abortion for women, including by imposing criminal penalties on the women themselves and on abortion service providers,” said UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani.

“We are calling on the United States and all other countries to ensure that women have access to safe abortions. At an absolute minimum, in cases of rape, incest and foetal anomaly, there needs to be safe access to abortions,” she added.

Not only does a complete ban on abortion drive women and girls to seek unsafe “back street” methods of termination, but a study found that women and girls are also more likely to experience short-term anxiety and loss of self-esteem, economic insecurity and poverty, and continued exposure to intimate partner violence.

But there is hope yet.

Organisations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal have filed lawsuits to help protect abortion rights in the U.S.

And the UN can play a role globally too.

In 2001, a 17-year-old Peruvian girl know only as K.L. was denied an abortion after being diagnosed as having a foetus with anencephaly at 14 weeks.

The refusal had serious mental and physical consequences on her health as she was forced to continue her pregnancy and her baby, once born, only survived four days.

Working with human rights lawyers, K.L. filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee, which concluded that Peru violated international human rights law and its actions constituted “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.”

It was the first time a UN Committee held a country accountable for failing to ensure access to safe, legal abortion.

The committee also ordered financial compensation to K.L, who finally received it a decade later in 2015.

“In seeing justice delivered in K.L.’s case—watching it go from A to Z—we are part of an inspiring historic moment,” said Lilian Sepúlveda who directs CRR’s global legal programme and was one of the attorneys involved in the case.

“We are witnessing the results of advocates’ dedicated perseverance and the power of the UN and other international bodies to ensure our basic human rights to dignity, health, and freedom from ill-treatment,” she added.

Such efforts are more urgent than ever to ensure access to justice as well as safety and health for women and girls.

Polish conservatives protesting against a reading of Golgota Picnic in Warsaw. Credit: Maciej Konieczny/Courtesy of Krytyka Polityczna

By Claudia Ciobanu
WAESAW, Jul 8 2014 (IPS)

A mix of conservative Catholicism and nationalism has become the predominant view in Polish public debate, with some worrying effects.

These were the values around which the opposition to communism led by trade union Solidarity built itself up in the 1980s but, after the fall of communism, opinion makers in the media and politicians continued to depict them as part and parcel of being Polish.

Observers note that the Polish Catholic Church has also grown increasingly conservative since 1989, in apparent contrast to an opening up of the Church worldwide.Conservative Catholicism and nationalism were the values around which the opposition to communism led by trade union Solidarity built itself up in the 1980s but, after the fall of communism, opinion makers in the media and politicians continued to depict them as part and parcel of being Polish.

Last month, the director of a theatre festival in the city of Poznan decided to cancel showings of a play fearing he could not ensure the safety of viewers in the face of threats by conservative and far-right groups. The play – “Golgota Picnic” by Argentinian director Rodrigo Garcia – describes the life of Jesus using striking depictions of contemporary society, including some with a sexual meaning.

Among those asking for play to be cancelled were representatives of Poland’s main opposition party, Law and Justice, the main trade union Solidarity, and the far-right Ruch Narodowy (National Movement), all of which stand for traditional Catholic values. The Church also voiced its opposition to the play.

In itself, protesting against the play was unremarkable (it has also been met with opposition from Catholics in other countries, for example in France), but the Polish response was interesting: even if the festival was largely financed from public sources, the show was cancelled and there was hardly any resistance from public authorities to the decision. The public, however, made itself heard and readings of the play were organised in major Polish cities, with hundreds attending.

Meanwhile, the dynamics surrounding “Golgota Picnic” are being replicated over other issues in Polish society, among which the most striking is women’s reproductive rights. Poland is one of only three countries in the European Union where abortion is prohibited, unless the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, there is a serious threat to the mother’s health or foetal malformation has been detected.

Abortion had been legal in communist Poland but was outlawed in 1993 after pressure from the Catholic Church. Ever since, attempts to make abortion legal have failed. In 2011, the Polish parliament came close to further tightening the law on abortion by prohibiting it no matter the circumstances.

At the time, it was not only the political forces explicitly standing for Catholic values that endorsed a total ban, but also many members of the governing centre-right Civic Platform, which depicts itself as Poland’s main liberal political force.

De facto, even the current restrictive law is not being implemented. In a series of high profile cases over the years, Catholic doctors in public hospitals have refused to perform abortions even if girls were pregnant as a result of rape, had serious health conditions or malformation had been detected in foetuses.

In May, in an escalation of the situation, over 3,000 Polish doctors, nurses and medical students signed a “Declaration of Faith” in which they rejected abortion, birth control, in vitro fertilisation and euthanasia as contrary to the Catholic faith. Signatories included employees of public clinics and hospitals. One of them was the director of a Warsaw maternity hospital who said he would not allow such procedures to take place in his institution.

The “Declaration of Faith”, which has been endorsed by the Polish Catholic Church, is contrary to Polish law and Prime Minister Donald Tusk has spoken out against it.

State authorities have been carrying out check-ups at those institutions in which signatories of the Declaration work to establish whether the law is being respected, and one fine has been imposed on the Warsaw maternity hospital whose director prohibits legal abortions. Yet more determined measures are still pending.

“Lack of massive resistance [to the Declaration] is not a sign of approval on the part of the general public,” comments Agnieszka Graff, writer and feminist activist. “It is rather a question of resignation: for 20 years we have seen politicians court the Church while ignoring public opinion on matters that have to do with reproductive rights. The pattern of submission has emboldened the radical anti-choice groups.”

Political power in Poland is firmly in the hands of conservatives. Law and Justice, the party with the best chance of winning next year’s parliamentary elections, is staunchly pro-Catholic and nationalist, and has in the past allied in government with far-right politicians. The governing Civic Platform, the choice of many liberals in this country, is bitterly divided between social conservatives and liberals, meaning it cannot enforce the constitutional secularity of the Polish state.

As Graff explains, in this political context, those who oppose the Catholicism-nationalism nexus find it difficult to coalesce into a strong movement. And ultra-conservatives continue to advance.

Far-right elements breeds in this environment and, in an ethnically and racially homogeneous country, their main targets are feminists, the LGBTQ community and leftists (the same groups that the Church condemns). Their strength is most visible in Poland during the annual Independence March on November 11, when tens of thousands of far-right youth take to the streets of Warsaw and other cities wreaking havoc.

According to June polls, the third strongest political force in Poland is the New Right Congress, which has a neo-liberal far-right agenda. The party, whose leader Janusz Korwin-Mikke has declared that women have lower IQs than men and that they enjoy being raped, gathered 7.5 percent of the vote in the May elections for the European Parliament.

“There is no clear demarcation between the Polish extreme right, the populist right and the mainstream right,” notes political scientist Rafal Pankovski of anti-racist group Nigdy Wiecej (Never Again). “The notion of a cordon sanitaire against the far-right does not seem to have been accepted in Polish politics and the media.”

Over recent years, civic mobilisation by progressive forces has nevertheless grown, and political parties with a strong liberal, secular and anti-nationalist message have been forming, but they still lack consolidation. Faced with the constant accusation of being “communists”, leftist forces that might counterbalance the conservative, nationalist and far-right trend are slow to grow in Poland.