Latest news with #reproductiveHealth
CBS News
2 days ago
- Health
- CBS News
What will the Supreme Court's Planned Parenthood ruling mean in Minnesota?
A major decision by the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday morning involving Planned Parenthood in South Carolina could have a ripple effect across the country. Legal experts say the ruling means that states will have the right to block Planned Parenthood's access to federal Medicaid funding for non-abortion services. That includes birth control, cancer screenings, reproductive care and more. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic was suing South Carolina for blocking the funding, but the high court ruled in the state's favor in a 6-3 vote. WCCO reached out to Planned Parenthood North Central States, which covers Minnesota, to see if there's concern that Medicaid patients here might face the same restrictions. They said that, as of Thursday, nothing will change in Minnesota for the 22,000 patients who sought care using Medicaid. "We want our patients to know that they will be able to continue to get care here in Minnesota under Medicaid, and we are doing everything that we can to live up to our committment to provide care and adapt in this every shifting environment," Ruth Richardson, president of Planned Parenthood North Central, said. "There's a lot of uncertainty in this moment, that is for sure with this manufactured chaos that we continue to see, and it seems to be ever-increasing in many ways. But the commitment and one thing we can rely on at this point is that we are continuing to see patients and we're going to be unwavering within that commitment." Last month, Planned Parenthood announced that four clinics would close in Minnesota, including two in the Twin Cities, due to a freeze in federal funding and budget cuts proposed in Congress. It's unclear if this new U.S. Supreme Court decision could impact more clinics. The dispute before the high court did not involve abortion, but it comes as several Republican-led states push to block Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid funds.
Al Arabiya
3 days ago
- Health
- Al Arabiya
The silent catastrophe: Abandoning women and girls in crisis
In crises across the Arab States region, where humanitarian needs have soared to unprecedented levels, a disturbing trend is unfolding: the systematic defunding of life-saving services for women and girls. From Somalia to Sudan, Syria to Yemen, and beyond, drastic funding cuts – notably the abrupt termination of US financial support – are precipitating what can only be described as a silent catastrophe. This isn't merely about abstract statistics; it's about lives shattered and futures stolen as critical reproductive health and gender-based violence services are dismantled precisely when and where they are needed most. For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app. Consider Joud, driven by conflict to a displacement camp in Al-Hol, north-eastern Syria. She never imagined having more children, with health services virtually non-existent and pregnancy feeling too risky. Yet, the opening of a UNFPA-supported maternity clinic gave her the confidence to embrace motherhood again. Now, she fears this lifeline may close. As she poignantly states: 'Without it, pregnant women will face their most precious and precarious moments alone — without care, without safety, and without hope." Her story underscores a grim reality: the decision to defund reproductive health and protection services is not a simple financial adjustment, but a profound denial of the most basic, life-saving support women and girls desperately require and deserve. The reality is stark: severe funding shortages have ripped away essential services from millions of the most vulnerable. In Lebanon, nearly half of UNFPA-supported women and girls' safe spaces — providing safety, counseling, medical treatment, and legal referrals, critical for survivors of violence — have been forced to close their doors. In Somalia, mobile outreach programs that delivered integrated reproductive health and gender-based violence services to an estimated 250,000 women have ceased entirely. Across Yemen, a staggering 1.5 million women and girls no longer have access to life-saving services. These are not abstract figures; they represent safe havens, vital medical care, and a lifeline for individuals facing unimaginable hardship. Even before recent cuts, health services in crisis-affected countries in the region were alarmingly precarious. In Syria, less than half of health facilities remain functional after 14 years of civil war. Funding for gender-based violence programs in Sudan was less than 20 percent of financial needs in 2024 as the number of people at risk soared to over 12 million. Yet, women-led organizations and services for survivors of gender-based violence were among the hardest and earliest hit by this year's aid cuts. Cuts to humanitarian funding are not merely budget decisions; they are profoundly, unequivocally, life-and-death choices. When the services designed to protect women's health, safety, and dignity vanish, what message do we, the global community, send? That their suffering is invisible. That their lives simply do not matter. This is utterly unacceptable. The closure of services, drastic staff cuts, and suspension of essential programming, such as emergency obstetric care and medical care for survivors of violence, represents a profound moral failure that will put the lives of women and girls at risk. We cannot stand by as the fragile progress made in advancing women and girls' rights and well-being is brutally eroded. Urgent and sustained donor contributions are not merely desirable; they are an absolute, immediate necessity to prevent a deeper, irreparable humanitarian catastrophe in these already fragile countries. The lives, dignity, and futures of millions depend on our collective action. To turn our backs now is to commit an irreversible injustice.
