Women's Views on News |
| The BBC, abortion pills and Northern Ireland Posted: 04 Nov 2016 03:09 PM PDT
On Thursday 27th October 2016 the BBC reported that another woman in Northern Ireland has been charged with using abortion pills. The article said almost nothing about the circumstances of the case, but included false and biased information about the risks of abortion medication and omitted important facts from experts and reputable sources. This briefing, clarifying the facts about medical abortion, draws on a complaint made to the BBC by Marge Berer of the International Campaign for a Woman's Right to Safe Abortion. You can make an online complaint to the BBC here, or phone 03700 100 222. Assertion: There are now warnings that women are putting their health at risk by taking abortion pills bought online. Fact: Medical abortion pills are extremely safe. They are one of several methods of abortion recommended by the World Health Organization and on the WHO Essential Medicines List. While there are dubious sources of the pills online, there are also a number of bona fide sources, which most women are using. When drugs are seized by N. Ireland customs, or women are prosecuted for buying or using them the source and safety of the drugs is not investigated because women's criminality, not their safety, is the key concern of Northern Ireland law enforcement. Assertion: The drugs cause blood loss and some people are likely to need treatment if they use them. Fact: Medical abortion pills are intended to cause an abortion, so they do cause blood loss, but not in the way this journalist implies. The great majority of women who use the pills do not need treatment. If Northern Ireland had an abortion service, providing reassurance, follow up advice and treatment would be part of its remit as it is for services in other parts of the UK. The same drugs are used across the UK to treat incomplete miscarriage and women use them safely at home. Assertion: "a number of women will actually require a blood transfusion." Fact: This is very rare – affecting fewer than 1 in 1000 women having an abortion before 13 weeks, according to guidance from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Assertion: "There are risks associated with this drug's use," said Dr Paul McCague of the School of Pharmacy at Queen's. Fact: There are risks associated with every approved medication on the market and in pharmacies. The implication here is that abortion medication is particularly risky. In fact, abortion using medical abortion pills is one of the safest known medical procedures. Assertion: "Of particular concern with this drug would be the heavy bleeding which is a relatively common adverse effect." Fact: Bleeding is a central aspect of medical abortion, not an adverse effect. In the rest of the UK women can seek help – without the fear of prosecution – if they have concerns about the extent of bleeding following medical abortion. Assertion: "in recent months campaigners have staged a series of stunts…" Fact: People demonstrating for the right to safe abortion in Northern Ireland have undertaken a range of activities to draw attention to abortion prosecutions and to the lack of NHS funding for women in Northern Ireland who are forced to travel to the mainland for abortions. Actions have included people handing themselves into police stations, risking prosecution themselves for using or supplying abortion medication. However, criticisms of the total abortion prohibition in Northern Ireland have also come from the United Nations Human Rights Committee, a High Court Judge in Northern Ireland, a range of civil society groups in Northern Ireland, and politicians in both Stormont and Westminster. Assertion: "There are fears that many who order pharmaceuticals online cannot be sure what they will receive." Fact: The article fails to mention that there are three international web-based distance medicine providers who supply bona fide medical abortion pills along with counselling and access to help if needed. Assertion: A police statement said: "The PSNI has a statutory duty under Section 32 of the Police (NI) Act 2000 to protect life…" Fact: The police in this instance are clearly interpreting this to mean the life of the foetus, although foetal life is not specified in the Act Assertion: A statement from the Department of Justice stated that "The current law prohibits the use of abortion drugs throughout the UK." Fact: In fact abortion medication mifepristone was licensed for use in Britain in 1991 and is routinely prescribed to women within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act. In 2015 medical abortion comprised 45 per cent of all abortions carried out in England and Wales and over 80 per cent in Scotland (in 2014). The bulk of the article emphasises that self-use of medical abortion pills is illegal under an archaic law that was passed in 1861: a law that was modified by the Abortion Act in the rest of the UK nearly 50 years ago, and which many people in the UK believe should be removed from the statute books entirely. The second half stresses how many people including MLAs in Northern Ireland are anti-abortion, but doesn't mention the cohort of pro-choice MLAs, or opinion polls which show an increasing majority of people support abortion reform. A version of this article appeared on Voice for Choice's website on 1 November 2016.  |
