FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — In an election where the future of reproductive rights is on the ballot in Maryland and elsewhere across the country, the state’s all-male congressional delegation stands to gain an influx of women.
It could happen in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, where Democrat April McClain Delaney is running against conservative Republican Neil Parrott, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates. They’re competing to represent a wide swath of rural Maryland and more affluent liberal suburbs of Washington, D.C.
In a year when voters also could elect the nation’s first female president, women are vying for two other open seats in Maryland’s 10-member congressional delegation. The delegation has been all-male since former Sen. Barbara Mikulski retired in 2016, but the state has a long history of female officeholders from both parties.
McClain Delaney, a mother of four daughters whose husband previously represented the district, says she wants to protect the reproductive rights of her children and other young people in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to end the constitutional right to an abortion and leave those decisions to the states. She previously worked in the Biden administration’s Department of Commerce and has focused much of her career on protecting children’s online safety.
“I can’t believe that my mother, my daughters’ grandmother, had more reproductive freedoms than they currently do,” she said in a recent interview. She said she once experienced an ectopic pregnancy that could have been fatal if restrictive abortion laws had limited her access to life-saving medical care.
Parrott, meanwhile, has deflected questions about reproductive rights on the campaign trail. He made his anti-abortion stance clear during 12 years in the Maryland State House. But now, he says, it’s “really a non-issue” because he doesn’t believe either political party can get enough congressional votes to regulate abortion nationally — a position similar to that of former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee.
That approach also echoes recent efforts by other conservatives and leaders of the anti-abortion movement now struggling to appeal to voters in blue-leaning Maryland. The state’s voters will also consider a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
Parrott, 54, has worked to move the conversation to friendlier terrain, emphasizing his commitment to lowering inflation, creating a stronger economy for middle-class families and stopping illegal immigration. He says his opponent — who lives several miles outside the district in an affluent suburb of Washington — is out of touch with the struggles of everyday Americans, including people in the 6th Congressional District.
U.S. House members are only required to live in the state they represent.
McClain Delaney has used personal funds to bolster her campaign and received endorsements from big-name Democrats, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin.
She’s also outspent Parrott by a wide margin, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign spending. Just since the May 14 primaries, Democrats have spent more than $600,000 on advertising in the 6th District race, compared to slightly more than $30,000 spent by Republicans.
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Those figures are not expected to change much between now and Nov. 5, with McClain-Delaney having a nearly 20-1 advantage in ad spending reserved the rest of the way. Neither candidate has received much support from the national parties or outside groups, a possible indicator that both sides view the seat as safely Democratic.
Parrot is a longtime resident of Hagerstown, a small city in western Maryland surrounded by farmland. A traffic engineer by trade, he said he can relate to people dealing with high grocery bills and unaffordable housing.
“I have a history here,” he said. “I’ve served in the community here.”
But McClain Delaney, 60, argues she’s more ideologically in line with most 6th District voters. She calls herself a “common sense, common ground” candidate. The daughter of an Idaho potato farmer, she says she can get Washington politicians to address the needs of working families.
McClain Delaney has attacked Parrott’s record in the Maryland House of Delegates, particularly on issues impacting women.
Parrott, in turn, has accused McClain Delaney of lying and taking things out of context. In an interview last week, Parrott said he supports the right to abortion in cases of rape, incest and when the mother’s life is at risk.
Tensions between the candidates erupted into a heated exchange during the last few minutes of a recent public forum.
“Shame on her,” Parrott said, pointing a finger at McClain Delaney, who denied putting out false information as members of the audience chanted and jeered.
The 6th District hasn’t always favored Democrats. It was represented by Republican Roscoe Bartlett for 20 years before McClain Delaney’s husband, John Delaney, won the seat in 2012 following a redistricting that helped Democrats.
Seven of Maryland’s eight House members are Democrats, as are the state’s two senators. Three women are vying for open seats this election cycle.
In Maryland’s deep blue 3rd Congressional District, state Sen. Sarah Elfreth won a crowded Democratic primary. Her main rival was former U.S. Capitol police officer Harry Dunn, who defended the U.S. Capitol against Jan. 6 rioters. In 2018, Elfreth became the youngest woman elected to the state Senate. She’s pledged to prioritize reproductive health and affordable child care.
Reproductive freedom is also at the forefront of the U.S. Senate race between former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and Alsobrooks, a Democrat who argues women have too much at stake to risk losing Democrats’ thin Senate majority. She said having more women at the table is a big deal.
“I believe it makes our policies more complete,” she said in a recent interview. “And so this is a moment that gives us the opportunity to make sure that we are adding women — mothers and daughters and sisters — to the Senate to ensure that the variety of lived experiences are represented in that body.”
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This story has been corrected to reflect that Maryland’s delegation has 10 members, not nine, and that there are nine Democrats, not eight, in the delegation
BINMAR, Chad — When Milla Nemoudji, a 28-year-old from a village in southern Chad, divorced her husband following years of physical abuse, she found herself without means for survival. Though raised in a farming family, she struggled to get by in a community where access to land is customarily controlled by men.
With little support for women in her situation, divorce being relatively rare in Chad, she fought for economic independence. She sold fruits and other goods. During the rainy season, she plowed fields as a laborer. Last year, however, a women’s collective arrived in her village and she decided to join, finally gaining access to land and a say over its use. She farmed cotton, peanuts and sesame, making enough money to cover basic needs.
The village, Birman, is on the outskirts of Chad’s second-largest city, Moundou, in the densely populated Logone Occidental region. Thatched-roof homes stand amid fields where women traditionally harvest the land but, like Nemoudji, have little or no say over it.
In Chad, land access is often controlled by village chiefs who require annual payments. Women are often excluded from land ownership and inheritance, leaving them dependent on male relatives and reinforcing their secondary status in society.
The struggle for land rights is compounded by the dual legal system in Chad where customary law often supersedes statutory law, especially in rural areas. While recent legal reforms mean laws recognize the right of any citizen to own land, application of those laws is inconsistent.
For women like Nemoudji who seek to assert their rights, the response can be hostile.
“There’s no one to come to your aid, although everyone knows that you are suffering,” Nemoudji told The Associated Press, criticizing the traditional system of land rights and urging local leaders to take domestic violence seriously. “If women weren’t losing access to farmlands, they would dare to leave their husbands earlier.”
Initiatives like N-Bio Solutions, the collective Nemoudji joined, are challenging those norms. Founded by Adèle Noudjilembaye in 2018, an agriculturist and activist from a neighboring village, the collective is a rare initiative in Chad negotiating on behalf of women with traditional chiefs, who then seek out residents with available land willing to lease it.
So far, Noudjilembaye runs five such collectives with an average 25 members. Although these initiatives are slowly gaining popularity, they are limited by financial resources and some women’s hesitancy to risk the little they have.
Noudjilembaye told the AP that “despite the violence and neglect, many women stay (in situations) because of financial dependency, fear of societal judgement or lack of support.”
The efforts of such collectives have broader implications for both gender equality and sustainable agriculture in Chad. Women of Binmar have adopted sustainable farming practices including crop rotation, organic farming and the use of drought-resistant seeds, which help preserve the soil and increase productivity.
In general, women who gain access to land and resources are more likely to implement sustainable agricultural practices and improve local food systems, according to the United Nations.
But in Chad, life for women who attempt to assert their rights is especially challenging.
Chad is ranked 144th out of 146 countries, according to the 2024 Global Gender Gap Indicator Report compiled by World Economic Forum. The country’s maternal mortality rate is high at 1,063 deaths per 100,000 births in 2020, over three times the global average, according to the United Nations. Only 20% of young women are literate.
For Nemoudji, her family’s response to her plight was mostly passive. They offered her a place to stay and provided emotional support but did little to confront her abuser or seek justice on her behalf.
“The system failed me when I sought help after my husband burned down my house,” Nemoudji said. When she reported the incident to the village chief, “nothing was done to solve my dispute.”
Village chief Marie Djetoyom, a woman in the hereditary role, told the AP that she was afraid to take action and risk being imprisoned in retaliation. She asserted that she must act within the customary land laws.
Despite the lack of support from traditional leaders and local authorities, women in the village of around 120 people have found strength in the collective.
“As cultural practices do not favor access to land for many women individually, the community alternative remains the best possibility to achieve the objective,” said Innocent Bename, a researcher at CEREAD, a N’Djamena-based research center.
Marie Depaque, another village woman who struggled to get by after her second husband refused to financially support her children from her first marriage, added that “our fight for land rights is not just about economic survival but also about justice, equality and the hope for a better future.”
Nemoudji dreams of better educational opportunities for the children in her community so they can break the cycle of poverty and violence. She advocates in the community for changes in the land ownership system.
“Knowing my rights means I can seek help from authorities and demand justice,” she said.