Arab News
5 days ago
- General
- Arab News
A room of one's own: Women claim men-only ‘Autaq' community spaces in Pakistan's Balochistan
LASBELA, Pakistan: On a summer afternoon in the village of Ahmadabad Wang village in southwestern Pakistan this month, the sun filtered through the wooden slats of a modest building tucked between fields and dusty open lands. Inside, the sharp scent of chalk and fabric mixed with the low hum of women's voices. Here, on a carpeted floor lined with checkered rugs and cylindrical pillows, women and girls had gathered not to cook or clean or care but to talk: about reproductive health, about puberty. About what they wanted from life and the future. And they are doing it in an Autaq, a space that for generations has been the exclusive domain of men in the southern Sindh province and in districts of Balochistan that border Sindh, Lasbela being one of them. 'The concept of Autaq is deeply rooted in our culture, both Sindhi and Baloch,' said Hafsa Qadir, 22, a sociology graduate who helped found this women-only version in December last year. 'Here, we talk about a range of challenges — SRHR [sexual and reproductive health and rights], menstruation, hygiene and skill-based education. All those issues that we can't talk about openly outside, we discuss them freely here.' Growing up, Qadir had watched her male cousins gather in their Autaq, with cushions piled high and the clink of tea cups punctuating heated discussions. Girls stood at the threshold, never allowed inside. 'Usually, it serves as a community center, but only for men,' she said. 'It just represents half of the community.' That memory stayed with her until she and six women from surrounding villages decided to build something of their own. The Addi Autaq, laid with humble furnishings and hand-stitched cushions, now welcomes over 50 women and girls each week. Every time the women gather, the room buzzes with energy and purpose, its walls bearing witness to conversations once whispered behind closed doors. Next to it Addi Autaq is a small stitching center where women thread needles and run fabric through clacking machines. The clothes they make are sold in local markets and for some, it's the first time they've earned their own income. 'There was no place here before where we could sit and speak openly,' said Saima Kareem, a student who pays her university tuition with her earnings. 'I feel very proud that I can bear my own expenses… cover my educational expenses and help out my family as well.' 'BIG ACHIEVEMENT' Their revolution has come with quiet persistence. Balochistan, after all, is no easy place to be a woman. It is Pakistan's largest province by area but also its most underserved. Female literacy stands at around 24 percent, far below the national average. Access to basic health care is limited. Many girls never complete school and few women join the workforce. Against that landscape, the idea of women not just gathering, but leading, shaping dialogue, earning money, is almost audacious. 'When we started the Autaq, we faced many challenges,' said Tehreem Amin, 23, an environmental sciences graduate. 'We approached the elders in our families, brothers, fathers, those who were educated, and talked to them, explained our purpose, and gradually helped shift their thinking.' Now, once skeptical male relatives are sending their daughters to the Autaq. 'When we started our own Autaq, it had some impact… Some women [on social media] have even said they want to visit, see how we created this Autaq, how we built a space that is truly safe for women,' said Asma Ali, 24, a teacher and co-founder, as evening fell and women left the carpeted room and moved to a nearby garden. There, in the open air, they held reading circles and dreamt aloud about education, leadership, financial independence. 'The Autaq we've established is a big achievement,' Amin, the environmental sciences graduate, said. 'But I believe when such Autaqs exist in every village, in every corner of Pakistan… only then will it be a real success.'
