April 2018 Monthly News Review

See full newsletter on the web: https://conta.cc/2Klz8WI

Momentum and Roadblocks in Family Planning Access

Achieving access to Family Planning, Contraception and Safe Abortion services requires work on all levels – academic, governmental, local, social; in the press, on the streets, in village squares; by women and girls, men, politicians, religious leaders. April saw advocacy across all of these areas in countries throughout Africa.

DRC is seeing “encouraging momentum” as well as “formidable challenges”. IntraHealth International is working with the Tanzanian government to increase women’s use of modern family planning methods, and investment that can achieve “big returns.” They could look to the example of Ethiopia, where 3,600 health centers have been built over the last 20 years which provide family planning services, one factor in the decline of the country’s maternal mortality ratio from 1,250 per 100,000 live births to 353.

Some momentum can be generated by journalists, as seen in trainings that occurred in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, where reporting “helps make it a policymaking priority.” Youth ambassadors have a role in promoting family planning practices in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Republic of Congo, and Uganda, as do male family planning ambassadors in Nigeria. From Comoros, an inspiring story about an MP who used to be a midwife and uses her experience to inform her leadership, as the only female MP, on women’s rights issues.

The Ouagadougou Partnerships “caravan” hit stops in Guinea and Senegal and promoted the Civil Society for Family Planning (CS4FP) project in Mali.

FHI360 looked at “Monitoring and evaluation of community-based access to injectable contraception” in Malawi, Senegal and Uganda, where a study published in Contraception concluded that “that self-injection may improve injectable contraceptive continuation.”

The debate over the legal status of abortion services continues in Namibia, where the “archaic law nails the poor.”

But even where abortion is legal, the Trump Global Gag Rule continues to adversely affect women in many African nations. The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) notes the policy prevents “access to abortion services — and even information on abortion — in countries where it is legal. Reducing access to safe, legal abortion doesn’t prevent it from happening, it just makes it unsafe.” In Lesotho, key players in reproductive health have had to suspend operations because of a lack of funding. PAI reported from Uganda on the preliminary effects: “Increasing commodity insecurity; chilling effects on advocacy for safe abortion and post-abortion care services; the dismantling of referral networks between compliant and noncompliant organizations; heavy administrative burdens for organizations; the disruption of donor coordination; and a bolstering of Ugandan opponents of sexual and reproductive health and rights.” Family planning counsellors in Nigeria give personal testimony: “This global gag rule forces health care providers to choose between U.S. family planning assistance and the ability to counsel and provide clients with an accurate and full range of safe and legal reproductive health options. The global gag rule seriously impedes countries’ efforts to improve women’s health.”

Where in the World?

For inspiration, look at a discussion between UNFPA’s Natalia Kanem, IPPF’s Alvaro Bermejo and Women Deliver’s Katja Iversen: “SHRH – the bedrock of gender equality.”

Ireland is in the final weeks before a vote to repeal Article 8 of the constitution which bans abortion. It is backed by the Taoiseach, and could see an influx of Irish emigrants coming home to vote. The proposed abortion ban in Poland is a “test case” for the Catholic Church, while Pope Francis said that “Fighting social injustice is as important as fighting abortion.” Legal for 50 years in the UK, abortion debate “still rages”, as the Isle of Man and Cyprus prepare to end restrictions. Teen abortions are at a record low in Denmark.

Abortion has been legal in India since 1971, but “it is still not a woman’s right” due to stigma and access issues, leading BuzzFeed to produce “The 4 Basic Facts Every Woman In India Should Know About Abortion.” Contraceptive prevalence is on the rise in MENA though at varying paces. New Zealand is discussing abortion law reform.

The head of Amnesty International calls Latin America’s abortion laws violence against women, and there is movement across the region. In El Salvador, women who have emerged from prison having served time for miscarriages are at the forefront of a campaign to end the country’s abortion ban. Chile recently liberalized its law, but is now facing a “backwards step” for reproductive rights. Brazilian women are “braced for battle” including the war of “feminist bots versus rightwing trolls.” What seemed only recently like a long-shot – legal abortion in Argentina – is suddenly “within reach.”

The New York Times has issued a call-out for any woman in the world to discuss their experiences with abortion – attitudes, challenges, healthcare issues, and decisions.

USA – The frenzy of activity against family planning and abortion access

This is the last newsletter that will feature a full domestic USA reference section, where the fight over family planning and reproductive rights is making news on a daily basis in almost every state. Other organizations are ably monitoring, informing, lobbying, cajoling and resisting the multiple efforts to limit access to sex education (abstinence!), contraception (moral exemption!) and abortion (6-week ban!). We will keep an eye on major US developments, like implementation of the Global Gag Rule (see above), as they affect worldwide reproductive rights, but will keep our focus on news through an African and global lens.

Though a new report shows the abortion is safe and declining, and complimentary research shows the dangers of criminalizing it, there is a “stealth war” on birth control and a feeling of optimism among anti-choice activists about overturning Roe v Wade.

On the US Federal level, the Trump administration is pushing “abstinence-only” sex education (in international fora as well), looking to restrict funding for Planned Parenthood in any way possible, using the Office of Refugee Resettlement as an anti-abortion front, and removing reproductive rights from the State Department’s annual human rights report.

The University of Michigan’s Dr. Lisa Harris brilliantly analyzes the “Conscious and Religious Freedom Division” at the Department of Health and Human Services. She concludes: “My call is for health care providers across the political spectrum to take note of our lived experiences, especially those that defy the narratives of movements with which we identify; use ambiguities as the basis for humility about our positions, and then for brave conversations with colleagues across ideological divides — not with the aim of changing each other’s minds about abortion but with the more modest hope that we might tolerate one another enough to collaborate toward shared vision in other area.”

April saw anti-abortion provisions in a Telemedicine bill in Kansas (where a rabbi asked the state’s senator not to compare the Holocaust with abortion), the Louisiana senate advancing a 15-week abortion ban, and more proposed restrictions in Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Arizona and Wisconsin.

Holding the line on access happened in Indiana (which scores a “D+” in reproductive rights), where a Pence-era law was blocked by a US Appeals Court; in Baltimore, where a judge ordered restoration of a $5 million teen pregnancy prevention program; a rebuff of a stringent South Carolina law; an Ohio “Defund Planned Parenthood” law, which also passed in Tennessee, was struck down. Other judicial decisions have stalled anti-choice efforts in Kentucky, and Montana.

If only we lived in a world where facts spoke louder than ideology: Colorado, which allows comprehensive sex education and access to birth control, has the fastest decline in teen pregnancy rates; Texas (where one of the strongest anti-choice advocates has been revealed as a white nationalist) has some of the most restrictive laws and a concomitant increase in unwanted pregnancies and fertility rate for unmarried women, while girls in foster care are 5 times more likely to get pregnant.

Botswana

Beaten for aborting, The Voice, 20 Apr 2018

Burkina Faso

Santé sexuelle : Plaidoyer de jeunes ambassadeurs, Burkina24/Partenariat de Ouagadougou, 27 Apr 2018

Développement des communes: La santé de la reproduction, un élément incontournable, Faso 24, 24 Apr 2018

Burundi

“I am living example of having a good life….”, IPPF, 3 Apr 2018

Cameroon

Francophone Regional Focal Point Workshop and Civil Society Pre-Meeting, FP2020/Royal FM, 2 Apr 2018

Les jeunes aident à façonner les actions nationales en matière de planification familiale, Medium/FP2020, 30 Mar 2018

Comoros

From midwife to MP – Advancing the rights of women in the Comoros, UNFPA, 4 Apr 2018