TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — It’s Sunday night and Crystal P. Lira is not answering her messages. Inside the headquarters of Colectiva Bloodys y Projects, an organization that has supported reproductive rights near the U.S.-Mexico border since 2016, her only concern is for the woman she has provided with a safe space to get an abortion.

Lira, who lives in Tijuana, in northern Mexico, is one among dozens of Mexican “acompañantes” — volunteers who support women wanting to terminate a pregnancy. Located all over the country, most acompañantes offer virtual guidance through an abortion protocol in which no clinics or prescriptions are needed.

Developed by activists after decades of facing abortion bans and restrictions in most of Mexico’s 32 states, the protocol encourages women to trust self-managed medication abortions following guidelines established by the World Health Organization.

“Accompaniment means that we facilitate information, medications and everything a woman needs to get a safe abortion at home,” Lira said. “But we also provide emotional support and support to fight stigma, religious and cultural barriers.”

Mexico’s Supreme Court recently ruled that national laws prohibiting abortions are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights. The ruling, which extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access, happened a year after the court’s U.S. counterpart went in the opposite direction.

The Mexican decision did not have the same immediate impact as Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing women’s access to abortion on a nationwide basis.

Although the Mexican ruling orders the removal of abortion from the federal penal code and requires federal health institutions to offer the procedure to anyone who requests it, further state-by-state legal work will be needed to remove all penalties.

“The court did not give a direct instruction to any local congress, but it sends a very clear signal of what congresses have to do,” said Sofia Aguiar, a lawyer at the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE.

For now, 20 Mexican states still criminalize abortion.

In Baja California, where Tijuana is located, abortion was decriminalized in 2021. By then, Lira had already gained five years’ experience as an acompañante.

“Ahead of starting an abortion network, I questioned myself: How did I get to this point? Why did I live what I lived, and what could have been different?” she said.

In 2012, Lira faced an unwanted pregnancy. “I didn’t know what to do, where to look for help,” she said.

On the recommendation of a friend, and due to her hometown’s proximity to the U.S. border, Lira made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood clinic in San Diego. She traveled back home with pills and a debt of $600 that she paid for her abortion.

Three years later, deeply conflicted by the inequality in abortion access, she became an activist and received training to become an acompañante.

“The easiest part was learning the abortion protocol,” she said. “The toughest was acquiring a political perspective, understanding how abortions are based on rights and freedom.”

Many reject her views in Mexico, a predominantly Catholic country.

Soon after the court’s ruling in early September, former actor and right-wing activist Eduardo Verástegui announced he will seek the presidency on an anti-abortion platform. “Say ‘yes’ to life and ‘no’ to abortion,” he has said, echoed by his followers.

Without mentioning him by name, the Catholic archbishop of Mexico City, Carlos Aguiar Retes, recently advocated voting for Verástegui in the 2024 election, and some Catholic, evangelical and anti-abortion groups have publicly supported him as well.

“We think it’s good to have a character like him,” said Rodrigo Iván Cortés, director of the National Family Front, an anti-abortion group. “He’s explicit about defending life and family.”

Abortion activists were not surprised by the conservative response to the court’s ruling.

“Historically, every progressive movement is followed by a setback from groups that organize against it,” said Aguiar from GIRE. “We saw it in the United States.”

Aguiar and her colleagues plan to keep advocating for reproductive rights. “We will continue working on issues like obstetric violence, maternal death and forced contraception,” Aguiar said.

At Colectiva Bloodys y Projects, Lira has plans of her own.

With a colleague who recently moved to San Diego, they hope to replicate some of their abortion strategies in California. “We want to migrate our perspectives,” Lira said. “To lead informative brigades and communicate that we can provide pills for those who can’t access abortion medication there.”

It’s no coincidence that Lira’s views are influenced by migration. The surge of migrants approaching the U.S. border, traveling from Colombia through the Darién jungle and moving up through Central America into Mexico, could approach 500,000 this year.

Venezuelans, Salvadorans, Haitians and Mexicans — internally displaced by violence — are among those who migrate by trains, buses and on foot. Along the way, thousands are victims of robbery, human trafficking and sexual abuse.

“We’ve been seeing women who suffer a lot of violence on their way to the United States,” Lira said.

Some migrants who wish to terminate their pregnancies contact them directly and others are channeled through shelters or midwives. “We have realized the need to support these women. … They experience violence, especially sexual, and need abortions,” said Minerva, another member of Colectiva Bloodys y Projects. For security reasons, she spoke on condition she be identified only by her first name.

Access to medication and a private space to get a self-managed abortion are particularly difficult for migrants, who can spend several months in shelters on the border.

“We want to accompany them,” Lira said. “But abortion access is just the tip of the iceberg. We expect to share key information for their physical and mental health.”

