Sept 28 Global Day of Action round-up

A few quick links from Friday’s Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. I’ll add more links later today. Let me know of any events, articles, posts, videos etc., produced for the day.

Nikki shared a powerful letter she wrote to the Labour Women’s caucus.

Family Planning urged the government to take abortion out of the Crimes Act, and, together with ALRANZ and Women’s Health Action, published a fact sheet asking the hard questions about abortion law in New Zealand about abortion law in New Zealand.

There were some great protests and demonstrations across the globe, including a large march in Dublin and yesterday there was a flash mob in Melbourne (I’m not sure if that was connected to the Sept 28 campaign but it was this weekend and it was awesome, so I’m including it here).

And to wrap things up, this video produced by IPAS Brazil a few years ago seems very appropriate.

September 28 Global Day of Action

Today is the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. This has also been referred to as the International Day of Action for the Decriminalisation of Abortion, which as I gather is what it was called last year, the first year of the global campaign, started by Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) in solidarity with the September 28 Campaign in Latin America and the Caribbean, which began in 1990.

The Southland Times, Catholics for Choice, people against choice and balanced reporting, and funny letters

Tuesday:

Opposition to abortion not the stance of all Catholics (appeared as an op-ed in the Southland Times but hasn’t been put up on their website)

Wednesday:

The Southland Times has sunk to a new low by publishing a half-page article on the opinion page provided by Jon O’Brien, chairman of the spurious American organisation Catholics for Choice. This organisation is not a Catholic organisation, it has no right to claim to speak for Catholics, who mainly support their bishops.
O’Brien is correct when he says Catholics have to obey their conscience, but this presumes that their conscience is informed. No amount of conscience formation can go against the 10 commandments, which clearly state “Thou shalt not kill”. Abortion is killing a human life in the womb, a God-given life, that will never see the light of day.
Shame on what was once a great paper, The Southland Times
V K Smith
Invercargilly:

Friday:

The Southland Times has sunk to a new low by publishing a letter by V K Smith. V K Smith was upset that the paper would stoop so low as to publish an opinion piece on the opinion page.
Why was V K Smith so upset? Because the opinion of the writer was different to their own.
The readers of The Southland Times should not have to be exposed to the views and opinions of others. Shame on what was once a great paper.
Nik Horn
Arrowtown

Dudes for Choice

http://dudesforchoice.tumblr.com/

One of my favourites:

This Is My Body (Not Yours)

“This Is My Body” is a women’s rights advocacy video created in response to the attacks on women’s health and reproductive rights that have occurred in the US throughout 2012. The video addresses those issues along with abortion, body image, cancer, fair pay, and a number of other important issues affecting women today. If you’re keen, the organisers are inviting women to contribute their own monologues (info on the Facebook page) – go ahead and add a Kiwi touch!

This Is My Body

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ThisIsMyBody

Reproductive rights in poetry

The Abortion Care Network, a US national organization of independent providers and pro-choice supporters, and Split This Rock, a US national network of socially engaged poets, sponsored an abortion rights poetry contest earlier this year. You can read the winning poems here, and hear the winner read her poem here (jump to about 4.50 if you just want to hear the winner being announced and hear her poem).

And a powerful poem Botched Motherhood, by Tiro Sebina, recently appeared on The Berer Blog (which is a great blog to follow if you are interested in reproductive rights).

Family Planning E-News Update July 2012

Family Planning E-News Update July 2012

Family Planning focus on abortion in this month’s E-News. You can also find out how you can support Family Planning at the same link.

Pro-choice morsels: International round-up

Well its been a while since we’ve had a round-up of blog posts, news reports, articles and videos from around the world. Here are a few from the past couple of months. Feel free to add your own in the comments if you’ve seen something we’ve missed. Or email us if you something you would like us to include in a post.

Turkish pro-choice protest

Turkey
In June, in the wake of protests by Turkish citizens (see a video of one such protest here), the Turkish government abandoned plans to further restrict access to abortion by shortening the time limit for women to seek an abortions.

Return of the DIY Abortion

Our very own Alison McCulloch has a fantastic post up over at Werewolf about how “a hostile law, and stretched services, are pushing women onto the Internet for abortion care”.

So women in NZ have resorted to seeking medication that can be used to induce abortions from overseas because they haven’t been able to easily access abortion here. But hey, our abortion laws are just fine and dandy as they are. We have abortion on demand. We should stop agitating in case a backlash results in tougher restrictions. Abortion’s just not an important issue these days. Uh huh. Sure.

The insidiousness of the US ‘personhood for zygotes’ movement

This Huffington Post article by Soraya Chemaly clearly explains the ‘personhood for zygotes’ movement in the United States. The three videos are well worth watching, and are a disturbing reminder about why personhood bills hurt all pregnant women, even those who want to continue their preganancy, and even those who are anti-abortion.

Thankfully NZ courts have ruled against expanding the concept of personhood to include zygotes, embryos and foetuses here, for now at least. It’s scary stuff happening in the US though, and we certainly can’t afford to become complacent.