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Health
- Washington Post
On Dobbs anniversary, Senate Democrats aim to restart abortion conversation
Just weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Nancy Davis learned that her fetus had a fatal cranial condition. She sought an abortion in her home state of Louisiana, but a 'trigger law' took effect shortly after the June 2022 decision. The law banned nearly all abortions in the state, and doctors were unsure if Davis's case fell within its few exceptions, forcing her to travel to New York to have an abortion. Now, three years post-Roe, Davis worries for patients who may still face the kind of excruciating decisions about their pregnancies that she did. On Tuesday, she will help Senate Democrats as they try to bring abortion and reproductive health care back to the forefront on the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. 'I know these women who are currently going through it need someone to say 'I see you,'' Davis told The Washington Post. ''I believe you.'' In a forum designed to resemble a congressional hearing at the Capitol, Davis will share her story with an audience of Senate Democrats and members of the press alongside other witnesses, including two abortion providers. They will speak about their experiences in the three years since the high court eliminated the nearly 50-year constitutional right to an abortion — part of an ongoing effort from some Democrats to keep steadfast attention on the issue. The event, known as a shadow hearing, allows for a public forum to be held without conducting an official Senate hearing, which would've required approval from Republican leaders who chair committees. The move comes at a time when abortion appears to have drifted away from where it once stood as a key political issue. Though President Donald Trump has repeatedly taken credit for appointing the justices who solidified the landmark Dobbs decision, he said on the campaign trail last year that he would veto a federal abortion ban and leave abortion law up to the states. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday. When Roe fell in 2022, conservatives claimed it as a massive victory. For liberals, it served as a sign of the ground the GOP gained while the Democratic Party struggled to muster enough votes to pass national abortion legislation over the past decade. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), one of the four Democratic lawmakers leading the Dobbs anniversary messaging, said that since Trump took office, his administration has steadily launched smaller scale antiabortion efforts, which she said amount to a 'national abortion ban behind the scenes.' 'Because there's so much going on, and because it's little by little and piece by piece, women don't collectively see what is coming at them,' Murray told The Post. Among the efforts Murray referenced is the GOP's budget bill, which includes a provision that would halt Medicaid payments to abortion providers who received more than $1 million in federal reimbursements in 2024 — a measure that would mean funding cuts to Planned Parenthood, one of the biggest reproductive health care providers in the United States. Senate Republicans are racing to meet Trump's July 4 deadline to pass their version of the bill. Leading the Democratic messaging on this year's Dobbs anniversary alongside Murray are Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin) and Tina Smith (Minnesota), all of whom have been vocal about the need to protect abortion access and other reproductive health advocacy. Murray said they will highlight a medley of actions from the Trump administration related to reproductive health over the past six months — some of them undoing Biden-era efforts to protect abortion access. Within days of assuming the presidency, Trump pardoned 23 people who were convicted of blocking access to reproductive health clinics, many of them during the Biden administration for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or Face Act. This month, Republicans prepared a bill that if passed would repeal the Face Act altogether. Also in January, Trump overturned two executive orders signed by President Joe Biden that aimed to expand access to reproductive care. And in early June, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rescinded Biden-era guidance that required hospitals to provide emergency abortions when needed to stabilize patients, regardless of the state where they were receiving treatment. For Davis, who still lives in Louisiana and has become a reproductive health advocate, the ongoing changes have made her afraid that more patients will be unable to receive the care they choose in a timely manner. It's a fear that's been on her mind constantly, she said, especially as a mother to three girls, one of whom was born in the time since her 2022 nonviable pregnancy. Sharing her story again this week, Davis said, 'gives us a chance to stand up before any more harm is done.' 'For me, it's about protecting the next woman, the next family, the next mother,' she said.
