Refusing to Dispense the Pill, Abortion in Latin America

POLITICS

States Say No To Sex-Ed Dough - AlterNet
Maine has become the latest state to reject federal funding for sex education programs that teach only abstinence.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Ill. pharmacists withhold emergency pill - AP
Walgreen Co. said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule. The four cited religious or moral objections to filling prescriptions for the morning-after pill and "have said they would like to maintain their right to refuse to dispense, and in Illinois that is not an option," Walgreen spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said.

INTERNATIONAL

Push to Loosen Abortion Laws in Latin America - NY Times
In this tradition-bound Roman Catholic town one day in April, two young women did what many here consider unthinkable: pregnant and scared, they took a cheap ulcer medication known to induce abortions. When the drug left them bleeding, they were treated at a local emergency room - then promptly arrested. Insisting that abortion was rare, Pamplona's conservative leaders thought the case was over. Instead, the episode reverberated throughout Colombia and helped to galvanize a national movement to roll back laws that make abortion illegal, even to save a mother's life.

Women And AIDS - News From Bangladesh
HIV/AIDs prevention programme cannot be successful and sustainable in Nepal unless women are financially dependent and are in a position to control what happens to their own bodies.

Muslim girls in Austria fighting forced marriages - SF Chronicle
When 15-year-old Fatima traveled to Turkey last year to attend the wedding of a male cousin she had never met, she was eager to meet the bride and groom. But after she arrived in the small Turkish village where her parents had lived before immigrating to Austria, the Vienna high school pupil's enthusiasm quickly turned to panic when she learned that she was the bride.