News Review – 1 December 2017

by admin · Published December 1, 2017 · Updated January 9, 2018

AIDS, Family Planning and Reproductive Justice

International AIDS Day on December 1^st gave an opportunity to explore the link between access to family planning services and combatting HIV, which can both be related to gender inequality. Stigma around getting family planning counselling and access is closely linked to the stigma around getting tested for HIV or accessing treatment, causing “25% of pregnancy-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa attributable to HIV and AIDS.”

RTI International announced it was developing a new “multipurpose implant providing long-acting contraception and HIV prevention — the Subcutaneous Contraceptive and HIV Implant Engineered for Long-Acting Delivery (SCHIELD) device.”

The Trump administration Global Gag Rule that withholds funding from any international NGO that provides services for, information about, or references for abortion, has influence here as well: “roughly two-thirds of the funding affected by the expanded Global Gag Rule is for HIV/AIDS programs around the world, under the president’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). PEPFAR has received broad bipartisan support and has been successful in reaching more than 13.3 million men, women, and children with lifesaving antiretroviral treatment.”

A prospective study at Columbia University will look at the impact of the Global Gag Rule on women’s health, starting with Kenya and Nepal. Another article from Madagascar shows the “serious consequences” of the rule on an island population where “10 women a day die from complications from pregnancy and childbirth.”

Expanding family planning availability is the focus of initiatives announced this week in Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, and Nigeria, where “four million pregnancies are caused by poor access.”

A few more ways to increase acceptance: a conference in Dakar addressed Muslim attitudes to contraception, “focused on values espoused in the Koran: the need for better maternal health and the need to ensure parents have resources to feed and educate their children.” It also comes down to individuals, as with the Senegalese activist disseminating accurate sexual and reproductive health information.

More stigma-free access to all of those service are ingredients of Radical Reproductive Justice, which centers on “three interconnected human rights values: the right not to have children using safe birth control, abortion, or abstinence; the right to have children under the conditions we choose; and the right to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments.”

International Abortion Barometer

In Malawi, the increase in population is “hindering quality health care.” “53 percent of all pregnancies in the country are unintended; 141,000 abortions occur every year; 30 to 40 per cent of admissions in gynaecological wards in hospitals are due to abortion-related cases and 18 per cent of maternal deaths are due to unsafe abortion.” A law that will increase access has been urged by “chiefs, religious leaders and politicians,” but is being challenged by Episcopal and Catholic bishops.

Poland is “pushing abortion underground”, while the Brazilian parliament is seeking to eliminate the right to abortion altogether, even in cases of rape. Human Rights Watch highlighted the case of a woman who petitioned directly to the Supreme Court to ask for permission to have an abortion, which was denied on procedural grounds. The conservative MPs may have gone too far as women “are ready to fight for the few reproductive rights they still have.” South Korea is reviewing its anti-abortion law. In the UK, GPs may be free to issue abortion pills.

In the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland and Norway, Abortion has been “non-politicised”, though a number of challenges have emerged from “conscientious objectors” in the medical profession. A study in Women’s Studies International Forum concludes, “although the recent Nordic developments have limited immediate consequences for the availability of abortion as a public service, they suggest, perhaps more importantly, that a long-term struggle is emerging over public opinion supporting universal abortion access.” Worrying.

MD magazine looks at a recent WHO/Guttmacher study on the “Advancements and Challenges in Global Abortion Safety”, quoting Bela Ganatra, lead author, scientist, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization (WHO): “It is surprising — indeed heartbreaking — to see that over 25 million abortions in the world (almost 1 in 2) occur unsafely. This is despite the fact that medically speaking, safe abortion is a simple, safe primary care level service. It’s not science that is holding us back, its stigma, its politics, it’s the lack of trained persons, it’s the many barriers that make it hard for women to access these services.” Towards that safety, IPAS published a Medical Abortion Reference Guide.

Think Progress posits that a lack of proper medical school training in the US is causing a shortage of abortion doctors.

Complete News Review Source References:

Academic

Supplement: Just Reproduction: Reimagining Autonomy in Reproductive Medicine (full issue) Hastings Center Report, November-December 20178

Advancements and Challenges in Global Abortion Safety, MD magazine, 29 Nov 2017

Birth Interval Linked to Autism Risk, Medscape, 29 Nov 2017

Medical Abortion Reference Guide, IPAS, 28 Nov 2017

Thirty-year trends in the prevalence and severity of female genital mutilation: a comparison of 22 countries, BMJ Global Health, 25 Nov 2017

Dropping the ball or holding the line? Challenges to abortion laws in the Nordic countries, Women’s Studies International Forum, 24 Nov 2017

Evaluating implementation of the World Health Organization’s Strategic Approach to strengthening sexual and reproductive health policies and programs to address unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion, Reproductive Health, 21 Nov 2017

Cote d’Ivoire

Un projet de loi sur la santé sexuelle reproductive “est en cours” (ministre), Agence de Press Africaine, 30 Nov 2017