Carcano decided to tell her story publicly for the first time after reading here about the Peace Corps Equity Act, introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg last week, which would modify the current policy by extending Peace Corps health coverage to abortions in case of rape. Carcano, who majored in human biology at the University of Texas and is now working as a research assistant on HIV/AIDS, says she wasn't particularly educated about the politics of abortion. But then, in the months after her ordeal, the headlines were full of politicians talking about abortion, "legitimate rape" and doubting rape victims could even become pregnant. "I came back to my country and I felt like other Americans were against me or against my choices," she says.

Continue Reading...

According to the bill, abortions would be legally allowable when:

Two medical practitioners, have, in accordance with this head, jointly certified in good faith that there is a real and substantial risk of loss of the pregnant woman’s life other than by way of self-destruction and in their reasonable opinion this risk can be averted only by that medical procedure.

The measure also makes clear that an abortion may be performed in situations in which there is an "immediate risk of loss of the pregnant woman's life" and the procedure is deemed "immediately necessary."

Continue Reading...

According to ThinkProgress, multiple individuals in the state have reported receiving phone calls from the shady conservative group “SSI Polling," which claims to be polling on the race between Colbert Busch and Mark Sanford, but does not mention Sanford at all in the calls.

According to ThinkProgress, some of the questions were:

Continue Reading...

I was 21, and for nine months in the mid-1990s, I worked as a hotline counselor on the toll-free line at the National Abortion Federation, a voluntary membership group of several hundred providers nationwide. Overtly, the job went like this: Women called to ask for a clinic near them, and I provided the address and phone number. Each clinic had been vetted by a NAF inspector. The clinics I could mention were not the only clinics out there. They met certain standards and agreed to pay a membership fee for the referral service.

Continue Reading...

On Tuesday, the FDA lowered to 15 the age at which girls and women can buy the emergency contraceptive without a prescription -- and said it no longer has to be kept behind pharmacy counters.

Instead, the pill can sit on drugstore shelves just like condoms, but that buyers would have to prove their age at the cash register.

Earlier this month, a federal judge had ruled there should be no age restrictions and gave the FDA 30 days to act. The FDA said its latest decision was independent of the court case.

Continue Reading...

After reaffirming his longstanding support of Planned Parenthood, the president denounced Republican efforts to turn the organization into a "punching bag" and undermine women's access to health and family planning services.

Addressing legislative efforts in North Dakota, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi (and nearly 40 other states) to restrict abortion access through TRAP laws and unconstitutional abortion bans, Obama said: "When it comes to a women's health, no politician should get to decide what's best for you. The only person who should get to make decisions about your health is you."

Continue Reading...

The court has only issued a temporary directive that the woman, identified only as Beatriz, be given "necessary medical care" while they consider her petition for an abortion. But time is short, as Amnesty's Human Rights Project Coordinator Kathryn R. Striffolino told Salon on Thursday:

What it comes down to is that -- while the government is debating this, while the court is debating this, every minute that goes by -- Beatriz is suffering cruel and inhumane treatment. She is reaching the five month mark and the court has yet to rule.

Continue Reading...

"The safety and security of Peace Corps Volunteers is our highest priority. Over the past few years, we’ve put in place a number of new, significant practices and safeguards to reduce the risks for Volunteers and ensure victims of crime receive compassionate and effective support.

The Peace Corps supports Senator Lautenberg’s bill and the President’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget, which extends the same rights and protections to female Peace Corps Volunteers as many of their federal colleagues by applying exceptions on abortion restrictions as outlined in the Hyde Amendment."

As Mary Kate Shannon waited to find out if she was pregnant after being raped for the second time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru, the healthcare coordinator told her her options were limited. "If I were pregnant, the Peace Corps could not pay for the abortion due to some kind of federal law," Shannon recalled in an interview with Salon. They would, however, pay for parenting classes.

"I felt betrayed," Shannon said. "I felt like it was a decision that was going to be made for me. I wasn't in a place financially where I felt like I could pay for it."

Continue Reading...

Lawyers for Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, could start presenting defense witnesses as early as Wednesday. Gosnell has been in prison since a 2011 grand jury report that described his outdated West Philadelphia clinic as "a house of horrors."

Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart had ruled Tuesday that prosecutors over the past month failed to make a case on three of the seven first-degree murder counts, involving aborted babies known as Baby B, Baby C and Baby G.

On Wednesday, Minehart clarified that he did not intend to dismiss charges related to Baby C, which former employee Lynda Williams admits killing after it was alive for 20 minutes.

