Trump picks former anti-abortion leader for health and human services post

Donald Trump has appointed the former president of a leading anti-abortion group to the top communications role at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS).

Charmaine Yoest, who for several years was head of Americans United for Life (AUL), will be HHS assistant secretary for public affairs. AUL played an instrumental role in the recent wave of anti-abortion laws by feeding model legislation to state lawmakers.

Under Yoest, the group pushed model bills that outlawed abortion after 20 weeks, required abortion providers to gain admitting privileges at local hospitals, and mandated counseling and waiting periods for women seeking abortions. AUL is also opposed to the use of the morning-after pill and IUDs.

Between 2010 and 2016, states have enacted 288 restrictions on abortion. The AUL directly credits its own work for several dozen of those laws. Its model legislation may have inspired countless more. Abortion rights advocates have managed to block many such measures in court.

As AUL president, Yoest played a key role in framing abortion restrictions as necessary to protect women’s health, although the medical evidence for such claims was often dubious. AUL’s ultimate goal is to end abortion.

Since leaving AUL, in 2016, Yoest has been a senior fellow at American Values, an anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage nonprofit. In her new role, she will set communications strategy for the entire health department.

The agency is headed by another staunch opponent of reproductive rights, former Georgia congressman Tom Price, who as chair of the House budget committee oversaw passage of a measure that defunded Planned Parenthood.

Price has also voiced hostility toward the requirement, put in place by the Obama administration, that health insurance plans cover contraception with no co-pay, once challenging a reporter to “bring me one woman” who struggled to afford contraception on her own.

Trump picks former anti-abortion leader for health and human services post

Anti-abortion group in tampon tax row removes death penalty comparison

A charity that has been given £250,000 from the government’s so-called tampon tax fund has scrubbed language describing abortion after rape as a “death penalty” from its website after being challenged on it.

The Life charity has now said it will do a full review of its website to remove offensive language, after the Guardian pointed out that the same article referred to abortion in cases of disability as a “death sentence”.

Life, which campaigns against abortion, was among 70 organisations working with women and girls to receive funding from the £12m tampon tax fund set up by George Osborne.

The £250,000 funding will go into housing and counselling services run by Life for homeless pregnant women in west London, the government announced. But the decision to award Life funding provoked concern among some women’s groups.

On Monday, Life’s education director Anne Scanlan was challenged on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about a piece on the charity’s website in which abortion after rape was described as a “death penalty”.

Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, brought up the phrasing and said: “You cannot be saying on one hand that you provide an unbiased, non-judgemental approach to dealing with women when this is the ideological motivation of your organisation.”

Scanlan responded: “I cannot believe we use that terminology at all, we would absolutely never use that kind of language face to face when dealing with women.”

The article was swiftly edited on Monday morning to remove the description. However, the same article still referred to abortion in cases of disability as a “death sentence”.

When the Guardian pointed this out, Scanlan said the language was inappropriate and offensive, and pledged to review all content on the website. “Where inappropriate language was used, we will amend it or remove it,” she said.

“We offer help and support to women. We certainly don’t want anything on the website that’s offensive,” Scanlan said. “We are not going to shy away from it: we are an anti-abortion organisation. But I was genuinely surprised to find out that language was being used on our website.”

Scanlan said she did not know how long the article had been online but believed it was written before she arrived at Life six years ago and had slipped through the net when the website was revamped last year. “Unfortunately a whole swathe of briefing papers have been moved from the old website without being adequately checked,” she said.

She denied that the group’s opposition to abortion made it unsuitable to receive the tampon tax funding. “We never, ever try to push our views onto anybody else,” she said, adding Life provides “non-directive counselling” that avoids recommending any particular course of action. “When it comes to providing support for women, we’re not debating the issue: we are just providing support,” she added.

Furedi told the Guardian she did not believe it was possible to separate Life’s opposition to abortion from the advice it provides to women. “Organisations are led by their values, and that runs through advocacy and campaigning, but it also runs through the way services are delivered,” she said, adding: “What they are saying is abortion has, as far as they are concerned, no place in the management of problem pregnancy.”

The government’s decision to provide funding to an anti-abortion organisation was a “slap in the face” to public opinion, which is increasingly supportive of choice, Furedi said, pointing out that the £250,000 was among the largest grants handed out: “Every woman who’s buying sanitary protection is being caused to effectively make a donation [to Life]”. The charity has a turnover of £3.6m a year.

