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Posted May 22, 2019 09:04:01

Abortion-rights campaigners, including Democrats seeking their party's 2020 presidential nomination, have rallied at the US Supreme Court in Washington to protest against new restrictions on abortion passed by Republican-dominated legislatures in eight states.

They joined the thousands of Americans who have held demonstrations across the country to protest against the new laws, which amount to the tightest restrictions on abortion in the United States in decades.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Cory Booker urged the crowd in Washington to "wake up more men to join this fight".

The rally is one of scores that were scheduled on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and other abortion rights groups.

Conservatives hope to overturn Roe vs Wade ruling

Conservative Republicans in more than a dozen states have recently passed, or are soon aiming to pass, more restrictive abortion laws.

Many of these laws are intended to draw legal challenges which religious conservatives hope will lead the nation's top court to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling that established a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy.

Alabama passed an outright ban last week, including for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, unless the woman's life was in danger.

Other states, including Ohio and Georgia, have banned abortions absent a medical emergency after six weeks of pregnancy or after the foetus's heartbeat can be detected, which can occur before a woman even realises she is pregnant.

Protesters outside the Supreme Court waved signs saying "We won't be punished" and "Protect Safe, Legal Abortion" and were joined by the Mayor of South Bend in Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, who is also vying for the 2020 nomination.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, another Democratic 2020 candidate, blamed what she called "outrageous bans" on US President Donald Trump.

"This is the beginning of President Trump's war on women," she told the rally. "If he wants his war, he will have his war, and he will lose."

Mr Trump, a Republican who opposes abortion, has seized on the issue as one likely to fire up his core supporters, although he considers the Alabama ban too restrictive because it does not make exceptions for incest and rape.

In the District of Columbia, progressive politicians and protesters declared they would fight tooth and nail to protect the Roe vs Wade decision.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, abortion opponents and abortion-rights advocates held duelling protests, which at some points devolved into a shouting match.

The restrictive new laws are contrary to the Roe vs Wade ruling made more than four decades ago, which afforded a woman the right to an abortion up to the moment the foetus would be viable outside the womb, which is usually placed at about seven months, or 28 weeks, but may occur earlier.

The bans have been championed by conservatives, many of them Christian, who said foetuses should have rights comparable to those of infants and view abortion as tantamount to murder.

The Supreme Court now has a 5-4 conservative majority following two judicial appointments by Mr Trump.

States fight rule saying doctors can refuse abortions

Meanwhile, nearly two dozen states and municipalities have sued the US Federal Government to stop a ruling that lets health care clinicians decline to provide abortions and other services that conflict with their moral or religious beliefs.

The lawsuit in the Manhattan Federal Court asked the judge to declare the rule unconstitutional and said it was passed in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

The rule was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services and is scheduled to take effect in July.

A spokesman for Federal Government lawyers declined to comment on the legal proceedings.
ABC/wires
Topics: health, reproduction-and-contraception, abortion, laws, pregnancy-and-childbirth, rights, united-states

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Thousands of Americans protest against restrictive new abortion laws

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Posted May 22, 2019 09:04:01 Abortion-rights campaigners, including Democrats seeking their party's 2020 presidential nomination, have rallied at the US Supreme Court in Washington to protest against new restrictions on abortion passed by Republican-dominated legislatures in eight states.

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Saudi siblings Lina and Walid Alhathloul check their phones constantly for any mention of their sister on social media. They have already done four interviews on the day of the PEN awards and sit down for a fifth, because, they say, this is the only way to help their sister, 29-year-old jailed Saudi activist Loujain Alhathloul.

"We want to raise awareness," says Lina Alhathloul, a lawyer living in exile in Belgium.

On Tuesday, Loujain Alhathloul was honored with the 2019 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award. Two of her siblings were in New York to accept the award on her behalf. Two other jailed Saudi writers, Nouf Abdulaziz and Eman al-Nafjan, were also honored by the freedom of expression advocacy group. (PEN America linked to some of their key writing here.)

It's been a year since Alhathloul was detained and arrested for leading a movement to end Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving and its strict rules against women's everyday activities without approval from a male "guardian."

A trial began in March in the Saudi capital Riyadh, but was later suspended with no official date to resume. Lina Alhathloul believes the suspension is a government strategy to keep the activists out of the news.

"What they are trying to do is that the case will just die because there is nothing new, but we won't give up," Lina Alhathloul says.
Torture allegations
After Loujain Alhathloul's arrest in May 2018, her parents said she was taken to a secret prison and tortured; water-boarded, flogged and threatened with sexual assault and death, according to her siblings.

Walid Alhathloul says he was emotionally "shocked" when he learned about the abuse. "This is the moment we started to speak out, the worst happened when we were silent," the brother says.

Saudi officials deny the accusations of torture, but the family raised the alarm when Loujain Alhathloul's parents were finally allowed to visit her in jail four months after her arrest and said they saw the signs of brutal mistreatment first hand.

