Saturday, October 2, 2021
#AbortionIsAWomansRight - Supporters of Abortion Rights, at Nationwide Marches, Try to Regain Momentum
“No matter where you live, no matter where you are, this fight is at your doorstep right now,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and chief executive of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “The moment is dark.”Still, the march in downtown Washington struck an almost celebratory tone, as protesters stretching a city block cheered, chanted and waved their homemade signs as they marched to the steps of the Supreme Court. In Austin, Texas, thousands of participants packed elbow to elbow across the sweeping lawn in front of the State Capitol. Smaller marches spread throughout the country, with protesters organizing events from Great Falls, Mont., to the retirement community of The Villages in Sumter County, Fla., where attendees decorated their golf carts with pink signs. “We’re the largest and longest-running protest movement in the country,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March, which organized the events. “For some reason, folks are willing to discount the actions of 250,000 women because it’s less than the highest ever.” In Austin, Leslie Ellis said the severity of Texas’ new abortion law had prompted her to participate in her first abortion rally. “It’s crazy that women are having to fight for their reproductive rights,” said Ms. Ellis, a dog groomer from New Braunfels. “It’s a constitutional right to have body autonomy.”Those who did not attend cited varied reasons: the coronavirus pandemic; a sense of political fatigue after a divisive election; other issues that seemed more pressing than abortion, such as racial justice or transgender rights. “There would have been a time when a march like this would have been a three-generational event,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who advises the White House and the Democratic Party. “Now, the 8-year-old girl isn’t vaccinated, and you’re scared that Mom could get sick. People are just exhausted, and they’re deliberately checking out.”
Even as Democrats see the struggle over abortion rights as a winning political fight, party strategists worry that a decline in enthusiasm could be another harbinger of what’s expected to be a difficult midterm election next year for their party.Already, Democrats find themselves struggling to respond to a series of public health, economic and foreign policy crises. As party factions bicker and Mr. Biden’s approval ratings sink, his domestic agenda remains mired in a legislative standoff in Congress. Other issues that would motivate the Democratic base, including legislation that could enact abortion rights into federal law, face an uphill climb to passage given the party’s razor-thin congressional margins. In interviews and polling, voters who believe abortion should remain legal say they worry about the future of abortion rights and say that restrictions, such as a new law in Texas that effectively bans abortions after about six weeks, make them more likely to vote in the midterm elections. But they are also skeptical that the constitutional right to an abortion will be completely overturned and view managing the pandemic as far more urgent. And some of those who became activists during the Trump administration now prefer to focus on state and local politics, where they see more opportunities to enact change. Other solutions to protect abortion rights proposed by liberal groups — including an expansion of the Supreme Court — remain divisive among independent voters. Judy Hines, a retired gym teacher in a conservative rural county in western Pennsylvania who is active in Democratic politics, has not been to a march in more than a year and a half, and since she has a family member with health issues, she did not attend on Saturday either. “I’m hoping that the fight is still in people, but it’s not,” she said. “We see our Supreme Court. We know how they’re going to vote.” Abortion rights advocates warn that this is no time for complacency. The Supreme Court is preparing to take up an abortion case — the first to be argued before the court with all three of Mr. Trump’s conservative appointees — that has the potential to remove federal protection for abortion altogether. “We have almost 50 years of legal abortion,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, the chief executive at Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas. “People don’t believe it could roll back.” Some advocates believe voters will become more engaged as bills similar to the Texas law are passed by other Republican-controlled state legislatures. Aimee Arrambide, the executive director of Avow Texas, an abortion rights organization in Austin, struggled to generate attention when the Texas law was first introduced. Since the bill became law last month, her organization has collected $120,000 in donations, an amount that would normally take six months to raise. “It’s a little frustrating, because we’ve been kind of sounding the alarm for years, and nobody was really paying attention,” she said. “People are realizing that the threat is real.” For decades, opponents of abortion rights have attracted large crowds to the National Mall in Washington for the March for Life, an event that features high-profile conservative politicians and religious leaders. On Monday, thousands gathered outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg urging the passage of anti-abortion legislation. The liberal movement that exploded into the streets in 2017 was led and fueled by women, many of them college-educated and often middle-aged. They gathered for huge marches and almost weekly protests, huddling to discuss door-knocking strategies in exurban Paneras and founding new Democratic groups in tiny, historically conservative towns. Many of the marchers came to these events with their own parcel of pressing issues, but surveys showed the issue that the persistent protesters most had in common was abortion rights, said Dana R. Fisher, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland who has conducted surveys among activist groups and at large marches. Those motivations began to change in the past two years. As the threat of Covid-19 kept many of the older activists home, the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police in May 2020 ignited an even larger wave of demonstrations nationwide, which were fueled by younger crowds motivated by a different set of issues. In surveys conducted at marches following the killing of Mr. Floyd, as well as among organizers of last year’s Earth Day demonstration, the percentages of people citing abortion rights as a key motivator for activism were much lower, Ms. Fisher said. Liz Fields, 45, said she had attended the march in Washington to express her frustration with a Supreme Court she believes is robbing women of their rights. Her husband, who joined her for protests on other issues over the summer, stayed home. “I don’t want to say he doesn’t believe in this, but abortion is just such a fraught issue,” she said. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/us/politics/abortion-rights-march.html
Women’s March Targets Abortion Access On Steps Of Supreme Court
Ellen Knickmeyer
The first Women’s March of the Biden administration headed straight for the steps of the Supreme Court on Saturday, part of nationwide protests that drew thousands to Washington to demand continued access to abortion in a year when conservative lawmakers and judges have put it in jeopardy.