A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which determines how the tampon tax fund is distributed, said the money is being spent to “help improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls, including those who have been affected by violence,” adding: “Life has been awarded £250,000 to fund a specific project in west London that will help homeless and other at risk women who are pregnant by providing housing, counselling and life skills training.”

The government declined to comment on whether it had any concerns about providing significant funding to an avowedly pro-life organisation.

Anti-abortion group in tampon tax row removes death penalty comparison

Anger as tampon tax is used to help fund anti-abortion group

A new row has broken out over the so-called tampon tax after it emerged that a quarter of a million pounds from a controversial levy on women’s sanitary products is to be given to an anti-abortion organisation.

Under pressure from campaigners after failing to honour a pledge to scrap the 5% VAT on sanitary products, former chancellor George Osborne said that more than £10m a year would be redistributed from the tax receipts to women’s charities.

But there was consternation on Saturday night among women’s groups and politicians who had campaigned on the issue after it emerged that £250,000 of that money is going to Life, a charity that campaigns against abortion and has been at the centre of controversy over the information provided by a network of unregulated pregnancy counselling centres.

A spokesperson for the End Violence Against Women Coalition said: “We are surprised to see that Life is the recipient of a very significant tampon tax grant. The government set out clearly that this money would be spent in ways that would address women’s specific needs and inequalities. It is hard to understand how a service offering counselling based on the fundamental premise that abortion is wrong, to vulnerable women, can do that.”

The government announced last Friday that 70 organisations across the country would share £12m from the tampon-tax fund, which it said would improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls across the country.

Rob Wilson, the minister for civil society, gave details of the funding on a visit to the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which is to receive £200,000 to help increase its casework support service for women who are being stalked.

Four other charities, ranging from the Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre Cornwall, which is getting £179,157, to Black Country Women’s Aid (£240,401), were highlighted in a press notice from the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

No mention was made of Life, but the organisation appears on a separate long list, which says it will receive £250,000 for “housing, practical help, counselling, emotional support and life skills training for young pregnant women who are homeless”. There has been surprise not just at the award, but at its size: it is one of the largest donations on the list.

Life describes itself as unique, combining “pro-life advocacy and education work with nationwide services providing positive alternatives to abortion”. It served notice last year of plans to increase its online presence to compete with established service providers such as Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS).

Among others who criticised the grant was Labour MP Paula Sherriff, whose successful amendment to last year’s budget led to the government pledging to abolish the tax.

“It will seem bitterly ironic to many women if we are taxed for our biology, only for the government to hand over that money to organisations that don’t even believe we should have control over our own bodies, especially when so many are left without basic sanitary protection,” she said.

“Just this Thursday, I led a Commons debate on period poverty and discussed terrible cases like the homeless women who can’t afford tampons and whose health is at risk, the girls in Leeds who play truant during their periods and a charity that provides free sanitary products to Africa now getting requests from schools in Britain because so many female pupils cannot afford them.

“Tackling these issues would surely be a better use of the tampon tax fund. The minister agreed on Thursday to look at funding for sanitary protection in schools and homeless shelters, and I will be asking the government to review their allocation of the tampon tax fund urgently.”

There was also criticism from the Women’s Equality Party. Its leader, Sophie Walker, said: “We consider any restriction on women’s reproductive rights as violence against us and thus it was a shock to learn the government has used the tampon tax fund to support a charity whose mission is anti-choice and aims to ‘make abortion a thing of the past’.

“While we appreciate the work Life does to support homeless pregnant women and care for children with life-limiting or terminal illnesses, we are very disappointed to see the allocation of such significant funds to this one charity while many others struggle, particularly those supporting black and minority ethnic women and disabled women who experience some of the highest rates of violence against them and yet are consistently at the bottom of the list for funding.

The government had originally faced a potential rebellion over the issue, after an amendment tabled by Sherriff won the backing of Eurosceptics keen to assert Britain’s power to set its own tax rates. Osborne had originally pledged to remove the tampon tax in November 2015, but was unable to do so due to regulations applied by the European Commission that prevented member states from doing so.

The government said on Friday that it is committed to continuing the fund until EU rules allow a zero rate of VAT to be applied to women’s sanitary products and that a decision will be made on the future of the Fund once this has been achieved.