The Guardian
20-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What it's really like … to know I'm going to miss my Harvard graduation because of Trump's travel ban
Next May, I should be walking across a stage at Harvard – my two-year-old daughter in my arms, my name called out, my doctoral hood placed over shoulders that have carried far more than academic ambition. It was going to be more than a graduation. It was to be a culmination, a reclamation. My daughter's presence would symbolise not only my personal triumph but the very journey that led me here: discovering my own uterine fibroid when I decided to become a mother inspired my doctorate. Together, mother and daughter would cross a finish line that generations before me weren't even allowed to approach. This summer, after years of balancing motherhood, research and rigorous study, I was ready to return briefly to Harvard to defend my doctoral dissertation – one final, vital step before next year's graduation. Instead, I am in Sierra Leone, denied the ability to return – not due to misconduct, overstaying or fraud – but simply for being Sierra Leonean. Under new restrictions enacted in June 2025, Sierra Leoneans – and nationals from several other countries – are now denied non-immigrant visas. Our individual circumstances do not matter. I have met every previous legal requirement. I have complied with every visa stipulation throughout my academic journey. I can demonstrate a clear intent to return home. My research is on African women's reproductive health, and I intend to continue working on the continent. Still: no. The sudden denial, without recourse or meaningful appeal, sends a chilling message to thousands of international students who now face a similar fate: educational dreams suspended, futures uncertain, doors closed without warning or reason. This amplifies the already overwhelming fears and hurdles we face. It has never been easy to get a visa. I had to prove financial solvency, undergo invasive medical screenings, pass extensive background checks, and demonstrate to US immigration authorities that my presence would constitute 'national value'. Even after fulfilling these rigorous demands, students such as me are now vulnerable to sudden exclusion. The impact of this ban reaches deeper than individual disappointments. It disrupts academic communities, weakens critical international collaborations, and undermines global scholarship that profoundly benefits the US. My research – focusing on uterine fibroids, a condition severely affecting women's lives across Africa and globally – is critical to advancing women's health. Through my social impact venture, Youterus Health, we centre African women's experiences, turning insight into action by mobilising resources and creating systemic solutions for neglected gynaecological conditions – including abnormal uterine bleeding, fibroids and adenomyosis. These conditions directly affect maternal health, economic empowerment and global equity. Our work elevates uterine care within maternal and reproductive health agendas, challenging historic neglect and reshaping healthier futures for women and communities everywhere. Harvard has embraced me and my work. When I gave birth to my daughter in 2023, I sat for my written exams just two weeks later. Harvard's unwavering support during that intense period made me believe that merit would always outweigh difficult circumstances. The US government's decision undermines this belief, revealing a deeper systemic issue: a harsh, bureaucratic racism selectively silencing voices from African and Middle Eastern countries. This exclusion is neither isolated nor new. African scholars have long navigated bureaucratic hurdles designed to quietly but persistently deny our presence. This latest policy continues a historical pattern of selective exclusion. Yet even during earlier restrictions, such as bans during Trump's first term, many of us held hope. We believed our achievements, resilience and the genuine value of our work would speak louder than our passports. Today, students from banned countries face intensified exclusion without clear paths for appeal or resolution. I have tried to remain positive, to respond with grace. But the truth is, this decision cuts deeply. It denies me not only the moment I earned on that graduation stage but dims the aspirations of countless others who, like me, envision using their education as a force for global good. What do we do when we've done everything right yet find ourselves standing at locked doors? We speak louder. We write bolder. We name these wounds clearly, defiantly. And we persist in rewriting the narrative. I am not just missing the Harvard graduation. The US will be missing what I can offer. Our value – my value – is not defined by a stamp in a passport. Yet, this moment calls for allies in academia, policy and beyond to recognise and actively challenge these systemic barriers. Because a closed door for some diminishes the potential of all. Fatou Wurie is a doctoral candidate at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and founder of Youterus Health, a pioneering African women's health venture.
