October, 29 2014, 02:15pm EDT
Oklahoma Women At Risk of Losing Access to Non-Surgical Abortion on November 1
District court fails to block unconstitutional law restricting medication abortion from taking effect. Center for Reproductive Rights plans immediate appeal to state Supreme Court
OKLAHOMA
A district court judge has refused to block Oklahoma's unconstitutional restrictions on medication abortion in an order issued this morning. The Center for Reproductive Rights is planning an emergency appeal to the Oklahoma Supreme Court to ensure women in the state will continue to have access to a method of ending a pregnancy in its earliest stages using medication that has been proven safe by more than a decade of scientific evidence and medical practice after November 1.
The district court judge had announced from the bench on October 22 that he intended to allow the law to take effect--today's order makes that announcement final.
Late last month, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit challenging Oklahoma's unconstitutional restrictions on non-surgical abortion in the earliest weeks of pregnancy--restrictions that would force physicians to treat women seeking medication abortion according to a decade-old method that is less safe, less effective, and more expensive than the evidence-based methods most doctors currently use. The measure--which was signed into law by Governor Mary Fallin in April--also bans all medication abortions after 49 days of pregnancy, forcing women to undergo a surgical procedure when they otherwise would have the option of a safe abortion using medications alone.
Said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights:
"This ruling endorses sham restrictions passed under false pretenses to deny doctors the ability to prescribe certain kinds of care and women a safe option when they have decided to end a pregnancy.
"Politicians have no more business playing doctor than they do intruding on our personal, private medical decisions. We now look to the Oklahoma Supreme Court to maintain women's ability to get high-quality, compassionate care based on the expertise of the reproductive health care providers they trust, not the agendas of politicians who presume to know better."
This is the third time in the past four years Oklahoma politicians have passed legislation restricting women's access to medication abortion in the state, including a measure that would have effectively banned the method in 2011. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a legal challenge in October 2011 against that provision and the US Supreme Court eventually refused to hear the case, allowing the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision permanently blocking the law from taking effect to stand.
Autumn Katz and Zoe Levine of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Blake Patton of Walding & Patton, and Martha Hardwick of Hardwick Law Office represent Nova Health Systems d/b/a Reproductive Services--a non-profit reproductive health care facility in Tulsa--and the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice--a non-profit membership organization dedicated to ensuring the availability of the full range of reproductive health care services to women throughout the state in this challenge.
Women in the United States have been safely and legally using medication abortion for over a decade, with one in four women who make the decision to end a pregnancy in the first nine weeks choosing this method. Major medical groups oppose laws like Oklahoma's which severely restrict access to medication abortion. Both the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist (ACOG) have submitted amicus briefs opposing similar restrictions in Arizona and Texas. These types of restrictions ignore years of doctor's practical experience and scientific advancement, forcing providers to prescribe the medication with an inferior, outdated, and less effective protocol.
Harmful and unconstitutional restrictions like these further underscore the need for the federal Women's Health Protection Act (S. 1696/H.R. 3471)--a bill that would prohibit states like Oklahoma from imposing unconstitutional restrictions on reproductive health care providers that apply to no similar medical care, interfere with women's personal decision making, and block access to safe and legal abortion services.
The Center for Reproductive Rights is a global human rights organization of lawyers and advocates who ensure reproductive rights are protected in law as fundamental human rights for the dignity, equality, health, and well-being of every person.
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'Macron Resign!' French Protests Intensify Over Attempt to Force Retirement Age Hike
"This forced passage with the use of Article 49.3 must be met with a response in line with this show of contempt toward the people," declared one union leader as MPs introduced no-confidence motions.
Mar 17, 2023
Protests in Paris and across France have ramped up since President Emmanuel Macron's government on Thursday used a controversial constitutional measure to force through a pension reform plan without a National Assembly vote.
Fears that the Senate-approved measure—which would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64—did not have enough support to pass the lower house of Parliament led to a Council of Ministers meeting, during which Macron reportedly said that "my political interest would have been to submit to a vote… But I consider that the financial, economic risks are too great at this stage."
"This reform is outrageous, punishing women and the working class, and denying the hardship of those who have the toughest jobs."
After the meeting, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced the decision to go with the "nuclear option," invoking Article 49.3 of the French Constitution—a calculated risk considering the potential for a resulting motion of no-confidence.