Wilson said at the launch of the fund: “From Cornwall to Dundee, the tampon tax fund continues to benefit organisations in every corner of the UK working to improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls, including those who’ve been affected by violence.

“This fund is helping to improve lives, supporting our ambition to create a fairer, shared society for everyone. I’m glad that so many worthwhile organisations will benefit from this money.”

A spokesperson for Life said: “We believe that our support services for women are not a luxury but are essential for them to have the space to look at options for continuing their pregnancies with support.”

Anger as tampon tax is used to help fund anti-abortion group

Anti-abortion activists charged over undercover Planned Parenthood videos

California prosecutors have charged two anti-abortion activists who made undercover videos of themselves trying to buy fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood with 15 felonies, saying they invaded the privacy of medical providers by filming without consent.

State attorney general Xavier Becerra announced the charges on Tuesday against David Daleiden of Davis, California, and Sandra Merritt of San Jose. The two operate the Irvine-based Center for Medical Progress.

The allegations say the pair filmed 14 people without permission between October 2013 and July 2015 in Los Angeles, San Francisco and El Dorado counties. One felony count was filed for each person. The 15th was for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy.

Becerra says they used a fictitious bioresearch company to meet with women’s healthcare providers and covertly record them.

Daleiden, in an email to the Associated Press, said the “bogus” charges were coming from “Planned Parenthood’s political cronies”.

“The public knows the real criminals are Planned Parenthood and their business partners,” Daleiden said.

Planned Parenthood – which has previously said the videos were “heavily edited to deceive the public” – welcomed the charges, saying they sent “a clear message: you can’t target women and healthcare providers without consequences”.

Planned Parenthood (@PPact)

CA Attorney General filing criminal charges sends a clear message — you can’t target women & health care providers without consequences. https://t.co/dFT42uZUyq

March 29, 2017

In April of last year, Daleiden said in a Facebook post that California department of justice agents had raided his home, seizing all of his video footage along with personal information.

Since then, the case had gone largely quiet, with virtually no revelations about the investigation and no indication that the charges were coming before they were filed on Tuesday in San Francisco superior court.

The prosecution got a new leader this year in Becerra, a longtime Congressional Democrat, who took over for Kamala Harris when she became a US senator.

Daleiden and Merritt had previously been indicted in Texas on similar charges in January 2016, but all of the charges were eventually dropped by July as prosecutors said a grand jury had overstepped its authority. The grand jury had originally been convened to investigate Planned Parenthood, but after finding no wrongdoing indicted Daleiden and Merritt instead.

Anti-abortion activists charged over undercover Planned Parenthood videos

"There will be more deaths": NGOs on Trump"s anti-abortion rule

Three days after his inauguration, Donald Trump reinstated the “global gag” rule, which prohibits the use of US aid money for abortions, prevents NGOs from using private funds for abortion services, from referring women to groups that provide abortions, and even from offering information on services.

We asked NGOs around the world to tell us how the policy impacted them in the past, and what it means for their work today.

‘The policy constitutes bullying and blackmail’

Sally Griffin, director, ICRH-Mozambique

Mozambique is at a crucial turning point. Abortion was recently decriminalised and the government and its partners are preparing to roll out services. We fear this policy could derail the process, either through its impact on funding for services, or through the climate of fear and restraint it creates.

We receive US funding to provide HIV, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services to sex workers. The ‘global gag’ rule pushes us into a corner: abandon our efforts to support access to safe abortion or close down our programme providing essential SRH services to marginalised people. Either way, vulnerable women will have their reproductive and sexual rights compromised.

The policy constitutes bullying and blackmail, particularly of local organisations that are heavily dependent on US funding to provide services and to survive, and are therefore effectively powerless to turn it down.

This policy is going to undermine the reproductive health of our women

Rani Jha, Nepal

‘Impoverished women may not be able to afford quality abortion care’

Rani Jha, obstetrician and gynaecologist, Nepal

I work to provide free or subsidised safe abortions and contraceptive services to marginalised women. The services are funded by international donations and we are afraid that we may not be able to secure more funds in the future. Then, we may have to curtail our services or start charging patients. But Nepal is a poor country and impoverished women may not be able to afford quality abortion care. We can expect a rise in the rate of unsafe abortions, and subsequent mortality and morbidity. This is going to undermine the reproductive health of our women.

