House panel attacking women's health puts Maryland lives at risk

[lynn82md.livejournal.com]

n Nov. 27 last year, a vicious gunman opened fire on health care providers at a Planned Parenthood community clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., killing three people, including a local law enforcement officer. It was later learned that the assailant had been motivated in part by extreme anti-abortion rhetoric related to the false allegations that Planned Parenthood has been profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. In 2009, respected physician Dr. George Tiller was gunned down during a worship service at his church in Wichita, Kan., after he was publicly cited in the media and even on the Floor of the House of Representatives as a practitioner of late-term abortions. Since 1993, there have been 11 murders and 26 attempted murders resulting from extreme anti-abortion violence, not to mention more than 200 arson attacks since the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.

Perhaps just as tragic as these crimes is the reality that they might have been prevented had politicians and commentators refrained from crossing a very dangerous line. By combining a relentless barrage of accusatory and dehumanizing rhetoric with the release of specific identification of individuals and organizations, they bear some culpability for creating the conditions that led to these crimes.

Yet, having failed to learn from the very real and very dangerous consequences of extreme rhetoric and the publication of names and personal information of those who provide reproductive care services, House Republicans are now placing other health care practitioners, researchers, patients and first responders in danger — this time in our home state of Maryland.

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Ireland Abortion Ban Violated Woman's Human Rights, U.N Panal Says

[lynn82md.livejournal.com]

LONDON — Ireland’s ban on most abortions subjects women to cruel, degrading and discriminatory treatment, and should be lifted in cases of fatal fetal abnormalities, a committee of United Nations human rights experts said on Thursday.

The committee found that Ireland had violated a pregnant woman’s human rights by forcing her to choose between carrying her fetus to term — knowing it would not survive — or traveling abroad for an abortion.

The committee urged Ireland to change its laws — “including, if necessary, its Constitution” — to allow abortions and to let medical providers give information on abortion services “without fearing being subjected to criminal sanctions.”

Although Ireland became the first nation to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote last year, it has some deeply conservative roots, and the Roman Catholic Church’s stance against abortion has not changed.

The case considered by the United Nations panel centered on a Dublin woman, Amanda Mellet, who subsequently started an advocacy group urging the legalization of abortion for medical reasons.

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