Members of Parliament opposed to the overhaul filed a pair of no-confidence motions on Friday, and votes are expected on Monday. Although unlikely, given the current makeup of the legislature, passing such a motion would not only reject the looming pension law but also oust Macron's prime minister and Cabinet, and likely lead to early elections in France.
As Deutsche Wellereported:
"The vote on this motion will allow us to get out on top of a deep political crisis," said the head of the so-called LIOT group Bertrand Pancher, whose motion was co-signed by members of the broad left-wing NUPES coalition.
The far-right National Rally (RN) filed a second motion, but that was expected to get less backing. RN lawmaker Laure Lavalette however said her party would vote for "all" no-confidence motions filed. "What counts is scuppering this unfair reform bill," she said.
Leaders of the Les Republicains (LR) are not sponsoring any such motions. Reutersexplained that individuals in the conservative party "have said they could break ranks, but the no-confidence bill would require all of the other opposition lawmakers and half of LR's 61 lawmakers to go through, which is a tall order."
Still, Green MP Julien Bayou said, "it's maybe the first time that a motion of no-confidence may overthrow the government."
Meanwhile, protests against the pension proposal—which have been happening throughout the year—continue in the streets, with some drawing comparisons to France's "Yellow Vests" movement sparked by fuel prices and economic conditions in 2018.
Not long after Borne's Article 49.3 announcement on Thursday, "protesters began to converge on the sprawling Place de la Concorde in central Paris, a mere bridge away from the heavily guarded National Assembly," according toFrance 24.
As the news outlet detailed:
There were the usual suspects, like leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, thundering against a reform he said had "no legitimacy—neither in Parliament, nor in the street." Unionists were also out in strength, hailing a moral victory even as they denounced Macron's "violation of democracy."
Many more were ordinary protesters who had flocked to the Concorde after class or work. One brandished a giant fork made of cardboard as the crowd chanted "Macron démission" (Macron resign). Another spray-painted an ominous message on a metal barrier—"The shadow of the guillotine is nearing"—in the exact spot where Louis XVI was executed 230 years ago.
Police used tear gas to disperse the Concorde crowd. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told RTL radio 310 people were arrested nationwide—258 of them in Paris. He said, "The opposition is legitimate, the protests are legitimate, but wreaking havoc is not."
Anna Neiva Cardante is a 23-year-old student whose parents, a bricklayer and a cleaner, "are among those who stand to lose most."
"A vote in the National Assembly was the government’s only chance of securing a measure of legitimacy for its reform," Neiva Cardante told France 24 as police cleared the crowd Thursday. "Now it has a full-blown crisis on its hands."
"This reform is outrageous," she added, "punishing women and the working class, and denying the hardship of those who have the toughest jobs."
Across the French capital early Friday, "traffic, garbage collection, and university campuses in the city were disrupted, as unions threatened open-ended strikes," DW noted. "Elsewhere in the country, striking sanitation workers blocked a waste collection plant that is home to Europe's largest incinerator to underline their determination."
"Article 49.3 constitutes a triple defeat for the executive: popular, political, and moral," declared Laurent Escure, secretary general of the labor union UNSA. "It opens up a new stage for the protests."
The French newspaper Le Mondereported that "the leaders of France's eight main labor unions called for 'local union rallies' on the weekend of March 18 and 19 and for a 'new big day of strikes and demonstrations' on Thursday, March 23."
Philippe Martinez of the CGT union asserted that "this forced passage with the use of Article 49.3 must be met with a response in line with this show of contempt toward the people."
Fellow CGT representative Régis Vieceli vowed that "we are not going to stop," tellingThe Associated Press that flooding the streets and refusing to work is "the only way that we will get them to back down."
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Ilhan Omar Warns 'The Next Iraq Will Be Even Worse'
"Have we fully learned the lessons from this failed war of aggression, or are we doomed to repeat it?" the progressive lawmaker asked on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.
Mar 17, 2023
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Friday marked the upcoming 20th anniversary of the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq—where thousands of U.S. troops remain today—by asking if Americans have learned anything from the "failed war of aggression" and warning that waging another such war will have even more dire consequences.
In a Twitter thread, Omar (D-Minn.) asserted that "20 years later, the Iraq War remains the biggest foreign policy disaster of our generation, one that took thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives."