What is the ‘global gag rule’, and why does Trump support it?

‘The rule will reduce our work to near zero’

Claudia Dides, executive director, Miles Chile

In the past, the implementation of the policy meant that only government funding was available to support the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights. There was an increase in the number of girls aged 11–14 having unwanted pregnancies, and an increase in the prevalence of HIV/Aids.

The global gag rule will reduce our work to near zero as we depend almost 100% on external support to promote the sexual and reproductive rights of women and teenagers in Chile. They would be left without information on the latest contraceptive methods, they would have limited access to sex education (government programmes are limited or non-existent), and there would be restrictions on advocating preventive actions around HIV/Aids and other sexually-transmitted diseases.

‘Mothers will visit the clinic with problems they might have avoided’

Heloise, Ghana

In northern Ghana, it is common for poor young women to receive financial support from their boyfriend in exchange for sex. But without SRH and rights education, they often don’t know how to prevent pregnancy. If a woman does get pregnant, she will often rely on her boyfriend and his family to support her. And if she goes to school, she may have to drop out. After the baby is born, the man’s family is considered free of responsibility and this can leave the woman without financial or family support. In this region, girls and women are often so poor they have no money to get treatment for any pregnancy or newborn complications, resulting in extremely high rates of maternal and child mortality.

Family planning clinic in Gambia. Photograph: Chloe Hall/REX Shutterstock

With the reinstatement of the ‘global gag’ rule, mothers will visit the clinic with gynaecological problems they might have avoided had they received preventative SRHR education. There will be more deaths, our clinics and health professionals will be burdened by higher caseloads of complications, and maternal and child mortality, and an already overburdened and under-financed health system will face yet more problems.

‘The policy violates human rights to information, bodily integrity and autonomy’

Kathy Mulville, executive director, Women’s Global Network of Reproductive Rights, Philippines

The policy will feed stigma around abortion and prevent millions from making informed decisions about their own bodies

Kathy Mulville, Philippines

In countries where abortion is decriminalised, and comprehensive safe abortion information and services and contraceptives are widely accessible, we have seen that unsafe abortions and maternal mortality and morbidity are effectively eradicated. This has significant ripple effects for economic and social development; increased school attendance among girls, reduced levels of household poverty and hunger, reduced inter-generational transfers of poverty, mitigated socioeconomic impact of HIV/Aids, and improved environmental sustainability.

In addition to putting much-needed funding in jeopardy, the ‘global gag’ rule will only worsen the already challenging context in which we, our members and local partners work, further stigmatizing efforts to advocate for safe and legal abortions. The policy will feed the already rampant stigma around abortion and will prevent millions from making free and informed decisions about their sexuality and their own bodies, while also violating their human rights to information, bodily integrity, and autonomy in reproductive decision-making.

Demonstrators protest at an abortion rights rally in Chicago. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters

‘It will weaken evidence-based services for the poorest and most vulnerable women and girls’

Suzanne Petroni, senior director – global health, youth and development, International Center for Research on Women, US

The International Centre for Research on Women is not subject to the gag rule, but our local partners around the world would have to sign it – several have already indicated they are not willing to do so. This may constrain our ability to conduct efficient research, used to improve the design and implementation of policies and programmes that reach thousands, if not millions, worldwide.

For example, our US–funded work to understand how to improve the wellbeing of girls in Zambia who are HIV-positive, to ensure adherence to anti-retroviral therapy services by problem drinkers in India, and to expand access to voluntary family planning in numerous countries, may all be affected by the imposition of this new and expanded “global gag” rule. As well as restricting services directly, the rule is likely to diminish the availability and use of solid evidence, and will weaken the design and delivery of evidence-based services for the poorest and most vulnerable women and girls – and men and boys – globally.

‘Women should determine the care they receive, not the US government’

Sera Bonds, CEO, Circle of Health International, US

This is not our first global gag rule rodeo – nor, sadly, is it likely to be our last

Sera Bonds, United States

Too many organisations dependent on big government funds lose funding in times such as these and are no longer able to provide life-saving services like safe deliveries. We have not taken US government funding for this exact reason; women and their trusted healthcare providers should determine the care they receive, not the US government or a donor.