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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
In recent years, the philanthropic world has increasingly recognized that investing in women and girls is essential for humanity to progress. Governments including Sweden, Canada, France, and Wales have adopted feminist approaches to their international development agendas, while some billionaires like Melinda French Gates—who recently announced $1 billion in spending on women and families over the next two years—have put their support behind organizations working on urgent issues such as reproductive rights in the U.S.
Research unequivocally backs the importance of funding this type of work: the World Bank argues that gender equality is “smart economics,” while a McKinsey report says that addressing the women’s health gap could add “years to life and life to years”—potentially boosting the global economy by $1 trillion annually by 2040.
Despite exciting new funding commitments, however, wider numbers paint a less encouraging picture. In 2022, women’s rights organizations received only 0.34% of Official Development Assistance, or global aid flow designed to promote economic development and welfare, while only 0.42% of foundation grants were allocated towards women’s rights, according to the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, or AWID. The Women’s Philanthropy Institute finds that less than 2% of philanthropic giving in the U.S. directly benefits women and girls.
“There is a lot of talk about doing this work globally, but not many dollars match that talk,” says Kiersten Marek, who founded the website Philanthropy Women. “I would argue that there is a ‘say/do’ gap in gender justice funding, both in the U.S. and globally.”
Even when donors take a gender lens to their giving portfolio, Marek says they tend to scale back their vision for feminist philanthropy over time. For example, Jennifer and Peter Buffett, the Founders and Co-Chairs of the NoVo Foundation, pledged a staggering $90 million in 2016 towards addressing structural problems facing girls and young women of color in the U.S.—the largest effort ever made by a private organization. Even so, by 2020, the Buffets had canceled plans to fund a women’s building in Manhattan and halted funding for critical programs focused on women and girls, saying that more donors needed to pony up for the work.
“Donors have a tendency to start off strong and strident, and then lose momentum over time,” Marek explains.
Meanwhile, the need for funding has grown exponentially against a political landscape in which authoritarianism is on the rise and humanitarian crises have erupted around the world. In 2020, for example, the U.S. joined Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda to co-sponsor an international anti-abortion declaration. Between 2013 and 2017, the “anti-gender” movement—which the U.N. describes as opposition to reproductive rights, sexuality, and gender-sensitive education in schools, the rights of the LGBT community, and in some cases, even the very notion of gender—received over $3.7 billion, more than triple the funding for LGBT groups globally in those years.
In developing countries, women’s rights are being rolled back in extreme ways: the Taliban government in Afghanistan has banned women and girls from going to school, while women have been caught in the crossfire during the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In countries like Sudan, women and girls are especially vulnerable to violence after a conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted last year.
Keeley Longate, co-director of a philanthropic initiative called the Gender Funders CoLab, says private organizations often struggle to align their work towards common causes that advance women’s rights. “Philanthropy isn’t built to be super collaborative, but there is a desire and a real, deep sense that gender work is essential,” says Longate.
To help bridge this gap, 10 years ago, Longate’s CoLab brought together some of the biggest private foundations to form a community of funders who can leverage their power to supply more resources, particularly in the global south and east. Its members include the Ford Foundation, the Foundation for a Just Society, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.
Between 2014 and 2023, CoLab members moved at least $2.2 billion to women’s rights and gender equality work. In 2017, the group helped secure a $45 million fund from the Dutch government for four Global South women’s funds, with private members agreeing to fund an accompanying initiative. In 2019, it helped establish the Equality Fund—the largest single investment ever made by a government in global feminist movements— by securing $300 million from the Canadian government after many private foundations held meetings in Ottawa to shine a light on funding feminist movements. And it has secured $354 million in pooled fund grants from bilateral donors, including for the Bulgarian Fund for Women, which supports 24 grassroots groups working to end gender-based violence.
“CoLab has been able to bring the recognition that governments can’t do everything,” says Longate, “so here are the places or spaces where philanthropy can complement governments, and where governments can support philanthropy.” (This is the first time that CoLab has spoken out about its efforts publicly, in an effort to “further engage with the wider philanthropic community.”)
Monica Aleman, the Ford Foundation’s international program director of gender, racial, and ethnic justice, who works closely with CoLab, says this work can only be done by strengthening public-private partnerships. “That’s not something that we are accustomed to in the feminist movement, but I do think it’s important to open that door,” says Aleman.
The impact of feminist philanthropy can be enormous in directing resources to overlooked and underrepresented crises. A 2022 report from Shake the Table, a global research and action hub, and nonprofit advisory firm The Bridgespan Group found that women’s funding was at the forefront of supporting social movements and had the highest impact. “Women’s funds play critical roles in moving money to groups traditionally locked out of mainstream funding opportunities,” says a spokesperson for Shake the Table. Citing successful examples like the Black Feminist Fund in Sudan, the Dalan Fund supporting displaced Armenians of Nagorna-Karabakh, and the Urgent Action Fund in Papua New Guinea, the group has called on philanthropists to invest about $1.5 billion annually.
Yet, there is still a long way to go. While announcing her new chapter in philanthropy, Melinda French Gates wrote: “In nearly 20 years as an advocate for women and girls, I have learned that there will always be people who say it’s not the right time to talk about gender equality.”
She continued, “It’s frustrating and shortsighted.”
PARIS — The far-right National Rally leaped into a strong lead Sunday in France’s first round of legislative elections, polling agencies projected, bringing the party closer to being able to form a government in round two and dealing a major slap to centrist President Emmanuel Macron and his risky decision to call the surprise ballot.
When he dissolved the National Assembly on June 9, after a stinging defeat at the hands of the National Rally in French voting for the European Parliament, Macron gambled that the anti-immigration party with historical links to antisemitism wouldn’t repeat that success when France’s own fate was in the balance.
But it didn’t work out that way. With French polling agencies projecting that the National Rally and its allies got about one-third of the national vote on Sunday, Macron’s prime minister warned that France could end up with its first far-right government since World War II if voters don’t come together to thwart that scenario in round two next Sunday.
“The extreme right is at the doors of power,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said. He twice described National Rally policy pledges as “disastrous” and said that in the second-round ballot, “not one vote should go to the National Rally.”
French polling agencies’ projections put Macron’s grouping of centrist parties a distant third in the first-round ballot, behind both the National Rally and a new left-wing coalition of parties that joined forces to keep it from winning power.
Winning a parliamentary majority would enable National Rally leader Marine Le Pen to install her 28-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella, as prime minister and would crown her yearslong rebranding effort to make her party less repellent to mainstream voters. She inherited the party, then called the National Front, from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has multiple convictions for racist and antisemitic hate speech.
Still, the National Rally isn’t there yet. With another torrid week of campaigning to come before the decisive final voting next Sunday, the election’s ultimate outcome remains uncertain.
Addressing a jubilant crowd waving French tricolor flags of blue, white and red, Le Pen called on her supporters and voters who didn’t back her party in the first round to push it over the line and give it a commanding legislative majority. That scenario would force Bardella and Macron into an awkward power-sharing arrangement. Macron has said he will not step down before his term expires in 2027.
Only the second round will make clear whether Le Pen’s party and its allies get the absolute majority they would need to comfortably form a government and then start to implement their promises to dismantle many of Macron’s key policies and foreign policy platforms. That would include stopping French deliveries of long-range missiles to Ukraine in the war against Russia’s full-scale invasion. The National Rally has historical ties to Russia.
The far right’s more confrontational approach to the European Union, its plans to roll back Macron’s pension reforms and National Rally promises to boost voters’ spending power without clearly detailing how it would pay for the pledge could also spook European financial markets.
Some polling agency projections indicated that in the best-case scenario for the far right, the National Rally and its allies could collectively clear the bar of 289 seats needed for a secure majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.
But, depending on how the second round shakes out, the far right could also fall short and leave no single bloc with a clear majority, polling agencies projected. Predictions are difficult because of the two-round voting system. Early official results for the first round were expected later Sunday.
Already on Sunday night, the far-right’s rivals were working on arrangements to pull some of their candidates out of the race in round two, in an effort to concentrate votes against the National Rally.
Turnout was at least 66%, according to polling estimates, which would make it the highest for a first-round legislative election in 27 years.
Many French voters are frustrated with inflation and other economic concerns, as well as Macron’s leadership, seen as arrogant and out-of-touch with their lives. The National Rally party has tapped that discontent, notably via online platforms such as TikTok.
Foremost for many voters were the rising cost of living and immigration, which the National Rally campaigned heavily on. The campaign was marred by rising hate speech.
“People don’t like what has been happening,” said Cynthia Justine, 44. “People feel they’ve lost a lot in recent years. People are angry. I am angry.” With the rising hate speech, it was necessary to express frustrations with those holding and seeking power, she added.
She said it was important as a woman to vote since women haven’t always had that right. And “because I am a Black woman, it’s even more important. A lot is at stake on this day.”
The National Rally has questioned the right to citizenship for people born in France, and it wants to curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality. Critics say that undermines human rights and is a threat to France’s democratic ideals.