"She says that it has stopped," the sister says about the prison conditions relayed by her parents. But she stresses that the visits are limited: "We can't confirm anything about her daily treatment," she says. "I hope when she says she is not tortured anymore, it's true."

Lina says Loujain Alhathloul - who has written on her blog about criticism she received for her activism - has always been courageous, but her own courage is tempered with caution. She declines to answer questions about Saudi Arabia's leadership or comment on reports by U.S. intelligence officials that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sanctioned a campaign against opponents that included the October 2018 torture and murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi journalist who wrote for The Washington Post.

She says she is aware of a growing movement of Saudi dissidents in exile, but says she has no contact with them. "They would probably like to[reach out], but they would know it is dangerous for us," she says. When Loujain Alhathloul made her first appearance in court earlier this year, her charges included alleged contact with Western human rights organizations. "We don't want to put her in any danger," Lina Alhathloul says.
Back in the news
The biggest danger is that international interest in the case drops off, the siblings insist.

While in the U.S., the siblings have had a busy schedule. NPR was one of several outlets that interviewed them on Tuesday, a day that also included a Facebook Live video event with Nick Kristof of The New York Times and a sit-down with Amy Goodman's public radio show, Democracy Now.

The awards event in New York puts Loujain Alhathloul and the other jailed Saudi activists back in the news, says Karin Deutsch Karlekar, the director of the Free Expression at Risk Program at PEN America.

"We've been giving this award since 1987," she says. "There have been 44 awardees who have been in jail at the time. Of those 39 have been released, in part, because of the attention."

Last year, the award went to two Reuters journalists from Myanmar, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, sentenced to seven years in jail for breaking the Official Secrets Act. The journalists had reported on the killing of Rohingya Muslims by security forces in 2017, reporting which also won a Pulitzer Prize. The pair were freed earlier this month after more than 500 days in jail.

It's a good year to shine a spotlight on Saudi Arabia because of the crackdown on dissent, says Karlekar.

Authorities rounded up more than a dozen activists a year ago. A statement delivered in March by Iceland at the United Nations Human Rights Council has condemned the kingdom's "continuing arrests and arbitrary detentions of human rights defenders."

"There are more than these three Saudi awardees in jail," Karlekar says. "We picked them as writers because PEN has that connection to writers."

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'Won't Give Up': Siblings Of Jailed Saudi Women's Rights Activist Speak Out In U.S.

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Saudi siblings Lina and Walid Alhathloul check their phones constantly for any mention of their sister on social media. They have already done four interviews on the day of the PEN awards and sit down for a fifth, because, they say, this is the only way to help their sister, 29-year-old jailed Saudi activist Loujain Alhathloul.

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Paula Bronstein | Getty Images

The world witnessed a shocking rollback of human rights last year, according to Amnesty International's latest annual report, with signs of regression across the globe.

"Leaders have pushed hate, fought against rights, ignored crimes against humanity and blithely let inequality and suffering spin out of control," the campaign group said in its yearly audit of human rights.

Amnesty's State of the World's Human Rights report, published Thursday, assessed human rights violations in 159 countries in 2017. It claimed a broad clampdown on human rights had created a "more dangerous" world.

CNBC takes a look at some of the major human rights hot spots identified by Amnesty International.

US

Amnesty accused the U.S. government of setting the tone for a year of "hate-filled rhetoric" that fueled bigotry and persecution across the world.

The campaign group said the polarizing decision to ban travel from six Muslim-majority countries was "transparently hateful."

On Thursday, a second federal appeals court found President Donald Trump's travel ban violated the U.S. Constitution by discriminating on the basis of religion. Nonetheless, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the ban to go into effect while litigation challenging it continues.

Venezuela

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been widely condemned for overseeing one of the worst human rights crises in the country's history.

Citizens of the crisis-torn nation are struggling to cope with widespread food shortages, the collapse of its traditional currency and hyperinflation - which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast to hit 13,000 percent in 2018.

Meanwhile, almost 75 percent of Venezuelans are reportedly suffering from weight loss and unemployment in the South American country is expected to skyrocket to 32 percent by 2022.

Amnesty International said the crisis in the South American nation had reached "breaking point."

Yemen

Amnesty International said three years of a major armed conflict in Yemen, as well as a blockade imposed by a Saudi-led coalition, had "shattered" access for people's basic needs, including food and water.

The United Nations (UN) described the ongoing conflict in Yemen as "the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time."

Approximately 22.2 million people in Yemen - or three-quarters of its population - require immediate assistance with over 8 million citizens thought to be at risk of starvation.

EU, Australia

Amnesty accused both the European Union and Australia of adopting an "outright callous" approach to the global refugee crisis. The group said refugees were not being treated as human beings but instead as "problems to be deflected."