However, the governor of Texas, where we are based, has pledged to stop funding going to women’s health initiatives, and federal and state aid going to refugees in the state. This doubly impacts our work in the Rio Grande valley where we staff a clinic for refugees. I am sure that, together, we can figure a way through this. This is not our first global gag rule rodeo – nor, sadly, is it likely to be our last.

Do you work for a global health organisation funded by US aid? We want to know how the global gag rule will affect your work. Tell us in the comments below.

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.

"There will be more deaths": NGOs on Trump"s anti-abortion rule

Anti-abortion report challenges law reform in Northern Ireland

A report by anti-abortion campaigners in Northern Ireland has claimed that 100,000 people were born in the region because the 1967 Abortion Act was never extended to the province.

The Both Lives Matter report published on Wednesday comes as the former justice minister in Northern Ireland confirmed this week that he will resubmit his private member’s bill in the next Stormont assembly calling on the new devolved parliament to legalise abortions in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities where the pregnancies are doomed.

Dawn McAvoy of Both Lives Matter said: “The debate around abortion is in danger of becoming polarised by those only concerned with the unborn child on the one hand and those solely concerned with the rights of the women on the other. The reality is that both lives matter.”

“There are people alive in Northern Ireland today who would not have been born if the 1967 Abortion Act had been introduced here. People we all know and love – spouses, children, friends and family.”

“We estimate that there are 100,000 people alive today, who would not be, had we introduced the 1967 Abortion Act.

The group’s report comes at a time when the battle lines are being redrawn over abortion in Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK where the procedure is banned in almost all circumstances except when there is a direct threat to the mother’s life.

Thousands of Northern Irish women are forced to travel across to England to terminate their pregnancies due to the near-total ban.

David Ford, the former leader of the cross-community Alliance Party, who was justice minister in the regional government before it collapsed on Monday, has vowed to continue to press for abortion reform.

He said that in the next parliament after the scheduled elections on 2 March, there would be another private members bill calling on assembly members to liberalise the near-total ban on abortion.

Ford said: “Should the people of South Antrim re-elect me to the position of their MLA, on my first day back I will go to the Speaker’s office and resubmit my bill, with a view to progressing it through the next assembly term.”

The Both Lives Matter campaign is being backed by the former police ombudsman in Northern Ireland Nuala O’Loan, who said extreme cases of crisis pregnancies were being used to push a pro-abortion agenda.

Lady O’Loan said: “There is an urgent requirement at a time when heart-rending cases are being extensively utilised by those seeking to diminish legal protection for the unborn, to be more focused on recognising and providing for the needs and care of both mother and child. ‘Both Lives Matter’ is an excellent response to that pressing need.”

The group has also won the support of economist Esmond Birnie, a former adviser to ex-first minister and Nobel peace prize winner David Trimble.

Both Lives Matters said it is a new collaborative movement of individuals and organisations seeking to reframe the abortion debate in Northern Ireland.

In 2015 a high court judge in Belfast ruled that Northern Ireland’s almost outright ban on abortion breaches the human rights of women and girls, including rape victims. The ruling is being challenged by the province’s attorney general John Larkin.

At least 1,000 women and girls from Northern Ireland travel to hospitals in Britain for terminations every year.For instance, official figures for 2013 suggest 800 Northern Irish pregnancies were terminated in Britain – although that number is regarded as an underestimate. Among the 800 was that of a 13-year-old who became pregnant through incest.

The only law applying to abortion in Northern Ireland is the Offences Against the Persons Act 1861, which contains a life sentence for anyone convicted of carrying out a termination even in cases of rape or incest.

Anti-abortion report challenges law reform in Northern Ireland

Trump forms anti-abortion coalition and would ban public funding for procedure

Donald Trump on Friday named one of the nation’s top anti-abortion activists to his campaign coalition, in the clearest signal yet that the presidential candidate has fully embraced Republicans’ typically harsh stance against abortion.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B Anthony List, a group that works to elect Republican, anti-abortion women, will chair the loose coalition of conservative, anti-abortion rights leaders who are working to elect the Republican nominee. Trump’s campaign also announced that he would commit to a law banning public funding of abortion.