Joining forces with a local organization focused on reproductive health, Lira and activist Monica Rosas will offer an informative workshop on fertility and the reproductive cycle by mid-October at a church-affiliated shelter where up to 1,700 migrants are currently waiting to enter the U.S.

“We will create a space for self-knowledge as a tribe,” Rosas said.

The program includes body literacy — naming parts of the anatomy free of taboos — and dances to celebrate the female body.

“We would love for these women who are passing through, waiting for an opportunity to cross, to carry this information with them,” Lira said. “Our bodies are powerful and, if we know them, that can help us reach our own identity.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post As Mexico expands abortion access, activists support reproductive rights at the U.S. border appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

GENEVA (AP) — Backers of an international agreement that bans cluster munitions are striving to prevent erosion in support for the deal after what one leading human rights group calls an “unconscionable” U.S. decision to ship such weapons to Ukraine for its fight against Russia.

Advocacy groups in the Cluster Munitions Coalition released their latest annual report on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting next week of envoys from the 112 countries that have acceded to or ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The treaty prohibits the explosives and calls for clearing areas where they litter the ground because they harm and kill many more civilians than combatants,

A further 12 countries have signed the convention. The United States and Russia are not among them.

Mary Wareham of Human Rights Watch, who has long championed the 15-year-old convention, says the coalition was “extremely concerned” about the U.S. move in July, after an intense debate among U.S. leaders, to transfer unspecified thousands of 155mm artillery-delivered cluster munition rounds to Ukraine.

More than 20 government leaders and officials have criticized that decision, the coalition says.

Hoping to avoid defections from the convention, Wareham says supporters hope signatories will “stay strong — that they do not weaken their position on the treaty as a result of the U.S. decision. And we don’t see that happening yet. But it’s always a danger.”

U.S. officials argue that the munitions — a type of bomb that opens in the air and releases smaller “bomblets” across a wide area — could help Kyiv bolster its offensive and push through Russian front lines.

U.S. leaders have said the transfer involves a version of the munition that has a reduced “dud rate,” meaning fewer of the smaller bomblets fail to explode. The bomblets can take out tanks and equipment, as well as troops, hitting multiple targets at the same time.

But Wareham cited “widespread evidence of civilian harm that (is) caused by these weapons. It was just an unconscionable decision.”

The report says civilians accounted for 95% of cluster munition casualties that were recorded last year, totaling some 1,172 in eight countries: Azerbaijan, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Myanmar, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. The monitor noted efforts in places like Bulgaria, Peru and Slovakia to destroy their stockpiles of the munitions in 2022 and earlier this year.

Children made up 71% of casualties from explosions of cluster-munition remnants last year, the report said.

It said Russia had “repeatedly” used cluster munitions in Ukraine since President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine in February last year, while Ukraine had used them “to a lesser extent.”

Washington’s decision “is certainly a setback,” said Wareham, “but it’s not the end of the road for the Convention on Cluster Munitions by far.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post The US sent cluster munitions to Ukraine but activists still seek to bolster a treaty banning them appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Anti-abortion activists will have multiple reasons to celebrate — and some reasons for unease — when they gather Friday in Washington for the annual March for Life.

The march, which includes a rally drawing abortion opponents from across the nation, has been held annually since January 1974 — a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision established a nationwide right to abortion.

This year’s gathering — 50 years after that decision — will be the first since the high court struck down Roe in a momentous ruling last June.

Since then, 12 Republican-governed states have implemented sweeping bans on abortion, and several others seek to do the same. But those moves have been offset by other developments. Abortion opponents were defeated in votes on ballot measures in Kansas, Michigan and Kentucky. State courts have blocked several bans from taking effect. And myriad efforts are underway to help women in abortion-ban states either get abortions out of state or use the abortion pill for self-managed abortions.

“It’s almost like the old wild, wild West … everything is still shaking out,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee.

With numerous Democratic-governed states taking steps to protect and expand abortion access, Tobias likened the current situation to the pre-Civil War era when the nation was closely divided between free states and slave states.

“I will not be surprised if we have something like that for a few years,” she said. “But I do know that pro-lifers are not going to give up — it’s a civil rights issue for us.”

The theme for this year’s March for Life is “Next Steps: Marching Forward into a Post-Roe America.” Scheduled speakers include Hall of Fame football coach Tony Dungy and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who won the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe.

The president of March for Life, Jeanne Mancini, depicted the June ruling as “a massive victory for the pro-life movement.”

“But the battle to build a culture of life is far from over,” she said. “March for Life will continue to advocate for the unborn and policies that protect them until abortion becomes unthinkable.”

Prospects for any federal legislation restricting abortion nationwide are negligible for now, given that any such measures emerging from the Republican-led House would face rejection in the Democratic-led Senate. The main battlegrounds will be in the states.