A 64-year-old voter, Philippe Lempereur, expressed fatigue with politicians from the left, right and center and what he called their inability to work together on issues such as ensuring people have shelter and enough to eat. “We vote by default, for the least worse option,” he said. “I prefer to vote than do nothing.”
In the restive French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, polls closed earlier due to a curfew that authorities have extended until July 8. Violence flared there last month, leaving nine people dead, due to attempts by Macron’s government to amend the French Constitution and change voting lists, which the Indigenous Kanaks feared would further marginalize them. They have long sought to break free from France.
Voters in France’s other overseas territories of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana and French Polynesia, and those voting in offices opened by embassies and consular posts across the Americas cast their ballots Saturday.
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Associated Press writers Barbara Surk in Nice, France, and Diane Jeantet in Lens, France, contributed to this report.
Kamala Harris toured a Planned Parenthood that offers abortion services, the first vice president to do so, where she delivered a speech defending reproductive rights. What do you think?
“Probably good for her to have feelers out for other jobs.”
Sid Barrera, Trinket Designer
Men Explain How They Think An Abortion Works
“So that’s why there were a bunch of reporters at my abortion.”
PARIS — France’s leadership will use a Napoleon-era press to seal the right to abortion into the country’s constitution in a historic ceremony on Friday that’s open to the public — and designed to show support to women across the world on International Women’s Day.
France is the first country to explicitly guarantee abortion rights in the national charter.
While abortion is a deeply divisive issue in the United States, it’s legal in nearly all of Europe and overwhelmingly supported in France, where it’s seen more as a question of public health and not politics. French legislators approved the constitutional amendment on Monday in a 780-72 vote that was backed by many far-right lawmakers.
Friday’s ceremony, held on the cobblestones of Vendome Plaza in Paris, is a key event on a day focused on advancing women’s rights globally. Marches, protests and conferences are being held from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Mexico City and beyond.
The French constitutional amendment has been hailed by women’s rights advocates around the world, including places where women struggle to access birth control or maternal health care. French President Emmanuel Macron called it a direct result of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 rescinding long-held abortion rights.
Macron’s critics questioned why he pursued the measure in a country with no obvious threat to abortion rights but where women face a multitude of other problems.
France has a persistently high rate of women killed by their partners and challenges remain in prosecuting sexual abuse against women by powerful celebrities and other men. French women also see lower pay and pensions — especially women who are not white.
Macron’s government said the abortion amendment was important to avoid a U.S.-like scenario for women in France, as hard-right groups are gaining ground and seeking to turn back the clock on freedoms around Europe.
Macron will preside over the constitutional ceremony. Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti will use a 100-kilogram (220-pound) press from 1810 to imprint the amendment in France’s 1958 constitution.
It will include the phrase saying, “the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed.” The ceremony will be held outdoors with the public invited, in another first.
France follows in the footsteps of the former Yugoslavia, whose 1974 constitution included the phrase: “A person is free to decide on having children.” Yugoslavia’s successor states retained similar language in their constitutions, though they did not spell out guaranteed abortion rights.
In Ireland, voters will decide on Friday whether to change the constitution to remove passages referring to women’s domestic duties and broadening the definition of the family.
Protesters in Istanbul plan to call attention to violence against women, and rallies are expected in many cities. Protests are often political and, at times, violent, rooted in women’s efforts to improve their rights as workers. This year’s global theme is “Inspire Inclusion.”
Indonesian demonstrators demanded adoption of the International Labor Organization’s Conventions concerning gender equality and eliminating workplace violence and harassment. Labor rights groups in Thailand marched to the Government House to petition for better work conditions, and activists marching against violence in the Philippine capital were stopped by police near the presidential palace, sparking a brief scuffle.
India’s government cut the price of cooking gas cylinders by 100 rupees ($1.20) with Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on social media that the move was “in line with our commitment to empowering women.”
Officially recognized by the United Nations in 1977, International Women’s Day is a national holiday in some 20 countries including Russia, Ukraine and Afghanistan.
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Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
BISMARCK, N.D. — A North Dakota judge said Wednesday he will decide soon whether to temporarily block a part of the state’s revised abortion laws so doctors can perform the procedure to save a patient’s life or health.
The request for a preliminary injunction asks state District Court Judge Bruce Romanick to bar the state from enforcing the law against physicians who use their “good-faith medical judgment” to perform an abortion because of pregnancy complications that could pose “a risk of infection, hemorrhage, high blood pressure, or which otherwise makes continuing a pregnancy unsafe.”
North Dakota outlaws all abortions, except in cases where women could face death or a “serious health risk.” People who perform abortions could be charged with a felony under the law, but patients would not.
Physicians, to mitigate risk of prosecution, “feel like they must delay offering abortions to their patients until the patients’ health has declined to the point where other physicians could not plausibly disagree that it was necessary to provide an abortion,” Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Meetra Mehdizadeh said.
“Patients and physicians have experienced significant harm,” she said. “For patients, the denial of their constitutional rights and forced additional health risks; and for physicians, the harm of having the threat of criminal prosecution hanging over their head every time they treat a patient with a medical complication.”
The state’s revised abortion laws also provide an exception for pregnancies caused by rape and incest, but only in the first six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. It also allows for treatment of ectopic and molar pregnancies, which are nonviable situations.
Special Assistant Attorney General Dan Gaustad cited the plaintiffs’ “seven-month delay” in seeking a preliminary injunction, and he disputed the “good-faith medical judgment” language. He told the judge the plaintiffs are asking him “to modify and rewrite the statute under the guise of a preliminary injunction.” The law uses ”reasonable medical judgment.”
The Red River Women’s Clinic sued the state last year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a nationwide right to abortion. The lawsuit targeted the state’s since-repealed trigger ban — a ban designed to go into effect immediately if the court overturned Roe v. Wade — as unconstitutional. The clinic moved from Fargo to neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota, where abortion is legal.
The judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the ban from taking effect last year, which the state Supreme Court upheld in March.
Chief Justice Jon Jensen wrote in the court’s March decision that “it is clear the citizens of North Dakota have a right to enjoy and defend life and a right to pursue and obtain safety, which necessarily includes a pregnant woman has a fundamental right to obtain an abortion to preserve her life or her health.”
Soon afterward, North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill revising the state’s abortion laws, which Gov. Doug Burgum signed into effect in April.
In June, the clinic filed an amended complaint, joined by several doctors in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2024.
The Supreme Court announced this morning that it would take up a pair of cases concerning access to mifepristone, the first pill in a two-pill regimen commonly used to induce abortion. Mifepristone has been the subject of a high-profile legal battle throughout the past year.
Crucially, the Court will not consider whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) erred in its initial 2000 approval of the Mifeprex (a brand name version of mifepristone) or its subsequent generic approval in 2019—which means the pill should remain legal no matter what SCOTUS decides. Rather, the Court will consider whether subsequent FDA rules regarding mifepristone’s prescription are valid.
At stake is whether doctors may prescribe mifepristone virtually, whether prescriptions can be shipped by mail, and whether it can be prescribed up to 10 weeks of pregnancy (instead of stopping at seven weeks).
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas held in April that the whole approval process was tainted. According to Kacsmaryk, the FDA erred when it approved the drug initially and when it approved generics in 2019. The judge also agreed with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—the group that brought the case—that the FDA’s subsequent loosening of rules around prescribing mifepristone had been wrong.
Kacsmaryk suspended access to the pill entirely, but the Supreme Court paused enforcement of this decision while appeals were being resolved.
On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected Kacsmaryk’s ruling with regard to the initial FDA approval and its later generic approval. But the 5th Circuit upheld his ruling with regard to the later loosening of prescription rules, including the FDA’s decisions to allow lower-dose prescriptions, virtual prescriptions, and shipping the drug through the mail.
Following the 5th Circuit’s ruling, the Biden administration and Mifeprex maker Danco Laboratories asked the Supreme Court to take up the case and find that the 5th Circuit was wrong with regard to the parts of Kacsmaryk’s decision that it upheld. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine asked the Court to take up the case and find that the 5th Circuit was wrong with regard to the parts of Kacsmaryk’s decision that it rejected. The justices met last week to decide what to do.
Today, the Court announced that it would hear the issue, consolidating the cases from Danco laboratories and the Biden administration. It declined to hear the cross-petition filed by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
“What’s most important to know is that SCOTUS will not be looking at the original challenge to FDA approval of the drug,” notes Jessica Valenti of the Abortion Every Day substack. “Instead, they’ll review the 2016 and 2021 changes to restrictions around mifepristone, and whether or not the Alliance of Hippocratic Medicine (the anti-abortion group who brought the lawsuit) has standing.”
“The decision here will undoubtedly affect the availability of mifepristone, but the case no longer includes the question of whether the FDA should have approved mifepristone for the purpose of terminating pregnancies in the first place,” explains Jonathan H. Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy.
This is—as Law Dork’s Chris Geidner points out—”a best-case scenario for abortion rights supporters.” It leaves intact the general approval of mifepristone while opening up the possibility of reversing the 5th Circuit’s ruling regarding eased access to the drug.