The appointment is a sharp about-face for both Dannenfelser, formerly one of Trump’s most vocal critics, and the Republican presidential nominee. Although he has espoused harsh anti-abortion positions, Trump has nevertheless spent much of the campaign out of step with the anti-abortion establishment – praising Planned Parenthood and, conversely, calling for the punishment of women who have abortions illegally.

In response, anti-abortion groups have sometimes accused Trump of being ignorant of their positions.

On Friday, Dannenfelser signaled that her group considered Trump’s policies to be wholly in line with the anti-abortion movement’s priorities. Trump “doubled down [on his] commitments to the pro-life movement,” Dannenfelser said. “The contrast could not be clearer between the two tickets, and I am proud to serve as national chairwoman for Donald Trump’s pro-life coalition.”

The announcement is a further sign that Trump has succeeded in wooing social conservatives who once viewed the Manhattan real estate magnate with suspicion and chimes with his choice of Mike Pence, governor of Indiana, as his running mate. The former congressman is credited with laying the blueprint for the Republican party’s crusade against Planned Parenthood.

Trump has only recently claimed to oppose abortion. In 1999, in his last public statement on abortion before he flirted with a presidential run, Trump proclaimed himself to be “very pro-choice”. He first declared he was “pro-life” in 2011 at an annual conservative confab.

During the Republican primaries, Dannenfelser was one of the loudest voices to oppose Trump, calling on Iowa caucus-goers in a January letter to “support anyone but Donald Trump”. “We are disgusted by Mr Trump’s treatment of individuals, women, in particular,” the letter read. “Trump … has through the years made disparaging public comments to and about many women.”

Reproductive rights groups immediately condemned Marjorie Dannenfelser’s addition to Trump’s campaign. Photograph: UPI / Barcroft Images

Her comments came as Trump repeatedly equivocated on abortion rights and one of the anti-abortion movement’s most cherished goals, the federal defunding of Planned Parenthood.

A little more than a year ago, Trump said he could not commit to defunding Planned Parenthood without weighing whether the group was “good for women”. Trump later committed to stripping federal funds from Planned Parenthood – “because I am pro-life” – in a February primary debate. But he added that he admired Planned Parenthood’s work on reproductive health, saying: “Millions of millions of women – cervical cancer, breast cancer – are helped by Planned Parenthood.”

A month later, Trump said he would support “some form of punishment” for women who have abortions if the procedure were illegal, comments that anti-abortion groups criticized as out of step with their mission. In April, he further angered anti-abortion groups by saying he believed abortion should remain legal. “The laws are set,” he said. “And I think we have to leave it that way.”

His campaign in both cases quickly sought to undercut his comments, claiming the candidate believed in punishment only for abortion providers and saying Trump would appoint anti-abortion nominees to the supreme court.

In Friday’s announcement, Trump committed for the first time to signing the Hyde amendment into law. The amendment is an annual budget rider that prohibits federal Medicaid funding from paying for abortion services. Making the amendment law is the strictest position Trump has staked out on abortion funding, although it is not surprising. Trump, in a January opinion column, called public funding for abortion “an insult to people of conscience”.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, in an apparent first for a major party candidate, has promised to repeal Hyde.

Reproductive rights groups immediately condemned Dannenfelser’s addition to Trump’s campaign.

“Let’s be clear: just like Donald Trump, Susan B Anthony List hasn’t done a thing to empower women and everything to advance an extreme agenda that aims to entirely end women’s access to abortion in America, often even for survivors of rape, incest, and women whose health is endangered,” said Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, a reproductive rights group.

“Between his support from the dangerously similar anti-choice and alt-right movements, and his record of misogyny, we know Donald Trump will be a disaster for women in the White House.”

Trump forms anti-abortion coalition and would ban public funding for procedure

The anti-abortion activists waging war on vulnerable females

A member of the pro-existence group Operation Rescue holds indicators reading through ‘Abortion is Murder’ in the course of a protest outdoors an abortion clinic in Buffalo, 1992. Photograph: Corbis

It really is not but seven o’clock on a Saturday morning in New York and I’m confronted by a group of individuals standing in front of a nondescript doorway, waving 4-foot high placards and shouting: “They murder babies here!” There are previously a dozen anti-abortion protesters outside the clinic and the day has barely started out.

