Comments on: Greatest Hits: The Global Gag Rule is Killing Women

By: 10 Reasons to Support Reproductive Justice on Roe Day - CommonDreams.org

10 Reasons to Support Reproductive Justice on Roe Day - CommonDreams.org — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:40:03 +0000

[...] hundreds of thousands more are injured. Women around the world suffer when pro-life laws rule the land. And “pro-lifers” could care less. Illegal abortion is the cause of 25% of all maternal [...]

By: Sabrina

Sabrina — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 06:10:39 +0000

you would think numbers like this would horrify “pro-life” supporters. it seems the only lives worth saving are the ones that have yet to be born. the crazy thing is pro-lifers won’t even listen to numbers like this. they’ll just scream at you that abortion is murder. it seems to me that the women who are dying because of a lack of access to pre-natal care or to safe and legal abortions are the ones being murdered.

By: Activist Mommy

Activist Mommy — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:55:40 +0000

About a third of women worldwide receive no pre-natal care, and 60 percent of births take place outside of hospitals.

I have a quick question about this. Does it mean over all 60% of the women worldwide having births outside hospitals, or just in areas where the mortality rates are so high? I ask because ther are many countries where it is odd for a healthy woman to give birth in a hospital. Putting the American idea that birth can only occur under the eye of a doctor would skew the results some by not taking into account the areas where women choose not to have hospital births, a choice that is perfectly safe and in some cases safer than a hospital choice. Comparing women in areas where homebirth is choosen more often to those areas where it is not a choice or not a good choice skews the results some.

Over-all the global gag rule makes me, well, gag. I wonder if anyone has asked any of the presidential hopefuls what their take on it is and if they would work to remove it.

By: Danyell

Danyell — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:28:33 +0000

The global gag rule is so depressing, I don’t even know what to say. But what can we do? I’m literally asking: what can we, as citizens do to help fix this problem?

By: Miller

Miller — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:23:30 +0000

Pro-”lifers” will just say that women and girls can avoid this by being sexually responsible or stop “asking” for rape. If a woman dies because the pregnancy itself kills her they’ll just say it’s God’s will.

Check out the article from The Independent: Amnesty to defy Catholic church over rape victims’ abortion rights. Amnesty decided to act due to the rape sprees in Darfur.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2859077.ece

On another note: Did anyone else read Freakonomics? The authors claimed that the huge decrease in violent crime in America was a direct result of access to legal abortions. Simply those who would have committed those crimes were not born. I realize that abortion should be considered a basic human right (freedom to exercise sovereignty over your being), but could this not be another way to fundamentally destroy the whole concept of anti-choice being considered pro-”life?”

By: Saros

Saros — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:22:31 +0000

The pentagon spends a billion bucks a day? Ouch, im glad im not a US taxpayer.
Stats like that really make you wonder about the priorities of modern governments.

By: noen

noen — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:11:59 +0000

Understandably horrible. I suppose that one silver lining would be if it mobilized people to rise in opposition. Perhaps in addition to creating a generation that rejects right-wing rule here in the US this administration will do us the same favor around the world. So if one is looking for a reason to hope I guess that might be one.