Texas’ medical exemption law gets tested: Kate Cox is a 31-year-old mother of two who is 20 weeks pregnant with her third child and seeking an abortion.
The baby has trisomy 18, which means it will most likely either be stillborn or die early in infancy. Cox has been to the emergency room several times during this pregnancy, and is arguing in court that continuing the pregnancy will risk her health, thus falling under the exception to the Texas abortion law, which does not generally permit abortions but allows them if the mother’s life is in danger or if an abortion would prevent the “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
Last week, a trial judge ruled that Cox could receive an abortion in the state, but Texas’ Supreme Court put a hold on the trial judge’s ruling this past Friday.
Then yesterday, the state Supreme Court ruled that Damla Karsan, Cox’s doctor, hadn’t sufficiently made the case that the medical exemption applied to her patient.
“Our ruling today does not block a life-saving abortion in this very case if a physician determines that one is needed under the appropriate legal standard, using reasonable medical judgment,” wrote the high court. “But when she sued seeking a court’s pre-authorization, Dr. Karsan did not assert that Ms. Cox has a ‘life-threatening physical condition’ or that, in Dr. Karsan’s reasonable medical judgment, an abortion is necessary because Ms. Cox has the type of condition the exception requires.”
“Some difficulties in pregnancy, however, even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses,” continued the ruling. Now, Cox says she will go out of state to get the abortion immediately.
Cox is one of the first who has sought a court-ordered exception since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling which overturned Roe v. Wade and allows states to dictate their own abortion laws. Her case is unique, too, because she is doing so in advance of getting the abortion. Another suit, which attempts to clarify the legal limits surrounding what qualifies as a medical exemption, is being brought before the state of Texas right now as well. And, in three other states, abortion is coming before Supreme Courts this week, as plaintiffs continue to challenge laws to suss out what each state’s new abortion regime permits.
Prior to abortion being made illegal in Texas, there were roughly 50,000 performed annually, down from an almost 80,000 high in 2006. In 2023, there have been 34. University of Texas at Austin researchers note that the vast majority of Texas abortion-seekers choose to get abortions out-of-state (or via securing pills from Mexico), but that Texas’ restrictive laws are associated with a roughly 10 percent reduction in the number of abortions performed.
Zelenskyy’s fundraising drive: Today, President Joe Biden will host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has traveled to the U.S. to hold out his hands for some funds for his country’s war against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. “A bipartisan group of senators is struggling to finalize an agreement to tighten border security in exchange for more Ukraine funding,” reportsPolitico, “and the chamber is scheduled to go into recess at the end of this week.” It’s likely that, if such a bill is drafted up at all, Biden will have to acquiesce to restrictions on asylum seekers as a condition for doling out more aid to Ukraine.
The New York Times characterizes Zelenskyy’s visit as a “last-ditch pitch,” which seems about right. A CNN poll from August shows how Americans have soured on supporting funding Ukraine’s war effort, with roughly 55 percent saying that Congress should not authorize any additional spending and 51 percent saying the U.S. has done enough as-is. Contrast this with the 62 percent, right after Putin’s invasion, who supported the U.S. doing more to help Zelenskyy.
“We refuse to allow our tuition dollars to fund apartheid.” Columbia students are holding a tuition strike for the spring 2024 semester in an attempt to get their school to “refuse to invest in ethnic cleansing and genocide abroad” and for “divestment from companies profiting from or otherwise supporting Israeli apartheid and Columbia’s academic ties to Israel.”
They also want the school to “immediately remove Board of Trustees members whose personal investments, financial commitments, employment, or other forms of business involvement entail profit from or support for Israeli apartheid” and changes to campus policing.
They say “it’s highly unlikely that students participating in the tuition strike would face disciplinary action of any kind,” and that “it would be absurd for the university to suspend, expel, or punish a student for this lateness.” Therein lies the problem: Students at elite universities seem to think they’re untouchable, and administrators have set a mighty dangerous precedent by spending the last decade communicating to students that their every need for psychological safety from political beliefs with which they disagree can be accommodated. (More from Reason‘s Jacob Sullum.)
Scenes from New York: This past Friday, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of New York’s restrictive gun law, which denies people the right to carry in certain public places (like parks) and allows local authorities broad discretion in denying gun rights to people they deem dangerous, only permitting licenses to people “of good moral character.” What this actually does is create hoops for law-abiding gun owners to jump through, while doing very little to prevent violence from criminals who own and use guns. (I wrote about Times Square’s silly gun-free zone last year.)
QUICK HITS
Harvard President Claudine Gay has come under fire for repeatedly plagiarizing and improperly attributing written passages over the course of her academic career.
The Biden administration’s “latest salvo” in the war against pro-lifers, writes Mike Pence at National Review, “is a proposed rule that would cut off Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to pro-life pregnancy resource centers.” Cutting government funding for organizations that can surely operate privately is fine, but doing so in a way that attempts to punish politically disfavored groups is not.
Every member of the K-pop band BTS is now doing mandatory military service.
Google loses its antitrust battle against Epic Games.
The government could have simply not cracked down on single room occupancy units in the first place, instead of now coughing up a bunch of money to try to incentivize landlords to fix ’em up.
To be fair, stoned boomers would pose a threat to the economics of the all-you-can-eat buffets on cruise ships, so I can see why cruise lines are cracking down on pot.
Lawyers for Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny say he has disappeared from prison and cannot be found.
Ugh, no:
This is of course self-serving of me as a generalist political pundit, but I think it would probably be better for the world if we had a reasonably strong norm against beat reporters & college professors doing hot takes outside their domain of specialization.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A pregnant woman in Kentucky filed a lawsuit Friday demanding the right to an abortion, the second legal challenge in days to sweeping abortion bans that have taken hold in more than a dozen U.S. states since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year.
The suit, filed in state court in Louisville, says Kentucky’s near-total prohibition of abortion violates the plaintiff’s rights to privacy and self-determination under the state constitution.
The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, is about eight weeks pregnant and she wants to have an abortion in Kentucky but cannot legally do so because of the state’s ban, the suit said. She is seeking class-action status to include other Kentuckians who are or will become pregnant and want to have an abortion.
“I am a proud Kentuckian and I love the life my family and I have here, but I’m angry that now that I’m pregnant and do not want to be,” the plaintiff said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups backing her challenge. “The government is interfering in my private matters and blocking me from having an abortion. This is my decision, not the government or any other person’s.”
Republican state Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s office said it is reviewing the suit but offered no other comments. Cameron’s office has defended the state’s anti-abortion laws in other court proceedings.
The filing in Kentucky comes a day after a judge in Texas gave a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis permission to get an abortion. The temporary restraining order issued Thursday stops Texas from enforcing the state’s ban on the woman, who is 20 weeks pregnant, and lasts for 14 days. Her attorneys afterward spoke cautiously about any wider impacts, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton insisted that the order would not insulate any medical practitioners from any civil or criminal liability.
Unlike the case in Texas, little is known about the Kentucky plaintiff or her pregnancy. Legal challenges currently taking place across the country have largely highlighted the stories from women who were denied abortions while facing harrowing pregnancy complications.
But in Kentucky, the plaintiff’s attorneys insisted they would fiercely protect their client’s privacy, stressing that Jane Doe believes “everyone should have the right to make decisions privately and make decisions for their own families,” said Amber Duke, executive director for the ACLU of Kentucky.
Earlier this year, Kentucky’s Supreme Court refused to halt the state’s near-total abortion ban and another outlawing abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. The justices focused on narrow legal issues but didn’t resolve larger constitutional questions about whether access to abortion should be legal in the Bluegrass State.
The ACLU, Planned Parenthood and other activists say they’ve been searching for a plaintiff ever since that February ruling. The suit filed Friday marks the launch of their new assault against the state’s abortion bans.
“These bans have harmed countless Kentuckians since going into effect last year, and we are relieved to be back in court to try to restore abortion access in Kentucky,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in the news release.
The lawsuit says Kentucky woman are suffering “medical, constitutional and irreparable harm” by being denied the right to obtain an abortion.
“Abortion is a critical component of reproductive healthcare and crucial to the ability of Kentuckians to control their lives,” the suit says.
“Whether to take on the health risks and responsibilities of pregnancy and parenting is a personal and consequential decision that must be left to the individual to determine for herself without governmental interference,” it added.
Kentucky voters last year rejected a ballot measure that would have denied any constitutional protections for abortion, but abortion rights supporters have made no inroads in the Republican-controlled Legislature in chipping away at the state’s anti-abortion laws.
The legal challenge revolves around Kentucky’s near-total trigger law ban and a separate six-week ban — both passed by Republican lawmakers. The trigger law was passed in 2019 and took effect when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. It bans abortions except when they’re carried out to save the life of the patient or to prevent disabling injury. It does not include exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
ISLAMABAD — Online abuse and hate speech targeting politically active women in Afghanistan has significantly increased since the Taliban took over the country in Aug. 2021, according to a report released Monday by a U.K.-based rights group.