Here to act as an “escort” – making certain sufferers, regardless of whether they are getting abortions or not, enter the clinic safely – I already come to feel intimidated. So, think about that you happen to be a female who has miscarried and a person shouts at you: “Carrying infants in your uterus is a present from God” or picture basically going to the medical doctor and becoming advised you happen to be “going to hell”. Think about becoming an African-American girl on your way to a women’s health clinic and currently being surrounded by folks screaming: “They want to kill black babies.”Can you think about how upsetting and emotionally traumatising that is for patients?

To aid these girls, volunteer organisations have sprung up in the US to provide help. When I’m inside the Selections Women’s Medical Center in Queens, Mary Lou Greenberg, the volunteer clinic escort director, gives me guidelines about privacy (for security, no one refers to anybody else by name) instructions on how to escort (strategy patients, gently inform them you happen to be with the clinic and that you happen to be there to guidebook them within) and warnings about proximity (never stand in front of, or block, a patient’s path by no means have get in touch with with a protester protect the patient by acting as a buffer). I am then handed a white health care coat (so as to be plainly noticeable to sufferers) and a big badge with “Alternatives Clinic Escort” on it. I come to feel like a strolling target – I am in the US, they have guns here. What if an anti-abortionist decided to allow off a handful of rounds?

Eliza, another escort, reinforces my be concerned. “I am aware that there has been poor violence outside other clinics, that folks have come in with guns, that individuals have died … They say: ‘The people in the white coats – they are butchers,’ so if some man is walking by and gets truly angry, we’re the ones who are going to get it.”

I am aware that my dread is practically nothing in contrast to the ladies who have, in a lot of instances, travelled excellent distances to attend the clinic and whose safety and safety we have a duty to defend. When we go outdoors, we escorts – a mixture of ladies and men between twenty and 60 many years previous, from a selection of backgrounds and professions – are outnumbered by protesters. The clinic regularly faces more than forty protesters a day.

Until now, my only knowledge with anti-abortionists had been with the (fairly) quiet protesters outside the Marie Stopes clinic in London’s Bloomsbury, who mostly pray and hand out objectionable leaflets right here, it is quite distinct. “You happen to be murdering youngsters!” shout the (primarily male) protesters as we wait, silently. But it is when a woman walks in the direction of the clinic that all hell breaks loose: she is quickly surrounded and screamed at.

Numerous instances I noticed patients crying as they had been shouted at. I could only try to get shut and offer you soothing words, but that doesn’t safeguard them from the abuse and aggression.

Eliza tells me: “Someone was coming in for a stick to-up, as she had had an abortion the week ahead of, and she advised a protester, ‘My infant didn’t have a heartbeat, so we had to abort,’ and the protester responded by saying: ‘Oh, they lied to you. Your baby did have a heartbeat. It was alive and you killed your baby.’ The degree of hatred that is directed at these women – a good deal of whom aren’t even receiving abortions – is unconscionable. If you’ve not escorted, you don’t know how undesirable the intimidation can be.”

Another clinic escort, Cathy, adds, “It really is extremely nerve-racking. I’ve been bumped close to by them a great deal since I am trying to shield individuals. You always know there is a bit of a bodily risk – the possibility that they are going to break the rules 1st – and that is scary.”

Every person I spoke with was shocked at how bad anti-abortion harassment has grow to be and typically didn’t realise it was happening in a main city like New York, as opposed to the Bible belt in the deep south. Could the sort of harassment experienced in liberal cities this kind of as New York spread to the United kingdom?

“We have not reached a level in the United kingdom in which clinic escorts are essential however, although that isn’t going to suggest protesters will not trigger some females significant distress,” says Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Services. “The number of protesters involved is fairly little, and inside the anti-selection motion itself there are a lot of who do not feel standing outdoors clinics targeting pregnant women is a moral or productive way to proceed. But numerous people are shocked this is happening here at all – we are a pro-option country and the fact a single girl must have a poster waved in her encounter and a leaflet thrust in her hand as she helps make her own decision to accessibility a legal healthcare support brings about concern.”

Furedi concedes that the United kingdom may well be heading in the direction of a lot more aggressive anti-abortion protesting. “The anti-option motion is more and more borrowing techniques from the US, whether it’s in the type of abortion clinic protests, demands for new laws on how clinics function, or calls for the prosecution of physicians – not for failing to care for ladies appropriately, but for failing to fill in paperwork accurately. So far they have been largely unsuccessful, but we require to be ever vigilant.”

