Vatican Taliban FAIL

I'd say that a nominally Catholic country that legalizes abortion in the face of the shitstorm hurled by the Vatican Taliban is on its way to happier days.

Good news! Uruguay just joined the club.

Latin America is home to about half of the world's Roman Catholics and the Church is opposed to abortion under any circumstances. But Uruguay, a country of 3.2 million people, has a strong secular tradition.

Perhaps surprisingly, civil unions for LGBT folk are legal too.

The new regime is not perfect, of course.

Under the bill Congress passed, a woman can end her pregnancy during the first 12 weeks of gestation, but she must meet with a team of health professionals, who, by law, should discourage the abortion. The woman must then reflect on the decision for five days.

"This process is complicated and legally unjustified," the nonprofit Coordinating Group for Legal Abortion said in a statement. "This means there's no recognition of a woman's right to decide freely about her life and her maternity."

Here we learn something of the politics behind the move.

The developments however come under the government of a president who is a doctor by training, Jose Mujica, and a deputy health minister, Leonel Briozzo, who is an obstetrician.
. . .
Uruguay is now only the second South American country to legalize abortion, after English-speaking Guyana in 1995. Cuba, a Latin American nation in the Caribbean, did so in 1965 and procedures are also legal in Mexico City.

"The explanation is that Latin America is the last outpost of the Roman Catholic Church," Briozzo said.

There's a cool re-organizable chart showing Catholicism by country here.

By percentage of population, the top four Catholic countries are East Timor, Malta, Honduras, and Venezuela.

The raw numbers create a different list. Brazil, where 65% are Catholic, has 123.3 million adherents. Mexico is 83% Catholic with 95.5 million. Philippines is next at 81% and 75.5 million. Then the US at 24% and 74 million.

This news from Uruguay adds to the good news from Northern Ireland last week.

The cracks are appearing. Slowly but slowly.

For sheer religious misogyny -- outside the Islamic world, that is -- Philippines takes the communion cracker.

Abortion is illegal, of course, but the Church is adamant that Filipinos remain pig-ignorant on matters sexual.

Sensible people there have been trying for 14 fucking years to pass the Sexual and Reproductive Health Bill

The bill was first introduced some 14 years ago, but has been languishing in legal limbo since. It would extend sexual health education in school, make contraceptives more widely available and improve pre and post-natal care. The bill would not legalize abortion.

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The local branch of Christian Sharia is having none of it. They've fraudulently labelled it an 'abortion bill' and insist that its passage will lead to promiscuity, infidelity, and MORE abortions.

And now election season is about to begin there and the bill will likely get sidelined again.

Ah well. Two steps forward and still playing Statues in Philippines.

Progresss Comes to Ireland

This is great news for Ireland but there's a heckuva long way to go yet.

The first private abortion clinic will open in Belfast next week.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where the Abortion Act 1967 does not apply, owing to opposition from the churches and almost all the parties at the Stormont assembly. Like their counterparts in the Republic, where abortions are illegal, women from Northern Ireland have to travel to elsewhere in Britain for terminations.

But the clinic will provide only medical abortions and the National Health Service won't cover the pretty hefty price.

Terminations will only be offered to women in the first nine weeks of pregnancy and will cost £450. The new city centre clinic, which opens next Thursday, also offers a range of sexual and reproductive services including short and long-term contraceptive options, emergency contraception and HIV testing.

Irish women needing abortions past nine weeks will still have to travel, find a place to stay overnight, and pay for all that.

There is definitely a need for the service.

Last year, 4,149 women from Ireland travelled to England or Wales for an abortion, as did 1,007 women from Northern Ireland.

In one respect, however, it is fabulous thing. As this piece puts it: Finally we can be open about Irish abortions.

Fetus fetishists always point to Ireland where abortion is outlawed and where maternal and infant mortality is very low as proof that banning abortion does NOT cause dangerous illegal procedures done by dodgy operators.

Not when there's a country where it's legal just a short hop away.

Irish women do have abortions. The truth can now be told.

Well. Maybe not just yet. Expect more of this: 'Marie Stopes: the clinics named after a Jew-baiting racist', written by a 'priest of the Church of England' yet.

Like Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes was a progressive and controversial woman of her time.

But progress is progress. Even in Ireland, it seems, women's rights cannot be held back forever.