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10 global hotspots for major human rights violations in 2017

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Paula Bronstein | Getty Images The world witnessed a shocking rollback of human rights last year, according to Amnesty International's latest annual report, with signs of regression across the globe. "Leaders have pushed hate, fought against rights, ignored crimes against humanity and blithely let inequality and suffering spin out of control," the campaign group said in its yearly audit of human rights.

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Sri Lanka has become the latest country to ban full-face-covering veils like burkha and niqab. (Photos: Getty Images and Reuters)

Days after Sri Lanka decided to ban burqa (also spelt burkha and burka) following the deadly serial blasts that killed more than 250 people on April 21, a debate for a similar ban is gaining traction in India. The Shiv Sena, which is an ally of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has demanded a ban on burqa, a dress worn by Muslim women. "People wearing face masks or burqa could pose a threat to national security," the Shiv Sena said in Saamna, its mouthpiece.

Though Shiv Sena's demand hasn't found resonance with the BJP which has said that the demand for ban is uncalled for, the issue has made headlines. But this is not the first time that the demand for a ban on burqa (or burkha) has been made in India.

Two BJP candidates in Uttar Pradesh recently alleged that the opposition parties were using burqas and asking people (including men) to cast fake votes against the BJP.

In 2010, France barred Muslim women from wearing any form of dress that covers their faces and heads. In October 2018, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) said that the ban imposed by France on burqa and other full face-covering veils is a violation of human rights.

However, a similar demand is routinely raised in countries like the United Kingdom and Australia among others. Routine reports of Muslim women being harassed for their dress have also been reported in many countries, especially in the West.

World over, people have been divided over the ban on burqa (alternatively spelt as burka and burkha) and other face-covering veils. While opponents of the ban call it an attack on the freedom of an individual to wear a dress of her choice, its proponents cite examples of cases where women are forced to wear the dress against their choice.

Besides this, proponents of the ban also argue that terrorists use the burqa (and other veils) to carry out suicide attacks, among others. The burqa ban debate has also been used by political pressure groups to further their vested interests by propagating Islamophobia on one side and raise the 'Islam-is-in-danger' card on the other.

Before we move on to discuss countries that ban burqa and other face-covering veils, here is a brief explainer on the types of veils that Muslim women wear and how they are different from each other.
Burqa (also spelt as burkha and burka)
The burqa is a garment worn by Muslim women that covers the entire body, including the face and head. The burqa generally has net that allows the person to see through. It is a loose-fitting dress that is designed in a manner which makes it difficult to recognise the shape of a woman's body.
(Click on the photo for a zoomed version) Niqab
Niqab is often confused with the burqa. However, the difference between the two is that a niqab is a veil that covers the face but leaves the eyes uncovered, while the burqa covers the full face.
Hijab
Hijab is a scarf worn by Muslim women. Unlike the burqa and niqab, the hijab dos not cover the face. It rather covers the person's head and neck.
Countries that ban face-covering veils: (IndiaToday.in does not claim that these are the only countries where full-face-covering veils are banned. This is snapshot of the status on burqa and face-veils in some countries.)
While these countries have banned burqa, niqab and other full-face-covering veils worn by Muslim women, there are countries that have a diametrically opposite policy for these dresses i.e. they have made it compulsory for Muslim women to wear them, citing socio-religious grounds.
Some Muslim majority countries and rules for wearing veils:
Saudi Arabia: In Saudi Arabia, women are supposed to wear abayas (a loose-fitting dress worn with a hijab, niqab or burkha (burqa/burka) that covers a woman's body from head to toe. Women have to wear abayas at all places where they can be seen by men who are not related to them.

In 2018, many Muslim women in Saudi Arabia started a campaign by wearing abayas inside out to protest against the practice.

Afghanistan: Under the Taliban rule in Afghanistan that ended in 2001 the country imposed a strict law where women were made to wear burqa and remain under veil in public.

Iran: Wearing hijab is compulsory in Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Women are expected to wear loose-fitting clothing and headgear that covers the head and neck in public.

Pakistan: Pakistan does not have any law that advocates for compulsory wearing of burqa and other face-covering veils. However, the dress is quite common among Muslim women in the country.

Indonesia: Indonesia is a Muslim majority country where women are allowed to decide whether they want wear hijab and other form of veils or not wear them.
The author tweets at @mukeshrawat705 and can also be reached out at Facebook. ALSO READ | Sri Lanka bans all types of face covers including burqa after Easter Sunday bombings ALSO READ | Freedom to choose: AR Rahman destroys trolls slamming daughter Khatija for niqab ALSO READ | The purdah of the mind ALSO WATCH | Demand for burqa ban in India: Countries that have banned it

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Burqa ban debate: Countries that proscribe veils, and those who make it compulsory

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World over, people have been divided over the ban on burqa (also spelt as burkha/burka) and other face-covering veils. While opponents of the ban call it an attack on the freedom of an individual to wear a dress of her choice, its proponents cite examples of cases where women are forced to wear the dress against their choice.