Even though there aren’t but strategies in location to have escorts at British abortion clinics, additional protection of individuals is feasible. Kate Smurthwaite, comedian, activist and vice chair of Abortion Rights Uk tells me that the campaign’s “policy on all professional-selection exercise is guided by the wishes of clinic staff. If clinics do want help – counter-protests, clinic escorts – they can get in touch. We have a nationwide network of supporters and regional pro-choice groups that can be mobilised even at quick observe to assistance staff and services customers in whatever way is proper.”

Is being reactive, rather than proactive, the way forward? Greenberg at Options suggests that women’s rights have been undermined simply because “folks in the women’s motion who consider themselves professional-decision have not taken it on … General, the climate is such that it encourages these protesters to come out. This is element of a greater political battle … a war on women.”

The anti-abortion activists waging war on vulnerable females

Anti-abortion clinics must be plainly labelled as this kind of – or shut down | Kate Smurthwaite

A pro-choice campaigner in Northern Ireland. Unsafe practices must be ended ‘by legalising abortion in Northern Ireland and around the world’. Photograph: Reuters

The battle for a woman’s correct to decide on when it comes to abortion is normally framed in terms of geographical boundaries, time limits and clinic regulation. For a woman going through that knot of panic from a missed period or devastating news – sickness, task reduction, relationship breakdown – throughout a planned pregnancy, these things are essential. But to have genuine handle in excess of what is happening to her, she also demands clear and accurate information about her options.

So it was particularly terrifying to read in the Day-to-day Telegraph this week that “crisis pregnancy centres” are alleged to be routinely lying and scaremongering to suit their own religiously driven anti-choice agenda.

At the very same time, a report launched right now by the sexual well being organisation Brook alleges that these organisations are misleading ladies up and down the nation, which includes in schools and prisons.

These organisations have beneficial and official-sounding names such as the Central London Women’s Centre and CareConfidential. The latter is even linked to on the NHS’s official site webpage on abortion. At 1st glance they seem like any other medical centre.

The details they offer, however, isn’t going to meet the specifications we count on from NHS-accredited health care tips providers. Numerous are telling ladies there is a link between abortion and infertility. The Royal School of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says there is no proof of such a website link for legal abortion. The risks are true but only for ladies who have illegal, “backstreet” abortions. The conclusion we need to draw is the urgent need to have to end these unsafe practices by legalising abortion in Northern Ireland and about the world.

They also report a website link – refuted by the RCOG, Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Cancer Analysis Uk – amongst abortion and breast cancer. Nearly a third of the centres investigated by Brook had been authoritatively talking about “submit-abortion syndrome”, a disorder not recognised by any medical physique. In reality, the most typical response to abortion is, unsurprisingly, relief.

Most bizarrely of all, the Telegraph reported that two counsellors visited by its reporters have been generating the entirely unfounded and sickening claim that possessing an abortion could turn a lady into a little one sex abuser.

What all this cynical scaremongering fails to take into account is that abortion is not something that women select because it matches their handbag.

Women do not pay a visit to these centres prior to determining to have unsafe intercourse. Condoms never check out these centres prior to they choose whether or not or not to split. Antibiotics will not wander in asking if they ought to interact with the contraceptive pill. Rapists are not queued up outdoors flicking via sexual overall health literature.

These females are already experiencing crisis pregnancy. The alternative to abortion is carrying the pregnancy to term and delivering it. And that does have direct back links to bodily and mental well being hazards such as infections, bodily harm and postnatal depression. There’s also the threat of being a parent when you will not want to be and there’s no acquiring round the fact that that can make a full mess of your total life.

Individuals clinics deliberately passing off lies and horror stories as medical reality want to be closed down. People that continue to be need clear signage on their doors, internet sites and literature stating that they are anti-abortion organisations and that their suggestions should be taken, if at all, with that in thoughts. The NHS demands to preserve its distance and make certain females are not getting referred to these centres.

And 1 far more point. We require to do far better with intercourse schooling. We need to have a key overhaul of the existing decade-outdated set-up to generate something comprehensive, truth-based mostly and compulsory that reaches youthful females, and men, ahead of this type of crisis ever does.

Anti-abortion clinics must be plainly labelled as this kind of – or shut down | Kate Smurthwaite