As Common Dreamsreported Wednesday, the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimates as many as 580,000 people were killed in Iraq and Syria since 2003 and nearly 15 million people were made refugees or internally displaced by the war—which is forecast to cost a staggering $2.9 trillion by 2050.
The war was waged—under false pretenses against a country that had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks—by neoconservative Republicans in the Bush administration who since before 9/11 had sought a way to invade Iraq and oust erstwhile ally Saddam Hussein. The horrors of war and occupation included torture, indiscriminate killing, sex crimes, environmental devastation, and soaring birth defects caused by the use of depleted uranium weapons.
What then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer called Operation Iraqi Liberation—OIL—devastated much of Iraq but enriched multinational corporations while creating a power vacuum that was eventually filled by Islamic State, whose rise to power in much of Iraq and neighboring Syria led to a second phase of the war launched during the administration of former President Barack Obama that continues today.
"Have we fully learned the lessons from this failed war of aggression, or are we doomed to repeat it?" Omar asked.
"Our foreign policy discourse remains fundamentally pro-war," Omar noted. "Think tanks (often the same ones who cheerled the Iraq War) outflank each other to justify armed conflict and derail diplomacy with adversaries like Iran."
Omar—whom Republicans recently ousted from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs—continued:
Instead of seeing China as a geopolitical challenge to be managed, politicians gin up jingoistic sentiment and nationalism to see who can be the most "anti-China."
Our spending on Pentagon waste and new weapons continues to rise uncontrollably—with weapons contractors wielding more lobbying power than ever in Washington.
Our national media too often treat war as a game—a way to juice ratings as fewer Americans turn into TV news—rather than the most horrific state of conditions to be avoided at all costs.
Claims from senior national security officials are reported as fact, even when no evidence for those claims is presented.
Much like the lost Iraqi lives lost were often ignored 20 years ago, we continue to ignore the pain and suffering of Black and Brown people in places like Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Haiti, and more.
"To truly be able to avoid another Iraq, we need a national reckoning with how we got into it the first place," argued Omar, who fled civil war in Somalia with her family when she was a child.
"We need accountability for those who got us into this war," Omar said. "But most of all we need to see all of our lives connected as part of the human fabric—to understand that the parent who loses a child in war could be us, that the child who is displaced could be our child."
"Because the next Iraq," she added, "will be even worse."
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Six Island Nations Commit to 'Fossil Fuel-Free Pacific,' Demand Global Just Transition
"As Pacific leaders shoulder the burden of climate leadership," this call "is a reminder that despite the doom and gloom, another world is possible, a fossil fuel-free world that is just, equitable, and sustainable."
Mar 17, 2023
Climate justice advocates celebrated Friday after a half-dozen island nations committed to building a "fossil fuel-free Pacific" and urged all governments to join them in bringing about an equitable phaseout of coal, oil, and gas.
From Wednesday to Friday, Vanuatu and Tuvalu co-hosted the 2nd Pacific Ministerial Dialogue on Pathways for the Global Just Transition from Fossil Fuels in Port Vila, Vanuatu. The summit came amid an ongoing state of emergency in Vanuatu, which was hammered earlier this month by a pair of Category 4 cyclones. Participants described the current devastation as "just the most recent example of the extensive and ongoing fossil fuel-induced loss and damage suffered by" Pacific Islanders.
At the conclusion of the three-day meeting, ministers and officials from six countries—Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga, Fiji, Niue, and the Solomon Islands—agreed on the Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel-Free Pacific.
The resolution—issued "on behalf of present and future generations, communities on the frontlines, and all of humanity"—calls for immediate international action to accelerate a just transition from dirty to clean energy in accordance with what experts have shown is necessary to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
"The science is clear that fossil fuels are to blame for the climate emergency," says the document. "This is a crisis driven by the greed of an exploitative industry and its enablers. It is not acceptable that countries and companies are still planning on producing more than double the amount of fossil fuels by 2030 than the world can burn to limit warming to 1.5°C."
"Every second wasted on climate inaction and clinging to fossil fuels puts lives, homes, livelihoods, cultures, and ecosystems in jeopardy."
Among other things, the resolution implores policymakers in the Pacific and around the world to join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) and negotiate a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty (FFNPT) to end the expansion of coal, oil, and gas extraction and to expedite a fair global shift to renewables. It also cautions lawmakers to avoid phrases like "unabated" or "inefficient," warning that such terminology "creates loopholes for fossil fuel producers."
