Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has signed a sweeping anti-abortion omnibus bill into law, reaffirming the state’s current ban on abortion at 20 weeks (without exceptions for rape or serious fetal anomalies), blocking tax breaks for abortion providers, expanding “conscience protections” for anti-choice groups and writing into state law that life begins “at fertilization.”It is, in effect, an anti-abortion greatest-hits law.At the bill’s signing ceremony, the arch-conservative governor applauded the legislature for passing the measure with sweeping margins and announced: ”All human life is sacred. It’s beautiful. With this, we continue to build this culture of life in our state.”Sadly, states like Arkansas and North Dakota have moved the bar for judging anti-abortion legislation so far to the right that Kansas’ 20-week ban seems “modest” when compared to North Dakota’s six-weeks and Arkansas’ 12-weeks. But make no mistake: The Kansas law is equally dangerous for women, and still violates the accepted definition of fetal viability as defined by Roe v. Wade.Continue Reading… … Read More
Anti-vaccination campaign blamed for massive measles outbreak in Wales
Public health officials said Friday they were investigating the first suspected death from measles in Britain in five years, after an outbreak blamed on a campaign against vaccinations. More than 800 people have contracted the highly contagious disease in Wales in the past six weeks, centred around…
Under Thatcher, the Poor Became Poorer
John Weeks: Thatcher and Reagan set out to crush the union movement and assert the power of capital … Read More
Pope Francis doubles @pontifex’s Twitter following
Pope Francis’s online flock has doubled from 2.5 million to 5.0 million Twitter followers in just seven weeks — nearly half the time it took his predecessor Benedict XVI to build up his following. The account @pontifex — the word “pope” in Latin — has tweets in…
War on women is still losing
Well, the Republican Party is getting ready to do more outreach to women — once again using a transvaginal ultrasound to make sure they get the best reach. Just a week after RNC Chair Reince Priebus and friends urged their colleagues to “address concerns that are on women’s minds in order to let them know we are fighting for them,” North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed legislation that effectively bans abortion in his state.One of the bills makes abortion illegal once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, normally around six weeks after conception, when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant yet. The law doesn’t specify the use of a vaginal ultrasound – those GOPers have gotten cagy — but since that’s the most reliable way to detect a fetal heartbeat, it almost certainly would be used. Another bill bans abortion in cases of genetic defects. Maybe the most dangerous one imposes new regulations on the state’s lone abortion provider, Red River Women’s Clinic, designed to put it out of business.Continue Reading… … Read More
Red Cross: Gitmo ‘tensions and anguish’ related to the lack of ‘clear legal framework’
RT: Two of the Red Cross delegates have now reached the Guantanamo prison. What have they seen? Simon Schorno: We don’t really comment to the public on what we see during our visits. But our two delegates arrived on Monday. The idea was to get a little bit in advance of our regularly planned visit that starts next Monday and to get a better sense of the current tensions and the hunger-strike, to speak with the detainees directly – of course, we are involved – and also with the authorities to get their perspective of what is going on. And that is what we are doing right now and will be doing for the next two weeks.RT: Why did you decide to send the delegates a week earlier than planned?SS: We’ve been following the current tensions and the hunger-strike since our last visit which ended at the end of February. And we’ve been in a very close communication with the camp authorities since. Being up-to-date on what’s going on is very important for us, to be present there and to speak with the detainees in person – again, to get their perspective. It’s how we work and for us it’s really essential to be in the facility and to really get a sense of what’s going on.RT: We’ve been reporting on how desperate the conditions have been getting in the last two weeks. Why did not you send delegates from the Red Cross before?SS: We visit the facility very regularly – every six weeks we have our two-week visit there. We were there last week of February. We have been visiting the facility since 2002. So far as visiting Guantanamo is something that we do very, very regularly. We have a full program dedicated to those visits, to the interaction on those issues with the US government. And that is something we do daily here in Washington and down in Guantanamo. For us, it is part of our job and again seeing detainees this week is our response, we have done it in the past with the issues at the facility and we continue to do that.RT: You can’t tell us what the delegates are seeing at the moment, but you can tell us what you saw in the past. What are the conditions? Are you happy with the way detainees are treated?SS: In fact, we don’t comment publicly on conditions of detention or treatment of detainees. Those are issues that we raise directly with the authorities concerned – American authorities in this case. What I can tell you is that from our observations those tensions and this anguish that the detainees are experiencing are clearly related to the lack of a clear legal framework in Guantanamo. This has now been having a real impact for detainees for some time – on their mental health, on their emotional health. For us the issue beyond what we are seeing right now in Guantanamo are these issues that you reported on, that lawyers are talking about- the issue of a legal framework that regiments the detention at Guantanamo and this is the issue that the administration must address.RT: So clearly you are concerned about the mental health of these detainees. Is there something you can challenge the authorities with? Does the Red Cross have much influence over this?SS: The discussions, the reporting, the observations we share with the authorities, we believe have an impact. It is a continuing thing. As I said, we have been visiting the facility since 2002, so it is a very solid relationship in terms of having our opinion and observations taken into account. There are bigger questions that touch on the political sphere, legal sphere and there the administration with Congress must act. This is beyond really what ICRC can do. What we can do is to assure that certain international standards are upheld and the humanitarian perspective is taking into account.RT: How significant is it now that this story becomes more and more public and well known?SS: The fact that the President Obama announced that Guantanamo will be closed back in 2010 – there hasn’t been really any action with Guantanamo - is slowly disappearing from the landscape here, the political landscape and certainly, until a few days ago, the media landscape. All of this is playing to what is going on now and for us the bottom line, what we’re seeing from our perspective, what we see is the increasing level of desperation.RT: Will the Red Cross want to see this detention center closed down?SS: No, we do not have an opinion on the closure of Guantanamo. What we want to see is a clear legal framework that regiments the detention in Guantanamo.Follow RT’s in-depth timeline on Guantanamo hunger strike. … Read More
Planned Parenthood president: Abortion could be heading back to the Supreme Court
North Dakota signed the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban into law on Tuesday, criminalizing the procedure as early as five or six weeks into pregnancy. Women’s reproductive rights advocates, medical professionals, legal experts and even some anti-choice organizations have denounced the new law as a violation of Roe v. Wade that is almost guaranteed to be declared unconstitutional and overturned.But the six week abortion ban came fast on the heels of an Arkansas law restricting the procedure at 12 weeks and, as Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told the Washington Post, other states are following suit:Continue Reading… … Read More