Demonstrators filled the streets surrounding the court, shouting “My body, my choice” and cheering loudly to the beat of drums.
Before heading out on the march, they rallied in a square near the White House, waving signs that said “Mind your own uterus,” “I love someone who had an abortion” and “Abortion is a personal choice, not a legal debate,” among other messages. Some wore T-shirts reading simply “1973,” a reference to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which made abortion legal for generations of American women.Elaine Baijal, a 19-year-old student at American University, said her mother told her of coming to a march for legal abortion with her own mother in the 1970s. “It’s sad that we still have to fight for our right 40 years later. But it’s a tradition I want to continue,” Baijal said of the march.
Organizers say the Washington march was among hundreds of abortion-themed protests held around the country Saturday. The demonstrations took place two days before the start of a new term for the Supreme Court that will decide the future of abortion rights in the United States, after appointments of justices by President Donald Trump strengthened conservative control of the high court.
“Shame, shame, shame!” marchers chanted while walking past the Trump International Hotel on their way to the Supreme Court. Some booed and waived their fists at the Trump landmark.
The day before the march, the Biden administration urged a federal judge to block the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, which has banned most abortions in Texas since early September. It’s one of a series of cases that will give the nation’s divided high court occasion to uphold or overrule Roe v. Wade.
The Texas law motivated many of the demonstrators and speakers.
“We’re going to keep giving it to Texas,” Marsha Jones of the Afiya Center for Black women’s health care in Dallas, pledged to the Washington crowd. “You can no longer tell us what to do with our bodies!”
Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of Planned Parenthood nationally, told of women forced to drive many hours across state lines — sometimes multiple state lines — to end pregnancies in the weeks since the Texas law went into effect.“The moment is dark ... but that is why we are here,” Johnson told the crowd packed into Freedom Square and surrounding streets. With the upcoming Supreme Court term, “No matter where you are, this fight is at your doorstep right now.”In Springfield, Illinois, several hundred people rallied on the Old State Capitol square. Prominent among them were the Illinois Handmaids, wearing red robes and white bonnets reminiscent of the automatons of Margaret Atwood’s classic tale and carrying signs that said, “Mind Your Own Uterus” and “Mother By Choice.”
Brigid Leahy, senior director of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said just two days after the Texas restrictions took effect, Planned Parenthood saw the first women from Texas traveling to Illinois for the procedure, with more following since.
“They are trying to figure out paying for airfare or gas or a train ticket, they may need hotel and meals. ...,” Leahy said. “They have to figure out time off of work, and they have to figure out child care. This can be a real struggle.”
With a sign reading “Not this again” attached to a clothes hangar, Gretchen Snow of Bloomington, Illinois, said, “Women need to be safe and they need to not have to worry about how much money they have to be safe.”
On the West Coast, thousands marched through downtown Los Angeles to a rally in front of City Hall. Protesters chanted “Abortion on demand and without apology: only revolution can make women free!”
Kayla Selsi said she was carrying the same sign she has held in three past Women’s Marches. It stated, “If only my vagina could shoot bullets, it will be less regulated.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t retire this sign,” Selsi said. “Women’s rights are being taken away, and it’s highly affecting women of lower class.”
“I feel safer in California as a woman, but Texas is obviously going in one direction and it scares me that other states could go the same way,” she said.