Afghan Witness, an open-source project run by the non-profit Center for Information Resilience, says it found that abusive posts tripled, a 217% increase, between June-December 2021 and the same period of 2022.
Building on expertise gained from similar research in Myanmar, the Afghan Witness team analyzed publicly available information from X, formerly known as Twitter, and conducted in-depth interviews with six Afghan women to investigate the nature of the online abuse since the Taliban takeover.
The report said the team of investigators “collected and analyzed over 78,000 posts” written in Dari and Pashto — two local Afghan languages — directed at “almost 100 accounts of politically active Afghan women.”
The interviews indicated that the spread of abusive posts online helped make the women targets, the report’s authors said. The interviewees reported receiving messages with pornographic material as well as threats of sexual violence and death.
“I think the hatred they show on social media does not differ from what they feel in real life,” one woman told Afghan Witness.
Taliban government spokesmen were not immediately available to comment about the report.
The report identified four general themes in the abusive posts: accusations of promiscuity; the belief that politically active women violated cultural and religious norms; allegations the women were agents of the West; and accusations of making false claims in order to seek asylum abroad.
At the same time, Afghan Witness said it found the online abuse was “overwhelmingly sexualized,” with over 60% of the posts in 2022 containing terms such as “whore” or “prostitute.”
“Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, social media has turned from being a place for social and political expression to a forum for abuse and suppression, especially of women,” the project’s lead investigator, Francesca Gentile, said.
The Taliban have barred women from most areas of public life and work and stopped girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade as part of harsh measures they imposed after taking power in 2021, as U.S. and NATO forces were pulling out of Afghanistan following two decades of war.
“The Taliban’s hostility towards women and their rights sends a message to online abusers that any woman who stands up for herself is fair game,” added Gentile.
One female journalist, speaking with Afghan Witness on condition of anonymity, said she deactivated some of her social media accounts and no longer reads comments, which affects her work when trying to reach out to online sources.
The report said it found the vast majority of those behind the online abuse were men, “from a range of political affiliations, ethnic groups, and backgrounds.”
In the early 1900s, New York City witnessed the introduction of the Sullivan Act, a law that targeted women smoking in public. Named after its proponent, Alderman Timothy Sullivan, this act reflected the era’s societal norms and gender biases. It specifically aimed to regulate women’s behavior, drawing clear lines between acceptable and unacceptable public conduct.
Rise of Women’s Resistance
The Sullivan Act ignited immediate resistance from women across various social strata. Activists and everyday women saw this law as an affront to their personal freedoms. The movement it spurred went beyond the act of smoking; it symbolized a fight against gender-specific restrictions and a quest for equal rights. Women’s response was not just about asserting their right to smoke but challenging the deeper societal norms that the law represented.
The Tobacco Industry’s Role
During this tumultuous period, tobacco companies played a significant role. They saw an opportunity in the controversy and began marketing cigarettes to women as symbols of independence and modernity. This move not only increased their sales but also influenced the ongoing debate about women’s rights. Smoking became a symbol of rebellion against traditional gender roles, thanks to these strategic marketing campaigns.
Overturning the Sullivan Act
The Sullivan Act’s repeal marked a significant milestone in the women’s rights movement. It underscored the importance of standing against discriminatory legislation and reshaped societal attitudes towards gender and freedom. The act’s failure also highlighted the growing power and influence of women’s voices in societal and political realms.
The repeal had implications far beyond smoking rights. It acted as a catalyst, inspiring further challenges to gender-biased laws. The movement contributed significantly to broader women’s rights issues, including the suffrage movement, signaling a shift in societal views on gender equality.
The Sullivan Act’s history offers insights into how laws can reflect and reinforce societal norms, especially regarding gender roles. It reminds us of the constant need to scrutinize laws that discriminate or seek to control personal choices based on gender.
The Legacy of the Sullivan Act
The legacy of the Sullivan Act is profound. It stands as a testament to the power of collective action against discrimination and has become a crucial chapter in women’s rights history. The act represents a pivotal moment in the journey toward gender equality, emphasizing the importance of challenging restrictive societal norms and advocating for personal freedom.
Today, the Sullivan Act’s story holds enduring relevance. It serves as a reminder of past struggles for gender equality and the ongoing need to challenge restrictive societal norms. The act’s history is not just a tale of a legislative battle but a narrative of resilience, resistance, and the relentless pursuit of equality.
Football Australia says it won’t bid for the 2034 World Cup, clearing the way for Saudi Arabia to host the marquee men’s tournament
ByThe Associated Press
October 31, 2023, 3:32 AM
FILE – FIFA President Gianni Infantino, right, walks with Minister for State Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir upon arrival for a meeting with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at Merdeka Palace in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. Indonesian soccer federation leader Erick Thohir says it now supports Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the 2034 World Cup. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim, File)
The Associated Press
MELBOURNE, Australia — Football Australia on Tuesday said it won’t bid for the 2034 World Cup, clearing the way for Saudi Arabia to host the men’s marquee tournament.
The chances of Australia hosting the 2034 event appeared unlikely after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) backed the Saudi bid on Oct. 5.
Indonesia’s association initially showed interest in a joint bid with Australia, potentially alongside Malaysia and Singapore, but that faded when Indonesia instead backed Saudi Arabia.
“We have explored the opportunity to bid to host the FIFA World Cup and — having taken all factors into consideration — we have reached the conclusion not to do so for the 2034 competition,” Football Australia said in a statement.
Australia will instead attempt to secure hosting rights for the 2029 Club World Cup and the 2026 Women’s Asian Cup.
“We believe we are in a strong position to host the oldest women’s international competition in the world, the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2026, and then welcome the greatest teams in world for the 2029 FIFA Club World Cup,” the FA statement said.
Australia and New Zealand successfully co-hosted the Women’s World Cup in July and August. Brisbane, Queensland state, is due to become the third Australian city to host the Olympics when it stages the 2032 Summer Games.
A former nurse convicted of sexually abusing women in custody at an Oregon prison has been sentenced to 30 years in prison
ByThe Associated Press
October 17, 2023, 8:54 PM
PORTLAND, Ore. — A former nurse convicted of sexually abusing women in custody at an Oregon prison has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.
Tony Klein’s sentence handed down Tuesday also includes five years of supervised release after prison, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office — District of Oregon. He had faced a possible life sentence.
A federal jury in July convicted Klein on 17 counts related to sexual assault and four counts of lying under oath involving nine women. Jurors found he deprived the women of their constitutional right to not face cruel and unusual punishment while they served time at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility south of Portland in Wilsonville.
He worked as a nurse at the facility from 2010 until 2018, interacting with women in custody who either sought medical treatment or worked in the prison’s medical unit. Prosecutors said Klein sexually assaulted many women entrusted to his care, making it clear to them that he was in a position of power and that their reports about it wouldn’t be believed.
Klein resigned as Oregon State Police was investigating the assault allegations.
Klein, 39, denies sexually assaulting anyone and his lawyers have said Klein plans to appeal the sentence. He didn’t testify at trial.
His attorneys, Amanda Alvarez Thibeault and Matthew McHenry, suggested during the trial that Klein was the victim of a plot by women in custody to get financial settlements from the state.
The jury reached a unanimous verdict “after careful consideration,” jury foreman Patrick O’Halloran said in July.
Prosecutors said Klein abused his position and abused women, violating the public’s trust, while doing everything he could to avoid getting caught.
“Holding Tony Klein accountable for his crimes would not have been possible without the courage and resolve of the women he abused and the dedication of our partners at the FBI and Civil Rights Division,” Natalie Wight, U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, said in a statement.
Numerous women since 2019 have sued the state Department of Corrections and Klein alleging sexual abuse. The state has settled at least 11 of them and paid out a total of $1.87 million while admitting no wrongdoing.
WASHINGTON — A few years back, Joseph Stramondo was a last-minute replacement as a conference speaker in Salt Lake City. He went online and made a reservation for a room accessible for people with disabilities.
“I figured, ‘OK, I should be set,’” Stramondo said.
But when he checked in, the room he was given looked like a standard room, without bars in the bathroom or a door wide enough to accommodate his wheelchair.
Returning to the front desk, Stramondo learned the room was accessible — for people with hearing loss.
The Supreme Court is taking up a case Wednesday that Stramondo, his wife, Leah Smith, and other people with disabilities worry could make it harder to learn in advance what accommodations are available that meet their needs.
The justices are being asked to limit the ability of so-called testers to file lawsuits against hotels that fail to disclose accessibility information on their websites and through other reservation services.
The information is required by a 2010 Justice Department rule. People who suffer discrimination can sue under the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law in 1990.
The issue in the Supreme Court case is whether Deborah Laufer, a woman with disabilities, has the right to sue a hotel in Maine that lacked the accessibility information on its website, despite having no plans to visit it. Laufer, who would not agree to an interview for this story, has filed some 600 similar lawsuits.