In a statement, Oil Change International global policy lead Romain Ioualalen said, "Faced with devastating climate impacts resulting from the world's continued addiction to fossil fuels, Pacific governments have once again demonstrated what true leadership looks like."
"The contrast between the U.S. and other rich countries approving new oil and gas fields in clear defiance of science, and the commitment to build a prosperous and resilient fossil fuel-free Pacific could not be more obvious and highlights the complete disregard the fossil fuel industry and its enablers have for people and communities most affected by the climate crisis," said Ioualalen. "Countries must urgently heed the call for an immediate end to fossil fuel expansion that is emanating from the Pacific. We look forward to Pacific countries continuing to be vocal champions for a just and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels on the global stage, including at COP28 later this year."
Samoan climate justice activist Brianna Fruean said that "this dialogue of Pacific ministers is stepping outside of the box and acknowledging that we must try new ways to save ourselves—and that is going to require a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty."
"While the guilty continue to reap profit off the expansion of fossil fuels behind our backs," said Fruean, "the meeting is bringing renewed energy to Pacific leadership that will not just echo across our islands but drive action with our allies globally."
Despite bearing almost no historical responsibility for the climate crisis, Pacific Islanders are acutely vulnerable to rising sea levels and increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather. Policymakers from the region have long been leaders in demanding ambitious efforts to slash greenhouse gas pollution at speed and scale, including by putting the idea of a FFNPT on the table in 2016. Just last year, Vanuatu and Tuvalu became the first national governments to endorse such a measure, while Tuvalu also recently joined the BOGA as a core member.
"Every second wasted on climate inaction and clinging to fossil fuels puts lives, homes, livelihoods, cultures, and ecosystems in jeopardy," said Lavetanalagi Seru, regional policy coordinator at Pacific Islands Climate Action Network. "As Pacific leaders shoulder the burden of climate leadership, the Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel-Free Pacific is a reminder that despite the doom and gloom, another world is possible, a fossil fuel-free world that is just, equitable, and sustainable."
The region's new resolution states that "we have the power and responsibility to lead, and we will. Pacific leaders called for the Paris agreement to limit warming to 1.5°C, and have demanded an end to the development and expansion of fossil fuel-extracting industries, starting with new coal mines. Pacific civil society has challenged the world to step up the fight for urgent fossil fuel phaseout and effective climate action."
In recent weeks, Vanuatu has been leading an ongoing push for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on "how existing international laws can be applied to strengthen action on climate change, protect people and the environment, and save the Paris agreement."
The document unveiled Friday calls for "redoubled efforts to reaffirm, strengthen, and codify legal obligations with respect to the global phaseout of fossil fuels," including by supporting the adoption of the Vanuatu-led ICJ resolution at the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly at the end of this month.
"The contrast between the U.S. and other rich countries approving new oil and gas fields in clear defiance of science, and the commitment to build a prosperous and resilient fossil fuel-free Pacific could not be more obvious."
According to Seru, "The phaseout of fossil fuels is not only a challenge, but an opportunity to promote economic development and innovation in the Pacific region."
To that end, the Port Vila document calls for "new Pacific-tailored development pathways based on 100% renewable energy."
350.org Pacific managing director Joseph Sikulu welcomed this week's developments, saying in a statement that "our people need global leaders to follow the innovation of Pacific representatives at the Pacific Ministerial Dialogue, it is a matter of survival."
"Our people also need energy to power their homes, their fishing boats, and their schools, which is where we are ready to work with governments in their commitment to progress the development and implementation of fossil-free development pathways at the grassroots level," he added.
In order to make that a reality, the document calls for increasing "public and private finance for the just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy at the scale required, with innovative, simplified mechanisms and reforms of existing financial institutions."
Cansin Leylim, 350.org associate director of global campaigns, applauded Pacific Island nations for "once again showing immense leadership in the fight against the climate crisis, a crisis they had no part in creating."
"Pacific leaders have told us time and again—in order to stay below 1.5°C, the historically responsible countries need to immediately commit to a fossil fuel-free future without loopholes," said Leylim. "This means ensuring adequate and grant-based climate finance is swiftly mobilized to both adapt to the crisis and limit the heating to survival limits, ensuring energy independence and resource resilience with renewable energy."
Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, predicted that this week's "historic meeting" will "have far-reaching consequences."
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