In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul spoke at rallies in Seneca Falls and then Albany. “I’m sick and tired of having to fight over abortion rights,” she said. “It’s settled law in the nation and you are not taking that right away from us, not now not ever.”
At an unrelated event in Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins called the Texas law “extreme, inhumane and unconstitutional” and said she’s working to make Roe v. Wade the “law of the land.”
She said she’s working with two Democrats and another Republican, and they’re “vetting” the language of their bill. Collins declined to identify her colleagues, but said the legislation will be introduced soon.
A participant holds a wire hanger reading "Warning: This is not a surgical instrument" in Los Angeles.
An opponent of women’s access to abortion called this year’s march theme “macabre.”
“What about equal rights for unborn women?” tweeted Jeanne Mancini, president of an anti-abortion group called March for Life.
The Women’s March has become a regular event — although interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic — since millions of women turned out in the United States and around the world the day after the January 2017 inauguration of Trump. Trump endorsed punishing women for getting abortions and made appointment of conservative judges a mission of his presidency.
With the sun beating down in Washington on Saturday, Ramsay Teviotdale of Arlington, Virginia — who when asked her age said she was “old enough to remember when abortion wasn’t legal” — was one of the few wearing the hand-knitted pink wool caps that distinguished the 2017 Women’s March.
Without Trump as a central figure for women of varied political beliefs to rally against, and with the pandemic still going strong, organizers talked of hundreds of thousands of participants nationally Saturday, not the millions of 2017.
Teviotdale said this does not lessen the urgency of the moment. “This Texas thing — no way can it stand. It’s the thin edge of the wedge,” she said.
Security in the capital was much lighter than for a political rally a few weeks ago in support of Trump supporters jailed in the Jan. 6 insurrection. No fence was placed around the U.S. Capitol, with the Capitol Police chief saying there was nothing to suggest Saturday’s rally would be violent.
John O’Connor in Springfield, Illinois; David Sharp in Bath, Maine; and Daisy Nguyen in San Francisco contributed.
At an unrelated event, GOP Sen. Susan Collins said she’s working to make Roe v. Wade “the law of the land.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/womens-march-abortion-supreme-court_n_6158c01fe4b0487c855f8b91
ISIS takes credit for killing Sikh in Pakistan
BY CAROLINE VAKIL
The Islamic State said in a statement on Friday that it was behind the fatal shooting of a Sikh in Pakistan on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Several men, whom ISIS identified as its gunmen, fatally shot Satnam Singh, 45, who sold herbal medicine at a clinic in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's provincial capital near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, according to the news outlet. The ISIS statement called Singh a “polytheist,” or a person who believes in more than one deity. Sikhism is a monotheistic religion.A local community leader, Sardar Harpal Singh, who is not related to the victim, called for the individuals who shot Singh and fled the scene to be arrested. In the last few years, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacking religious minority groups, religious sites and political protests though officials in the country have claimed that the members of the militant group are officially situated in Pakistan. In late August, 11 ISIS members were killed by Pakistan’s counterterrorism units after ISIS members had recently murdered two police officers. The group, which has operated in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, has conducted attacks in the provincial capital of Balochistan in past years.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/575015-isis-takes-credit-for-killing-sikh-in-pakistan
Opinion: Let Afghan girls learn
By Ziauddin Yousafzai
@ZiauddinY
January 15, 2009 was one of the saddest days in Malala’s life. That morning she got up but couldn’t get ready to go to school. Two weeks before, the Pakistani Taliban had announced on their FM radio that no girl, old or young, would be allowed to go to school after January 15. Thousands of girls felt devastated after the complete ban on girls' education.
Many cried to mourn the death of their future. Malala was one of them. I was shocked but determined to stand and continue to raise my voice for girls' right to education. For me, submitting to the Taliban would have meant a dreadful compromise on Malala’s dreams and ambitions. For me, submitting to the Taliban would have meant a betrayal of the thousands of girls in Swat. The brave people of Swat spoke up for girls' right to education. The rest of the country supported them and, subsequently, the security forces restored the writ of the government. After three months, the schools were reopened.
The fact is that the Taliban in Pakistan believed in the same ideology as the Afghan Taliban did -- repression of women and girls. The Afghan Taliban forced women to remain invisible and stopped girls from going to school. What the Afghan Taliban did to women and girls in Afghanistan from 1996-2001 was replicated by the Taliban in Swat from 2007 to 2009. Initially, they asked for mandatory veils even for small girls, then segregation of male and female students, and finally a complete ban on girls' education.
