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How HR 358, the Let Women Die Act 2011, Violates International Human Rights Standards
In a hospital in Nicaragua, after a total ban on abortion was passed, a woman with an ectopic pregnancy was allowed to languish, waiting for her fallopian tube to rupture before a doctor agreed to perform the procedure necessary to save her life and future fertility. Even though there was no doubt regarding the outcome of her pregnancy, the doctor refused to operate until the fetus was certifiably dead, and with no ultrasound available in that rural hospital, there was only one way to make sure.
This is the world that Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) would like to bring to America with the passage of H.R. 358, the so-called “Protect Life Act,” a bill that would deny pregnant women access to emergency treatment, insurance coverage for abortion services and even information about how she could pay for an abortion. It’s bad enough that one member of Congress would be willing to put women’s lives at risk this way; that a majority of the House of Representatives voted for it is appalling.
While in the United States we may treat abortion restrictions as a political issue, elsewhere around the world, advocates and experts understand such restrictions to be public health and human rights issues. And in the United States this year, we have seen law after law passed that clearly violates international human rights standards.
Contrast Pitts’ legislation with the report on legal restrictions on aspects of sexual and reproductive health presented to the United Nations on Monday by Anand Grover, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Health. The report states,
“Realization of the right to health requires the removal of barriers that interfere with individual decision-making on health-related issues and with access to health services, education and information, in particular on health conditions that only affect women and girls.” (Emphasis added.)
Indeed, the report highlights the growing global trend towards decriminalizing abortion. Everywhere, that is, except in the United States. In my home state of North Carolina this year, we have passed a number of barriers that “interfere with individual decision-making” on reproductive health: a mandatory waiting period, mandatory and biased counseling, and a forced ultrasound, all solely intended to place barriers and shame women who seek abortions, even if she has been raped or her life is in danger.
Just in the first half of this year, states enacted some 80 measures to restrict access to abortion (more than double the previous record set in 2005 of 34), all of which seem to violate the human rights standards set in international agreements. They include extreme restrictions, such as the one in Ohio that would ban abortion once a heartbeat can be detected (six to 10 weeks’ gestation). Several states, including Kansas, Tennessee and North Dakota have banned the use of telemedicine (key to delivering health services to underserved rural areas) for dispensing medical abortion. In Mississippi, a state ballot initiative, if passed, would mandate personhood from the moment of fertilization, possibly outlawing the most popular forms of contraception. Bearing in mind that 99 percent of American women have used contraception during in their lifetimes, this law would result in the violation of the rights of millions of American women.
Grover’s report was developed following a thorough review of health research, national laws, international agreements and opinions and rulings issued by human rights bodies – although it reads as if it were written about the United States:
“These laws make safe abortions and post-abortion care unavailable, especially to poor, displaced and young women. Such restrictive regimes, which are not replicated in other areas of sexual and reproductive health care, serve to reinforce the stigma that abortion is an objectionable practice.”
In the United States, there have been laws on the books for decades that specifically deny young and low-income women access to abortion. Parental consent laws force young women to seek their parents’ permission to have an abortion, regardless of their home situation. (Studies have shown that most teens will consult with a parent before deciding to terminate a pregnancy, but even those who risk violence or homelessness are still forced to produce at least one parents’ consent.) And the Hyde Amendment bans the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion, explicitly isolating one health care procedure for purely political reasons.
Amnesty International has created an international campaign to raise awareness about the toll the total ban on abortion is taking on women in Nicaragua. Is it time to create one for women in the United States?
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Show AllSo-called conservatives do seem obsessed with rolling back the sexual revolution even at the expense of the other stuff they profess to believe in. It seems as if they would much rather institute punitive sexual policies than anything else: cut taxes, reduce government spending -- any of that.
Public figure men who get caught with something of theirs in the nookie jar aren't punished much because, it has been said, their actions can be looked on as lapses that do not question -- but in fact, reinforce -- the female-controlling sexual mores that they insist apply (the only penalty is that their wives often leave them and they get embarrassing stuff about them in the media). But people who demand to have sexual and reproductive rights are challenging the moral code, and right wingers want to punish them severely for their repudiation of male supremacy and sex control.
Their dangerous obsession represents a risk not just to women but to everyone who isn't like that.
Those paying the GOP will still have access to such procedures...and will use them when necessary...cost will be no object.
Sometimes I think that the 1% wants to see even more 'underlings' to ensure a never-ending supply of cheap labor for their use.
But, I could be wrong!
I only wish I were.
I am still trying to find where the bill actually says what the article says it does, "H.R. 358, the so-called “Protect Life Act,” a bill that would deny pregnant women access to emergency treatment,"
The actual wording of the bill is as follows:
Section 2...
‘(c) Limitation on Abortion Funding-
‘(1) IN GENERAL- No funds authorized or appropriated by this Act (or an amendment made by this Act), including credits applied toward qualified health plans under section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 or cost-sharing reductions under section 1402 of this Act, may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except--
‘(A) if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest; or
‘(B) in the case where a pregnant female suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the female in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself....
Maybe I'm missing something but this sounds like emergencies are covered. Perhaps the key is "in danger of death" which sounds open to interpretation rather than simply health risk or such. And perhaps there are those medical personnel who would hesitate until death is a certainty. I don't know but this is the second article on this bill I've seen that doesn't quote the actual text they are discussing. I always get suspicious when I someone claiming something with no supporting language or citations no matter who is doing it or what the issue. I found this text of the bill at:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-358
The really glaring hypocrisy is that the greater the US MIC machine aims at the maiming and murder of foreign citizens (through what ought to be construed as ILLEGAL acts of aggressive war), the more we see a reciprocal focus on the rights of the fetus. (This sort of inverted relationship should intrigue psychologists who have not been entirely programmed by The System.) I believe this fixation on the unborn is used as a cloak and cover. It's one designed to display the supposed moral supremacy of a sect that champions "right to life" to take the public's attention away from all those dead foreign babies, murdered pregnant mothers, and other grotesque casualties of wars of choice where human beings are treated like moving electronic pieces merely erased from a computer game board.
The greater the love of militarism, the greater the control of the female body so that life can be claimed from the outset... and no other moral parameters need apply or factor into what comes after. The Nazis were also rather particular about abortion, while human beings were sent off to be gassed in showers or otherwise gunned down in broad daylight.
When it's largely the MASCULINE centers of power that define the basis for law, acts of martial aggression, inane cruelty, and obscene shows of force will be tolerated, with the rights of women, added to initiatives based on the care and nurture of others, not seen as viable. (Note the "Tea Party" priorities, and how they decimate any pretense towards the US operating as a humane society.)
To look at this issue and how it functions in this society you have to look at what purpose abortion serves or how death is viewed. It is about who decides. Historically women have made these decisions. During times of famine, women delayed or choose not to have children rather than see them die in famine conditions. There are other instances in history where women would not reproduce but instead took the lives of their children and themselves as a preference to the horrible conditions of life. If you saw the movie, "The Road" there is an example of a father and son that face these conditions as well. The natural conditions of life have given way to ideological conditions and with that decision making. It is part of the reason we have 7 billion people on the planet but many of them starve to death. Death itself is now ideological and not in a good way.
The abortion foes have used this issue to destroy family planning programs-- hence increasing deaths from starvatioin and infanticide. These same right wing zealots use fabricated science to curtail air quality standards and environmental reforms--which has led to immeasurable sickness and deaths. They justify using fraudulent information to initiate the disasterous Iraqi wars which have resulted in about 100,000 deaths. not to mention the regional destabilization.
When will Americans wake up?