| Questioning the minimum age for marriage Posted: 04 Nov 2016 02:37 PM PDT
Although the risks vary. But girls are at risk of dropping out of school, of sexual activity often without consent or contraception, and the myriad of health-related consequences that can accompany teenage pregnancy. And to some, the phrase "child marriage" conjures up images of a very young girl, living in the developing world, getting married to a much older man. This happens, but in reality, child marriage is more complex than that and it cuts across all regions, religions and cultures. It's a global problem and it happens in the United Kingdom too. Although the official legal age for marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 18, children can marry from 16 with parental consent. In Scotland, the legal age for marriage is 16. And in some communities in the UK this can result in forced child marriage whereby parents can consent on behalf of their children. The Home Office estimates that between 5,000 and 8,000 people are at risk of being forced into marriage every year in the UK. In 2013, the UK Forced Marriage Unit's helpline (020 7008 0151) dealt with 1,302 cases of forced marriage; 40 per cent of the calls received concerned minors. A very large majority of low and middle-income countries have in fact established minimum ages of marriage at 18, in line with international commitments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill received its second reading in the House of Lords on 21 October 2016. It seeks to raise the minimum age of consent to marriage or civil partnership in the UK from 16 to 18. The Bill proposes that the parental consent clause be removed from the law so that 18 is the only legal age for marriage and civil partnership. It also seeks to amend the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 so as to create an offence of “causing” a person under the age of 18 to enter into a marriage or civil partnership. To read the Bill, as it was introduced, click here. This is a private member’s bill introduced by former Liberal Democrat MP Baroness Jenny Tonge. In 1967, the House of Commons Report of the Committee on the Age of Majority considered three proposals. These were: raising the minimum age of marriage to 18 for both sexes; having a different minimum age for males and females; or leaving it at 16. Upon hearing arguments in favour of increasing the minimum age to 18, the report said: 'One point which greatly interested us was the fact that a large number of young people themselves expressed the view that marriage should not be allowed under 18.' In relation to arguments in favour of leaving the minimum age at 16, the report said: 'We consider it essential that the minimum age for marriage and the age of consent to sexual intercourse should be the same. 'If both were raised to 18 it would create thousands of young criminals and would not be likely to stop sexual intercourse in the 16 to 18 age group. 'Since the law could not be enforced and it is difficult to see what penalties could be imposed (prison? fine? "tut-tut"?), the law would be brought into disrepute. 'If the age of consent remained at 16 while the marriage age was raised to 18, it would appear as an encouragement to illicit sexual intercourse, and in either case the present number of illegitimate children would be greatly increased. The Committee members, in conclusion, were "unanimously of the opinion that the age of consent to sexual intercourse, together with the minimum age for marriage, should remain at 16 for both sexes". But the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) recently invested £36 million into a project to accelerate action to end child marriage in 12 high prevalence countries. Marrying young is linked to a raft of negative outcomes: less education, more poverty, and health problems that include domestic violence, risky adolescent pregnancies, and death of the mother during delivery. And in Bangladesh, which has the second highest absolute numbers of child marriage in the world – just under 4 million – lobbyists are said to be using the current UK law as an example of why the legal age of marriage there should be lowered. If you are at risk, or have been affected by child marriage, call the Karma Nirvana helpline on 0800 5999247. If you are being threatened, call the police on 999.  |
| Posted: 04 Nov 2016 02:25 PM PDT
The High Commissioner for Human Rights has issued a strong warning to us all to stand against populists and demagogues in Europe and the USA. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) represents the world’s commitment to universal ideals of human dignity. It has a unique mandate from the international community to promote and protect all human rights. Speaking at the Peace, Justice and Security Foundation gala at The Hague recently, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights – the principal human rights official of the United Nations – said: Dear Friends, I wish to address this short statement to Mr Geert Wilders, his acolytes, indeed to all those like him – the populists, demagogues and political fantasists. To them, I must be a sort of nightmare. I am the global voice on human rights, universal rights; elected by all governments, and now critic of almost all governments. I defend and promote the human rights of each individual, everywhere: the