A district court dismissed her complaint, but the federal appeals court in Boston revived it. Appeals courts around the country have issued conflicting rulings over whether ADA testers have standing to sue if they don’t intend to go to the hotels.
Acheson Hotels and the business interests supporting it argue that Laufer’s admission that she wasn’t planning to visit the hotel should end the case. Acheson owned the hotel, the Coast Village Inn and Cottages in Wells, Maine, when Laufer filed her lawsuit, but has since sold it.
“What we’ve seen for the last 20 years is that people just sit at their house and troll through websites. Small businesses in particular have been targeted,” said Karen Harned, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Responsibility.
On the other side of the case, civil rights groups fear a broad ruling for the hotel could limit the use of testers who have been crucial in identifying racial discrimination in housing and other areas.
It’s possible the Supreme Court could dismiss the case as moot without even reaching the main issue, though the hotel is urging the justices to reach a decision.
In the context of disabilities, testers can’t sue for money, just to get facilities to change their practices. That’s a critical role, Stramondo and Smith said.
Stramondo, a philosophy professor at San Diego State University, and Smith are each under 4 feet, and even a hotel room deemed accessible “doesn’t mean that it’s accessible for us,” Smith said, adding that they often turn over a room’s trashcan to use as a stepstool. Smith is the director of the National Center for Disability Equity and Intersectionality.
There’s no federal agency dedicated to enforcing the ADA. “And so we need to have some kind of enforcement mechanism. And the best one that I’ve seen is testers,” Stramondo said.
WASHINGTON — Actor and disability rights advocate Selma Blair on Monday helped President Joe Biden mark the legacy of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, displaying a touch of the comedic timing that made her a star in Hollywood hits like “Legally Blonde” and “Cruel Intentions.”
Blair, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018, walked together with Biden to a ceremony on the White House’s south lawn with her cane and her service dog, an English Labrador named Scout.
When she reached the stage, she told Scout, “down” and “good boy.” As he lay near Biden’s feet, the president started to bend down to pet Scout, but Blair looked over and said, “yeah, stay.” That caused Biden to straighten up to full attention.
“I feel so powerful all of a sudden,” laughed Blair. Then, indicating a handheld microphone in addition to the one she was using affixed to the podium, she said, “I don’t need this. This is for someone else, correct?”
“It’s for me,” Biden said, prompting Blair to respond, “OK, the real guy.”
Blair, 51, is known for a number of memorable late ’90s/early ’00’s movie roles and her modeling career. In recent years she’s become a leading face of disability rights, calling herself Monday “a proud disabled woman.”
Blair told a crowd of advocates attending the ceremony, “Although I’d had symptoms since the age of 7, it took a lifetime of self-advocacy to finally lead me to a diagnosis at age 46, after living most of my life in pain and self-doubt.”
She said Judy Heumann, a renowned activist who helped secure passage of the legislation protecting the rights of disabled people being celebrated Monday and who died in March at age 75, “Taught me my worth.”
“The push towards equity continues,” Blair said. “Our laws and policies must reflect that our disabled lives are not of lesser value.”
Biden also hailed Huemann, noting that, “History shows it’s often not the people in power, but the power of the people that move the country forward.”
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs conducted by federal agencies, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prevents discrimination against disabled people on everything from employment to parking to voting.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and Biden noted both bills received bipartisan support when clearing Congress.
“These laws are a source of opportunity, meaningful inclusion, participation, respect, and, as my dad would say, the most important of all, dignity,” Biden said. “Be treated with dignity. Ensuring that the American dream is for all of us, not just for some of us.”
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N.’s most powerful body must support governments seeking to legally declare the intensifying crackdown by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on women and girls “gender apartheid,” the head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality said Tuesday.
Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women, told the Security Council that more than 50 increasingly dire Taliban edicts are being enforced with more severity including by male family members. That is exacerbating mental health issues and suicidal thoughts especially among young women and is shrinking women’s decision-making even in their own homes.
“They tell us that they are prisoners living in darkness, confined to their homes without hope or future,” she said.
Under international law, apartheid is defined as a system of legalized racial segregation that originated in South Africa. But a growing consensus among international experts, officials and activists says apartheid can also apply to gender in cases like that of Afghanistan, where women and girls face systematic discrimination.
“We ask you to lend your full support to an intergovernmental process to explicitly codify gender apartheid in international law,” Bahous urged the 15-member council including its five permanent members: the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.
There is no existing international law to respond to “mass, state-sponsored gender oppression,” Bahous said. But she said the Taliban’s “systemic and planned assault on women’s rights … must be named, defined and proscribed in our global norms so that we can respond appropriately.”
The Taliban took power in August 2021 during the final weeks of the U.S. and NATO forces’ pullout from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. As they did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban gradually reimposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, barring girls from school beyond the sixth grade and women from almost all jobs, public spaces, gyms and recently closing beauty salons.
The Security Council meeting on U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ latest report on Afghanistan took place on the final day of the annual meeting of world leaders at the 193-member U.N. General Assembly.
No country has recognized the Taliban, and the assembly’s credentials committee hasn’t either, primarily over its effort to relegate women to their homes and failure to form an inclusive government. This has left U.N. recognition with the now-ousted previous government led by Ashraf Ghani. For the third year, its representative did not speak at the high-level gathering.
Bahous said that over the past year, UN Women collaborated with the U,N. political mission in Afghanistan known as UNAMA and the U.N. International Office for Migration to interview over 500 Afghan women.
Among their key findings, she said:
— 46% think the Taliban should not be recognized under any circumstances;
—50% think the Taliban should only be recognized after it restores women’s and girls’ rights to education, employment, and participation in government.
The women interviewed said the dramatic shrinking of their influence on decision-making, not just at the national or provincial level but also in their communities and homes, is driven by increased poverty, decreasing financial contribution and “the Taliban’s imposition of hyper-patriarchal gender norms,” Bahous said.
In a grim sign of women’s growing isolation, she said, only 22% of the women interviewed reported meeting with women outside their immediate family at least once a week, and a majority reported worsened relations with other members of their family and community.
Bahous said the restrictions on women have led to an increase in child marriage and child labor, and an increase in mental health issues.
“As the percentage of women employed continues to drop, 90% of young women respondents report bad or very bad mental health, and suicide and suicidal ideation is everywhere,” she said.
Roza Otunbayeva, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA, welcomed the recent visit of a group of Islamic scholars from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s member nations to Afghanistan to focus on girls’ education, women’s rights and the need for inclusive governance.
The scholars stressed that these requirements are “integral to Islamic governance around the world,” she said. “We urge that these visits continue. They are part of a vital conversation between the de facto authorities and the international community helpfully mediated by the Islamic world.”
Otunbayeva told reporters afterward that compared to the last visit of Islamic scholars, this time they left Afghanistan “quite satisfied.”
“We’ll see what will be resolved” at the upcoming International Conference on Women in Islam, she said. That converence, co-sponsored by the OIC and Saudi Arabia, will take place in Jeddah in November.
The U.N. envoy was asked whether any change in the Taliban’s hardline policies on women and government functioning is possible as long as its leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, makes the final decisions.
“He’s the producer of decisions,” Otunbayeva replied. She said she heard from a Cabinet member that more than 90% of its members support allowing girls to study, but as soon as such views get to the southern city of Kandahar, where Akhundzada is based, they are blocked.
“So, far he is unreachable,” Otunbayeva said. She said she tried to bring the entire ambassadorial corps to Kandahar for meetings with the provincial governor and others, but the meeting was canceled.
The U.N. envoy said the mission is in constant contact with Taliban officials in the capital, Kabul, “even as we continue to disagree profoundly and express these disagreements.”
Tecently, Otunbayeva said, provincial councils composed of religious clerics and tribal elders have been created in each of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, aiming to provide accountability and listening to local grievances, but they also report to the Taliban leader.
It’s too early to judge their performance, but Otunbayeva noted that the councils for the predominantly Shiite provinces of Bamiyan and Daikundi have no Shiite members.
She appealed to donors to support the $3.2 billion humanitarian appeal for the country, which has received just $872 million, about 28% of the needed funding.
Many programs have been forced to close just as winter is approaching and people are most in need, Otunbayeva said. “This means that 15.2 million Afghans now facing acute food insecurity could be pushed towards famine in the coming months.”
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Edith M. Lederer, chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press, has been covering international affairs for more than 50 years.
NEW YORK — The Clinton Global Initiative added gender equity as a pillar of the nonprofit’s work to sound the alarm about the increasing challenges women and girls currently face, Clinton Foundation Vice Chair Chelsea Clinton told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
The conference addressed numerous pressing global issues before wrapping up Tuesday evening – from food insecurity, which World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain called “desperation,” to climate change – with 160 new monetary commitments announced that could total billions of dollars in new funding.
