El Salvador has one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the world. A side-effect is that women who suffer miscarriages are sometimes suspected of inducing an abortion – and can even be jailed for murder.
Tag reproductive rights
The Guardian reports:
Leading doctor and politician John Crown says secret Catholic sect is trying to prevent limited abortion being made legal
Public support for abortion reform has grown in Ireland since Savita Halappanavar died from blood poisoning after a Galway hospital refused to terminate her pregnancy. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images
The secret ultra-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei is mobilising within the Irish professions to stop the republic reforming its abortion laws, one of the country’s most prominent doctors has warned.
John Crown, a leading cancer specialist and member of parliament, accused the powerful organisation of trying to exercise influence on the medical profession and politicians to prevent limited abortion being made legal for the first time in Ireland.
As the Guardian so poignantly reports:
In failing to accept that women own their own bodies, religious groups risk reversing progress on the status of women
How is it possible, in 2013, that violence against women is still tolerated? That was a question I heard several times at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) last week.