Saturday, April 23, 2011

In America the wind blows anti-abortion

Abortion again the protagonist in American politics. The new Republican senators and deputies, arrived in Congress with the laws of 2010, and often sponsored by Tea Parties, led Washington to radically anti-abortion slogans and ideas. "It 'a phenomenon which I have never witnessed in 12 years of professional activity," says Elizabeth Nash, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a group that deals with women's rights.

The wave anti-abortion, however, is particularly visible at the level of individual states. Last week, Kansas, in the wake of Nebraska, introduced the fetal pain law, a regulation that prohibits abortion after 21 weeks. According to the governor Sam Brownback, "fetuses feel pain after that date" (not an opinion shared by much of the scientific community).

Sixteen other states have begun to consider similar measures. The governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, meanwhile, has signed a law that cancels the tax exemption for donations to hospitals that offer abortion. In Massachusetts it has been accused, and is likely to close, a site aimed at teenagers, Mariatalks.

com, which among other things gives tips on how to obtain an abortion ("is a difficult issue - it says the site - but abortion is common, safe and effective"). The "palm" of the state as anti-abortion law, it is Oklahoma. Here the governor, Mary Fallin, has passed two laws: The first prohibits abortion after the twentieth week, the second prevents the State from marketing insurance policies that cover the costs of abortion.

"It's the 'free to all' the battle of American conservatives, say even the Guttmacher Institute. The symbol of this battle is still mainly one: the glorious "Planned Parenthood", the association since 1916 offers services related to reproductive freedom, sex education, birth control, became the conservatives of America for the tremendous machine eating public money to fund abortion.

During the recent discussion on how to reduce the federal deficit, the Republicans have tried the long shot and proposed the cancellation of funding Planned Parenthood. The measure passed the House, but sank to one vote in the Senate. "Planned Parenthood is the Lenscrafters of abortion," said Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, likely presidential candidate, comparing abortion to the large multinational group of optics.

Little has earned the facts, and figures. Planned Parenthood receives 363 million dollars in federal funding. By law, not a single penny can be used to fund abortion services, which in any case represent only 3% of Planned Parenthood (which is focused on contraception, sexually transmittable diseases, mammography and women's health in general ).

The reality is just a detail, in a debate that has become especially ideological, and that involves feelings, moral visions, religious beliefs, passions civilians. The American Catholic Church has taken the opportunity to fly, and Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York, the city has asked politicians to intervene to reduce the number of abortions (90,000 a year, one of the lowest percentages of America).

Against the background of the battle of the conservatives is a medium-term objective: the closure of many clinics in the country that offer abortion services to women (Virginia, for example, is planning a series of laws that impose high costs to clinics - in terms of personnel, operating rooms, clinics, security - to continue to ensure the interruption of pregnancy).

In the long term goal - the dream - the American anti-abortion, however, is above all another: Overcoming the Roe v. Wade, the historic Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973. An overrun is now a reality, given the network of restrictions, constraints, obstacles now put a little 'anywhere in the U.S.

the right to abortion.

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