rights of migrants, asylum seekers and immigrants; the rights of the LGBTi community; the rights of women and children in all countries; minorities; indigenous persons; people with disabilities, and any and all who are discriminated against, disadvantaged, persecuted or tortured – whether by governments, political movements or by terrorists. I am a Muslim, who is, confusingly to racists, also white-skinned; whose mother is European and father, Arab. And I am angry, too. Because of Mr Wilder's lies and half-truths, manipulations and peddling of fear. You see, twenty years ago I served in the UN peacekeeping force during the Balkan wars – wars so cruel, so devastating, which flowed from this same factory of deceit, bigotry and ethnic nationalism. Geert Wilders released his grotesque eleven-point manifesto only days ago, and a month ago he spoke along similar lines in Cleveland, in the United States. I will not repeat what he has said, but there are many who will, and his party is expected to do well in the elections in March. And yet what Mr Wilders shares in common with Mr Trump, Mr Orban, Mr Zeman, Mr Hofer, Mr Fico, Madame Le Pen, Mr Farage, he also shares with Da'esh. All seek in varying degrees to recover a past, halcyon and so pure in form, where sunlit fields are settled by peoples united by ethnicity or religion – living peacefully in isolation, pilots of their fate, free of crime, foreign influence and war. A past that most certainly, in reality, did not exist anywhere, ever. Europe's past, as we all know, was for centuries anything but that. The proposition of recovering a supposedly perfect past is fiction; its merchants are cheats. Clever cheats. Populists use half-truths and oversimplification – the two scalpels of the arch propagandist, and here the internet and social media are a perfect rail for them, by reducing thought into the smallest packages: sound-bites; tweets. Paint half a picture in the mind of an anxious individual, exposed as they may be to economic hardship and through the media to the horrors of terrorism. Prop this picture up by some half-truth here and there and allow the natural prejudice of people to fill in the rest. Add drama, emphasizing it's all the fault of a clear-cut group, so the speakers lobbing this verbal artillery, and their followers, can feel somehow blameless. The formula is therefore simple: make people, already nervous, feel terrible, and then emphasize it's all because of a group, lying within, foreign and menacing. Then make your target audience feel good by offering up what is a fantasy to them, but a horrendous injustice to others. Inflame and quench, repeat many times over, until anxiety has been hardened into hatred. Make no mistake, I certainly do not equate the actions of nationalist demagogues with those of Da’esh, which are monstrous, sickening; Da'esh must be brought to justice. But in its mode of communication, its use of half-truths and oversimplification, the propaganda of Da'esh uses tactics similar to those of the populists. And both sides of this equation benefit from each other – indeed would not expand in influence without each others’ actions. The humiliating racial and religious prejudice fanned by the likes of Mr Wilders has become in some countries municipal or even national policy. We hear of accelerating discrimination in workplaces. Children are being shamed and shunned for their ethnic and religious origins – whatever their passports, they are told they are not “really” European, not “really” French, or British, or Hungarian. Entire communities are being smeared with suspicion of collusion with terrorists. History has perhaps taught Mr Wilders and his ilk how effectively xenophobia and bigotry can be weaponized. Communities will barricade themselves into fearful, hostile camps, with populists like them, and the extremists, as the commandants. The atmosphere will become thick with hate; at this point it can descend rapidly into colossal violence. We must pull back from this trajectory. My friends, are we doing enough to counter this cross-border bonding of demagogues? A decade ago, Geert Wilder's manifesto and Cleveland speech would have created a world-wide furore. Now? Now, they are met with little more than a shrug, and, outside the Netherlands, his words and pernicious plans were barely noticed. Are we going to continue to stand by and watch this banalization of bigotry, until it reaches its logical conclusion? Ultimately, it is the law that will safeguard our societies – human rights law, binding law which is the distillation of human experience, of generations of human suffering, the screams of the victims of past crimes and hate. We must guard this law passionately, and be guided by it. Do not, my friends, be led by the deceiver. It is only by pursuing the entire truth, and acting wisely, that humanity can ever survive. So draw the line and speak. Speak out and up, speak the truth and do so compassionately. Speak for your children, for those you care about, for the rights of all, and be sure to say clearly: stop! We will not be bullied by you the bully, nor fooled by you the deceiver, not again, no more; because we, not you, will steer our collective fate. And we, not you, will write and sculpt this coming century. Draw the line. To watch the video of this speech, click here.  |
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