Instead, Minehart has thrown out the charges involving Baby F, which allegedly jerked its leg after it was born. Another staff member says Gosnell then cut the baby's neck to "ensure fetal demise."

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

As reported by the Philadelphia Daily News:

Minehart made his rulings following motion hearings that took place before the start of the defense attorneys starting their cases Tuesday afternoon.

Gosnell's attorney, Jack McMahon, argued that all seven counts regarding the fetuses should be dismissed. None were born alive, he said, all having been injected with death-causing drugs during the abortion process. Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron argued that there had been enough testimony from former clinic employees that the seven babies were born alive to let the jury decide.

The prosecution rested last week. Gosnell could be sentenced to death if he is convicted of the first-degree murders of the babies.

Continue Reading...

It is, in effect, an antiabortion greatest-hits law.

At the bill's signing ceremony, the arch-conservative governor applauded the Legislature for passing the measure with sweeping margins and announced:  "All human life is sacred. It's beautiful. With this, we continue to build this culture of life in our state."

Continue Reading...

The 22-year-old mother of one, identified only as Beatriz, is four-and-a-half months pregnant, but her doctors have confirmed that the fetus has anencephaly (developing without a brain and certain parts of the skull) and that the pregnancy is nonviable. In addition to the fetal diagnosis, Beatriz is experiencing critical health complications related to her lupus and kidney disease.

The hospital treating Beatriz requested legal permission to perform the abortion more than a month ago, but authorities have still not agreed to let them proceed. Now, if government policy and religious ideology interfering with a woman's right to access abortion care or a doctor's ability to exercise medical judgment and save a woman's life sounds familiar, it should.

Continue Reading...

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe had vetoed the extreme measure in March, citing concerns that it violated Roe v. Wade and that subsequent legal challenges would prove "very costly to the taxpayers of our state" as the "costs and fees [of defending an unconstitutional law] can be significant." The Legislature overrode Beebe's veto in March.

The suit seeks a preliminary injunction against the law, which is set to take effect in July.

“This law is one of the most dangerous assaults on women’s health that we’ve seen in decades,” said Rita Sklar, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas. “We may not all agree about abortion, but we can all agree that this complex and personal decision should be made by a woman, her family, and her doctor, not politicians.”

Continue Reading...

Now a new data point from the liberal Media Matters, which tabulated the amount of time the three major cable news networks devoted to Gosnell's arrest in 2011. As it turns out, Fox News gave it the least coverage of the three. Liberal MSNBC gave the case about a third more time, while CNN put both networks to shame by covering the arrest almost five times more than Fox. Here's a chart showing the relative time devoted to coverage on each network:

Continue Reading...

What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels of Amsterdam? Why children and vagina's of course. While the tales relate the actions of a solitary male the outcome cannot relate to similar situations where children and women and mothers are the potential victims.

Hansen's use of synecdoche outraged his Democratic and Republican colleagues, prompting Democratic state Rep. Rick Watrous to respond:

"Children and vagina's"??!! Are you really using "vaginas" as a crude catch-all for women? Really? Please think before you send out such offensive language on the legislative listserve.

NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire weighed in, too:

Continue Reading...

No one who supports the provision of safe abortion care to women excuses any of what Gosnell is accused of, from willfully gruesome conditions to sadistic treatment to infanticide. He is not typical, and there was, and has been, swift renunciation of his facility. But the case provides the ideal opportunity for the right-to-life movement to conflate his abusive clinic with all abortion as it's widely practiced in the U.S., and to focus on graphic later abortions, conveniently redirecting attention from their desire to ban all abortions for everyone. That desire, by the way, is being enacted into law explicitly in states like Arkansas and North Dakota, and implicitly with laws designed to close abortion clinics in states like Mississippi and Virginia.

Continue Reading...

[embedtweet id="322525582216794113"]

He followed it up soon after with another abortion-related tweet:

[embedtweet id="322696542286905345"]

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

The church, a multicolored brick building with stained glass windows that look like rolling waves, is flanked on one side by a domed Greek Orthodox church, and on the other by a field stretching out to a subdivision. Just inside its doors in 2009, 67-year-old Dr. George Tiller, one of the few late-term abortion providers in the United States and an usher at his longtime church, was shot and killed by a man named Scott Roeder.

To abortion rights advocates, the murder was the tragic culmination of a decades-long campaign by abortion opponents who had stalked Dr. Tiller; barraged him with nuisance lawsuits; blockaded and bombed his clinic; shot him in both arms in a previous, failed assassination attempt; and helped inspire Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly to begin a nightly television harangue against the doctor he condemned as “Tiller the Killer.”

Continue Reading...