“Whatever the issue — it’s connected to women and it falls more heavily on women,” Chelsea Clinton said. “It also requires us to center women in how we think about what our collective response should be.”
She echoed the famous line, “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights,” from then First Lady Hillary Clinton’s speech to the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. However, Chelsea Clinton said that while there has been progress for gender equality since then, “we’ve stalled out in some areas and we’ve regressed in others.”
“I think that it’s important to acknowledge all of that,” she said. “We have to secure the progress that we’ve made and keep pushing forward.”
That also applies to Ukraine. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the new CGI Ukraine Action Network, which is “committed to sustaining a deliberate international focus on Ukraine and supporting new commitments to action.”
CGI announced numerous new programs for Ukraine — from actor Orlando Bloom’s plan to raise $20 million to provide new laptops to 50,000 students to So-Light Design’s pledge to provide 30,000 SoLights, individual solar-powered light sources, to Ukrainians who lack consistent access to electricity.
“We are in this for the long haul for Ukraine, Ukrainians, and for democracy everywhere,” Hillary Clinton said. “Their fight is our fight. Don’t let anybody tell you differently.”
She also presented First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska with this year’s Clinton Global Citizen Award for “extraordinary leadership amid unimaginable, difficult circumstances, and who has been a forceful advocate for peace and a relentless champion of her determined people.”
Zelenska, who worked with Hillary Clinton for the past year designing the Ukraine Action Network, accepted the award on behalf of all Ukrainians who she said keep the country going each day in the face of attacks from Russia. “All of them are my compatriots and I am grateful to them,” she said. “A leader is the one who comes to help, who stands by those who need help. I’m grateful to the American people and their friends and family for being such leaders.”
Cindy McCain was looking to CGI for similar leaders to help address the growing problem of food insecurity.
“From the World Food Programme’s perspective, the world on fire,” she told former President Bill Clinton. “This is nothing to play with now… We have hundreds of millions of people who don’t know where their next meal is going to come from.”
McCain said recent disasters in Africa could plunge the region into chaos due to a lack of food. “I am scared for the first time in this job,” she said. “I’m scared about what will happen next.”
Chef Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen, agreed with McCain that food insecurity should be seen as a national security issue. He said that the war in Ukraine is as much a war about feeding the world, since Ukraine normally feeds about 500 million people annually, as it is a war about them keeping their freedom.
Andres said he was proud to be part of the Ukraine Action Network to help out through World Central Kitchen.
“Over the past almost two years, I’ve spent a lot of time in Ukraine and with the World Central Kitchen Ukrainian team members,” he told The Associated Press. “WCK has served over 240 million meals since the invasion of Ukraine began, by mobilizing a network of local cooks, community organizers, and volunteer organizations to provide food, when, where, and how it’s most needed. We have been filling gaps by listening to and following the Ukrainians – Ukrainians feeding Ukrainians – and we constantly adapt to meet the need.”
Chelsea Clinton said the new gender equity pillar and the Ukraine Action Network provide a structure for expanding CGI’s work that allows it to be more effective.
“This work has to be coherent and it also has to be bold and ambitious, but with clear underlying targets to kind of hold ourselves accountable,” she said. “It is so that we are very clear about what we’re driving toward.”
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
In 2019, a mnemonic began to circulate on the internet: “If the Naomi be Klein / you’re doing just fine / If the Naomi be Wolf / Oh, buddy. Ooooof.” The rhyme recognized one of the most puzzling intellectual journeys of recent times—Naomi Wolf’s descent into conspiracism—and the collateral damage it was inflicting on the Canadian climate activist and anti-capitalist Naomi Klein.
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Until recently, Naomi Wolf was best known for her 1990s feminist blockbuster The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, which argued that the tyranny of grooming standards—all that plucking and waxing—was a form of backlash against women’s rights. But she is now one of America’s most prolific conspiracy theorists, boasting on her Twitter profile of being “deplatformed 7 times and still right.” She has claimed that vaccines are a “software platform” that can “receive ‘uploads’ ” and is mildly obsessed with the idea that many clouds aren’t real, but are instead evidence of “geoengineered skies.” Although Wolf has largely disappeared from the mainstream media, she is now a favored guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast, War Room.
All of this is particularly bad news for Klein, for the simple reason that people keep mistaking the two women for each other. Back in 2011, when she first noticed the confusion—from inside a bathroom stall, she heard two women complain that “Naomi Klein” didn’t understand the demands of the Occupy movement—this was merely embarrassing. The movement sprang from Klein’s part of the left, and in October of that year she was invited to speak to Occupy New York. Was it their shared first name, their Jewishness, or their brown hair with blond highlights? Even their partners’ names were similar: Avram Lewis and Avram Ludwig. Klein was struck that both had experienced rejection from their peer groups (in her case, by fellow students when she first criticized Israel in the college newspaper).
Klein had once admired The Beauty Myth, but she realized to her horror that Wolf had drifted from feminist criticism to broader social polemics. When she picked up Wolf’s 2007 book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, her own book, out the same year, came to mind. “I felt like I was reading a parody of The Shock Doctrine, one with all the facts and evidence carefully removed.” To Klein, the situation began to seem sinister, even threatening. She was being eaten alive. “Other Naomi—that is how I refer to her now,” Klein writes at the beginning of her new book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. “A person whom so many others appear to find indistinguishable from me. A person who does many extreme things that cause strangers to chastise me or thank me or express their pity for me.”
The confusion was particularly galling because No Logo (1999), Klein’s breakout work, was a manifesto against branding. And yet here she was, feeling an urgent need to protect her own personal brand from this interloper. Klein asserts that she didn’t want to write Doppelganger—“not with the literal and metaphorical fires roiling our planet,” she confesses with a hint of pomposity—but found herself ever more obsessed by Wolf’s conspiracist turn. How do you go from liberal darling to War Room regular within a decade?
Like Klein, I loved The Beauty Myth as a young woman, and then largely forgot about Wolf until 2010, when Julian Assange was arrested for alleged sex offenses (the charges were later dropped), and she claimed that Interpol was acting as “the world’s dating police.” Two years later, she publishedVagina: A New Biography, which mixed sober accounts of rape as a weapon of war with a quest to cure her midlife sexual dysfunction through “yoni massages” and activating “the Goddess array.” In one truly deranged scene, a friend hosts a party at his loft and serves pasta shaped like vulvae, alongside salmon and sausages. The violent intermingling of genital-coded food overwhelms Wolf, who experiences it as an insult to womanhood in general and her own vagina in particular, and suffers writer’s block for the next six months. (I suspect that the friend was just trying to get into the spirit of Wolf’s writing project.) I remember beginning to wonder around this time whether Wolf might be a natural conspiracy theorist who had merely lucked into writing about one conspiracy—the patriarchy—that happened to be true.
Her final exile from the mainstream can probably be dated to 2019, when she was humiliated in a live radio interview during the rollout of her book Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love. She had claimed that gay men in Victorian England were regularly executed for sodomy, but the BBC host Matthew Sweet noted that the phrase death recorded in the archives meant that the sentence had been commuted, rather than carried out. It was a grade A howler, and it marked open season on her for all previous offenses against evidence and logical consistency. The New York Timesreview of Outrages referred to “Naomi Wolf’s long, ludicrous career.” In the U.K., the publisher promised changes to future editions, and the release of the U.S. edition was canceled outright.
Klein dwells on this incident in Doppelganger, and rightly so: “If you want an origin story, an event when Wolf’s future flip to the pseudo-populist right was locked in, it was probably that moment, live on the BBC, getting caught—and then getting shamed, getting mocked, and getting pulped.” If the intelligentsia wouldn’t lionize Wolf, then the Bannonite right would: She could enter a world where mistakes don’t matter, no one feels shame, and fact-checkers are derided as finger-wagging elitists.
“These people don’t disappear just because we can no longer see them,” Klein reminds any fellow leftists who might be enthusiastic about public humiliation as a weapon against the right. Denied access to the mainstream media, the ostracized will be welcomed on One America News Network and Newsmax, or social-media sites such as Rumble, Gettr, Gab, Truth Social, and Elon Musk’s new all-crazy-all-the-time reincarnation of Twitter as X. On podcasts, the entire heterodox space revels in “just asking questions”—and then not caring about the peer-reviewed answers. By escaping to what Klein calls the “Mirror World,” Wolf might have lost cultural capital, but she has not lost an audience.
Klein notes that this world is particularly hospitable to those who can blend personal and social grievances into an appealing populist message—I am despised by the pointy-heads, just as you are. She ventures “a kind of equation for leftists and liberals crossing over to the authoritarian right that goes something like this: Narcissism (Grandiosity) + Social media addiction + Midlife crisis ÷ Public shaming = Right wing meltdown.” She is inclined to downplay “that bit of math,” though, and feels uncomfortable putting Wolf on the couch. Nonetheless, I’m struck by how narcissism (in the ubiquitous lay sense of the term) is key to understanding conspiracy-theorist influencers and their followers. If you feel disrespected and overlooked in everyday life, then being flattered with the idea that you’re a special person with secret knowledge must be appealing.