This is similar to the Afghan Taliban's excuses today regarding girls going to secondary school. The Afghan Taliban's recent takeover of Kabul was an unimaginable disaster for the whole country and shocking for Afghan women and girls. The fall of Kabul to the Afghan Taliban revived my trauma of when Swat fell to the Pakistani Taliban. The first victims whose thought gripped my heart and soul were the 20 million women and girls -- half of Afghanistan's population.
During the Doha peace process, the Afghan Taliban frequently assured the negotiating parties and their mediators / facilitators that they would respect women’s rights and girls' right to education. But once they took over Kabul on August 15, they changed their narrative on issues such as inclusive government, women’s rights and girls' education. With every passing day, their policies and practices prove that they are the same old Taliban of the 1990s.
Within days they abolished the Ministry of Women's Affairs, stopped almost all women from working and suspended most girls' education. They are disappointing both their friends and their critics. They are trying hard to seek legitimacy and recognition in the eyes of the world but at home they don’t accept the basic rights of half of their citizens. They believe girl students should be taught only by female teachers but they don’t try to understand the simple fact that the country cannot produce female teachers if they don't allow girls to go to high school or college.
In the last 20 years, despite corruption and constant terrorism, Afghan youth had achieved a lot. Nine million Afghan children were enrolled in schools; this included nearly four million girls. Around 200,000 men and more than 100,000 women were studying in universities. Afghanistan produced a world class cricket team, and women's cricket, football teams and girls' robotics teams as well. Afghanistan had transformed.
We could see Afghan women in parliament, in the courts, in the media and almost in every other walk of life. A Taliban regime like it was in the past will be like a nightmare for Afghan women, girls and artists. Journalists, human rights activists, politicians, NGO workers, athletes, artists and musicians have all fled or are trying to flee the country. The world is seeing a tragic mass exodus of the most talented, learned and skilful Afghans.
Will the Afghan Taliban ever reflect on this situation of fear? Will they ask themselves why their own don't want to live under their rule? How will they run the country if the brain drain continues and no educated and skilled human resource is produced because of their draconian laws and restrictions on women’s jobs and girls' education? In my view, depriving a girl of her right to go to school is tantamount to burying her alive. The Afghan Taliban should understand that there are 1.8 billion Muslims and 45 Muslim countries in the world. Most Muslim countries respect women’s rights and girls' education. They should learn from them.
They should also know that this is not the Afghanistan they left in 2001 when they ruled by terror and fear. At the time, one armed Talib could bully and coerce a whole village. But now even with more military powers they can see this unprecedented and fearless resistance of Afghan women and men. Marching in the streets of Kabul, Kandahar and Herat these brave women and men have chanted powerful slogans for their rights that surprised the world: "Women’s rights are human rights"; “equality is our right”.
The Taliban have to listen to them. Silencing them with beating and flogging is not the solution. They have to include women in positions of power and allow all girls to achieve the best of education. This is not just because the UN or the international community demand them to do so. It is because this is the only route to bring lasting peace, prosperity and happiness to the people of Afghanistan. Malala once said, “We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” In the context of Afghanistan, that simply means Afghanistan can’t move forward when half of its population is held back.
Afghanistan under the Taliban is at the most crucial period of its history. The Afghan Taliban can either choose to stick to their obsolete ideology and keep Afghanistan isolated and once again as an outcast in the international community -- or they can form an inclusive government with women and all ethnicities participating. Their inclusivity at home will pave the way for Afghanistan to become an honourable member of the global community. They can either lose the social, political and economic gains of the last 20 years or benefit from these gains to build a better, stronger and happier Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban have repeatedly claimed that they have achieved freedom from foreign occupation. If that is true, then why does freedom mean subjugation for women and girls? They should listen to Fatima, an Afghan student who recently spoke to Tolo News and said: "As a girl, I feel like I am not a citizen of this country. I am imprisoned at home, literally, I am like a prisoner.” Will they listen to 11-year-old Setaresh who wants to become a doctor and told BBC international correspondent Lyse Doucet, "My message to the Taliban is they should allow us to study, to serve our country.”
And finally to world leaders and the international community: you are the last hope. Your faulty decisions failed the democracy of Afghanistan. Don’t fail the people of Afghanistan. Can you imagine living in a country where women are not allowed to work and girls are not allowed an education? Can you think of a country where music is completely prohibited?
If you can’t imagine it for yourselves, then do not recognise the regime of the Afghan Taliban until they accept all girls' right to education, all women’s right to go to work and all musicians' right to beat their drums and strum their guitars.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/896847-let-afghan-girls-learn
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