Global Safe Abortion
This website is for ANYONE who is working to eradicate unsafe abortion and to promote legal or practical reforms to ensure every woman’s right to access safe abortion wherever she lives in the world.
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Law adds fuel to race-abortion fire
Legislation that would outlaw sex, race and colour-based abortions in Georgia, in the United...
Legislation that would outlaw sex, race and colour-based abortions in Georgia, in the United States, has added further fuel to a dispute over so-called "race-targeted" terminations.
The Bill, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, would see equality law applied to terminations, meaning that, if enacted, it would be illegal for family planning clinics to knowingly solicit, perform or accept funding for race or sex-based abortions.
It comes after a pro-life organisation, the Radiance Foundation, claimed that black women were having too many abortions, and alleged that they were being deliberately targeted in an effort to control the African-American population.
The foundation recently launched an advertising campaign featuring a black child accompanied by the strap-line: "Black Children Are An Endangered Species."
Responding to the advertisements, Loretta Ross, the national coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, said: "The wording of the campaign is offensive ... to many of us, it compares our children to exotic animals. Our children are not animals."
The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 37% of 1.2 million abortions carried out in 2005 were on black women. African-Americans make up around 13% of the US population.
Copyright © Press Association 2010
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Fear over 'back-alley' US abortions
Fears have been voiced that "back alley" abortions may result from efforts to stop the US...
Fears have been voiced that "back alley" abortions may result from efforts to stop the US government subsidising legal terminations.
A pro-life congressional group is supporting health-care reform amendments which would prevent federal subsidies being used to help buy any insurance policy that covers abortions.
But pro-choice organisations such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America say that this would prompt insurers to exclude any such cover in order to protect subsidies in other areas.
Because this would deny access to legal abortions for all but the wealthiest, they say poorer women would be forced to seek cheaper - but unsafe and illegal - procedures.
At present, although the reform bills do not allow direct payment for abortions, subsidies might be used to buy insurance cover that includes terminations.
Pro-lifer want to ban subsidies for any insurance policy that covers abortions, including those with provisions for separate, privately-paid premiums.
Copyright © Press Association 2009
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