Klein’s real interest, as you might expect from her previous work, tends more toward sociology than psychology. Her doppelgänger isn’t an opportunist or a con artist, Klein decides, but a genuine believer—even if those beliefs have the happy side effect of garnering her attention and praise. But what about the culture that has enabled her to thrive?
At first, I thought what I was seeing in my doppelganger’s world was mostly grifting unbound. Over time, though, I started to get the distinct impression that I was also witnessing a new and dangerous political formation find itself in real time: its alliances, worldview, slogans, enemies, code words, and no-go zones—and, most of all, its ground game for taking power.
To explore this ambitious agenda, the book ranges widely and sometimes tangentially. At one point, Klein finds herself listening to hours of War Room, hosted by a man who has built a dark empire of profitable half-truths. Why does Klein find Bannon so compelling? Here Doppelganger takes a startling turn. The answer is that, quite simply, game recognizes game. Klein’s cohort on the left attacks Big Pharma profits, worries about “surveillance capitalism,” and sees Davos and the G7 as a cozy cabal exploiting the poor. Understandably, she hears Other Naomi talk with Bannon about vaccine manufacturers’ profits, rail against Big Tech’s power to control us, and make the case that Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum has untold secret power, and she can’t help noting some underlying similarities. When Bannon criticizes MSNBC and CNN for running shows sponsored by Pfizer, telling his audience that this is evidence of rule “by the wealthy, for the wealthy, against you,” Klein writes, “it strikes me that he sounds like Noam Chomsky. Or Chris Smalls, the Amazon Labor Union leader known for his EAT THE RICH jacket. Or, for that matter, me.”
This is Doppelganger at its best, acknowledging the traits that make us all susceptible to manipulation. In a 2008 New Yorker profile of Klein, her husband described her as a “pattern recognizer,” adding: “Some people feel that she’s bent examples to fit the thesis. But her great strength is helping people recognize patterns in the world, because that’s the fundamental first step toward changing things.” Of course, overactive pattern recognition is also the essence of conspiracism, and a decade and a half later, Klein expresses more caution about her superpower. When 9/11 truthers turn up at her events—drawn perhaps by her criticism in The Shock Doctrine of George W. Bush’s response to the tragedy—their presence leads her to conclude “that the line between unsupported conspiracy claims and reliable investigative research is neither as firm nor as stable as many of us would like to believe.”
We live in a world where the U.S. government has done outlandish stuff: The Tuskegee experiment, MK-Ultra, Iran-Contra, and Watergate are all conspiracies that diligent journalism proved to be true. QAnon’s visions of Hollywood child-sex rings might be a mirage, but the Catholic Church’s abuse of children in Boston was all too real—and uncovering it won The Boston Globe a Pulitzer Prize. Klein worries about whether a political movement can generate mass appeal without resorting to populism, and about how to stop her criticisms of elite power from being co-opted by her opponents and distorted into attacks on the marginalized.
However, Klein’s (correct) diagnosis of American conspiracism as a primarily right-wing pathology prevents her from fully acknowledging the degree to which it has sometimes infected her own allies and idols. In Doppelganger, Klein notes that anti-Semitism has served as “the socialism of fools”—stirred up to deflect popular anger away from the elite—but she does not discuss the anti-Jewish bigotry in the British Labour Party under its former leader Jeremy Corbyn, whom she endorsed in the 2019 election. (Corbyn once praised a mural of hook-nosed bankers counting money on a table held up by Black people, and his supporters suggested that his critics were Israeli stooges.) The party has since apologized for not taking anti-Semitism seriously enough.
At times, this can be a frustrating book. Near the end, Klein says she requested an interview with Wolf, promising that it would be “a respectful debate” about their political disagreements. She also hoped to remind Wolf of their original meeting, more than three decades earlier—when Wolf, then 28, captivated the 20-year-old Klein, showing her the possibilities of what a female author could be. But Wolf never responded to the request, and the doppelgängers have not met face-to-face since then.
Still, Klein emerges with a sense of resolution. She writes that the confusion between the two of them has lately died down, now that Other Naomi has become an “unmistakable phenomenon unto herself.” Even better, the situation has introduced “a hefty dose of ridiculousness into the seriousness with which I once took my public persona.” Not that the zealous Klein has disappeared: The next few pages are a paean to collective organizing, worker solidarity, and “cities in the grips of revolutionary fervor.”
Doppelganger is least interesting when Klein returns to her comfort zone, but her brutally honest forays into self-examination are fascinating. The book is also a welcome antidote to the canceling reflex of our moment and a bracing venture across ideological lines. Klein successfully makes the case that the American left is more tethered to reality than the right—not because it is composed of smarter or better people, but because it has not lost touch with the mechanisms, such as scientific peer review and media pluralism, that act as a check on our worst instincts. Exposed to many of the same forces as her conspiracist doppelgänger—fame, cancellation, trauma, COVID isolation—this Naomi stayed fine. That has to offer us some hope.
This article appears in the October 2023 print edition with the headline “The Other Naomi.”
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion Wednesday, ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights in a sweeping decision that extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access.
The high court ordered that abortion be removed from the federal penal code. The ruling will require the federal public health service and all federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.
“No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker, will be able to be punished for abortion,” the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE, said in a statement.
Some 20 Mexican states, however, still criminalize abortion. While judges in those states will have to abide by the court’s decision, further legal work will be required to remove all penalties.
Celebration of the ruling soon spilled out onto social media.
“Today is a day of victory and justice for Mexican women!” Mexico’s National Institute for Women wrote in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The government organization called the decision a “big step” toward gender equality.
Sen. Olga Sánchez Cordero, a former Supreme Court justice, applauded the ruling, saying on X that it represented an advance toward “a more just society in which the rights of all are respected.” She called on Mexico’s Congress to pass legislation in response.
But others in the highly religious country decried the decision. Irma Barrientos, director of the Civil Association for the Rights of the Conceived, said opponents will continue the fight against expanded abortion access.
“We’re not going to stop,” Barrientos said. “Let’s remember what happened in the United States. After 40 years, the Supreme Court reversed its abortion decision, and we’re not going to stop until Mexico guarantees the right to life from the moment of conception.”
The court said on X that “the legal system that criminalized abortion” in Mexican federal law was unconstitutional because it “violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.”
The decision came two years after the court ruled that abortion was not a crime in one northern state. That ruling set off a slow state-by-state process of decriminalizing it.
Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to drop criminal penalties.
Abortion-rights activists will have to continue seeking legalization state by state, though Wednesday’s decision should make that easier. State legislatures can also act on their own to erase abortion penalties.
For now, the ruling does not mean that every Mexican women will be able to access the procedure immediately, explained Fernanda Díaz de León, sub-director and legal expert for women’s rights group IPAS.
What it does do — in theory — is obligate federal agencies to provide the care to patients. That’s likely to have a cascade of effects.
Díaz de León said removing the federal ban takes away another excuse used by care providers to deny abortions in states where the procedure is no longer a crime.
It also allows women with formal employment who are part of the social security system and government employees to seek the procedure in federal institutions in states where the abortion is still criminalized, she said.
Díaz de León and officials at other feminist organizations worry that women, particularly in more conservative areas, may still be denied abortions.
“It’s a very important step,” Díaz de León said. But “we need to wait to see how this is going to be applied and how far it reaches.”
Across Latin America, countries have made moves to lift abortion restrictions in recent years, a trend often referred to as a “green wave,” in reference to the green bandanas carried by women protesting for abortion rights in the region.
The changes in Latin America stand in sharp contrast to increasing restrictions on abortion in parts of the United States. Some American women were already seeking help from Mexican abortion rights activists to obtain pills used to end pregnancies.
Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 15 years ago.
After decades of work by activists across the region, the trend picked up speed in Argentina, which in 2020 legalized the procedure. In 2022, Colombia, a highly conservative country, did the same.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that provided a right to abortion nationwide. Since then, most states led by conservative lawmakers and governors have adopted bans or tighter restrictions.
The fact that the U.S. government is politically divided makes a nationwide ban or legalization unlikely, at least in the short term.
Currently, abortion is banned throughout pregnancy — with limited exceptions — in 15 American states. Bans in two more states forbid abortion after cardiac activity can be detected, generally around six weeks into pregnancy and often before women know they are pregnant. Judges have put enforcement of restrictions on hold in at least four additional states.
Meanwhile, states with liberal governments have taken steps to try to protect abortion access.
Observers in Mexico agreed that it would take time to see how Wednesday’s ruling is applied.
In the southern state of Guerrero, Marina Reyna, director of the Guerrero Association Against Violence toward Women, cautioned that challenges would persist. Her state decriminalized abortion last year, but there are 22 open investigations against women accused of ending their pregnancies.
“There is still a lot of resistance,” she said.
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Associated Press Writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey contributed to this report.