Since June, near-total bans on abortion have been implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Legal challenges are pending against several of those bans.

Elective abortions also are unavailable in Wisconsin, due to legal uncertainties faced by abortion clinics, and in North Dakota, where the lone clinic relocated to Minnesota.

Bans passed by lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana and Wyoming have been blocked by state courts while legal challenges are pending. And in South Carolina, the state Supreme Court on Jan. 5 struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks, ruling the restriction violates a state constitutional right to privacy.

The Guttmacher Institute, a research group which supports abortion rights, says the overall result is “a chaotic legal landscape that is disruptive for providers trying to offer care and patients trying to obtain it.”

“When people do not have access to abortion care in their state, they are forced to make the difficult decision to travel long distances for care, self-manage an abortion or carry an unwanted pregnancy to term,” Guttmacher staffers Elizabeth Nash and Isabel Guarnieri wrote last week.

Looking ahead, some anti-abortion leaders hope the Republicans nominate a 2024 presidential candidate who will aggressively push for nationwide abortion restrictions, rather than keep it as a state-by-state matter.

“The approach to winning on abortion in federal races, proven for a decade, is this: state clearly the ambitious consensus pro-life position and contrast that with the extreme view of Democrat opponents,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America.

Dannenfelser says she’s not surprised by the divisive ups-and-downs that have unfolded since the June ruling.

“This is what it looks like when democracy is restored and we have a voice in the debate,” she said. “For 50 years, we had no voice because the judiciary was always going to shield public opinion from having an effect on the law.”

“We always knew it wouldn’t be a straight line (after Roe’s repeal),” she said, adding “we know neither side is going to lay down and die.”

Multiple public opinion polls since June have found that a majority of Americans support access to legal abortion. According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in July, 53% of U.S. adults said they disapproved of the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe, while 30% approved.

Professor Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, suggested the anti-abortion movement may suffer from a perception among many Americans that it’s more concerned with controlling women’s bodies than helping them cope with unintended pregnancies.

“It’s about consolidating their political power, more than about babies,” she said.

Some abortion opponents are trying to counter such perceptions. In Texas, for example, anti-abortion groups are urging lawmakers to spend more money on services for pregnant and parenting Texans, including expanding Medicaid coverage for mothers.

According to Texas Right to Life, the state’s new abortion ban has had a major impact — it says only 68 abortions were recorded by state health officials in July 2022, compared to 4,879 in July 2021.

The group noted the data does not include illegal, unreported abortions — which are widely believed to be increasing as women obtain abortion pills by mail from overseas or from Mexico suppliers.

Charles Camosy, a medical humanities professor at Creighton University School of Medicine who opposes abortion, has analyzed the high-profile election defeats suffered by the anti-abortion movement. Voters in Kansas and Kentucky rejected constitutional amendments that would have declared there is no right to abortion; Michigan voters approved an amendment enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.

“Pro-lifers have clearly and badly lost the PR battle since June and this has shaped how people are voting,” Camosy said via email. He said abortion-rights supporters were better organized and better funded, while many anti-abortion politicians either avoided the issue or sounded too extreme.

“There are obviously very good things that have happened, however,” added Camosy, citing the drop in abortions reported in states with bans.

“Pro-lifers also now relish the chance to actually debate the issues in a democratic, open context … as opposed to constantly running into the fiats of various courts,” he said. “We may lose some battles early on… but it is worth it to have the debates.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post US divided over Roe’s repeal as abortion foes gird for march appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Early media coverage of the March 16 Atlanta shooting disappointed many Asian Americans, activists say.

Many articles neglected to center on the fact that six of the eight victims were Asian women and avoided the connection to the surge in anti-Asian violence over the past year, said Elaine Sanchez Wilson, the director of communications and development at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, a civil rights nonprofit.

Instead, news stories quickly focused more on the suspect’s claims of not being racist, as well as his sex addiction, without providing more context.

“The reporting heavily followed the narrative offered by local law enforcement, whose perspectives also erased the suffering of the victims, survivors, and their families, and who in fact had criminalized these very businesses in the past,” Wilson said in an email. “And this erasure from the narrative is something that Asian Americans, and broadly speaking the Asian American and Pacific Islander community at large, are made to endure over and over again, in all facets of American life. Even in death.”

The Atlanta shootings occurred against a backdrop of the anti-Asian hate incidents that have spiked during the pandemic. Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting center launched in response to the rising xenophobia against Asian Americans, reported 3,795 hate incidents from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021. The vast majority of incidents involved verbal harassment and shunning, followed by physical assault, civil rights violations and online harassment, according to the nonprofit, which was founded by a coalition of Asian American advocacy groups. More than two-thirds of those incidents were reported by women.

Well before the recent surge of hostility sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans were no strangers to racism. Ben Hires, executive director of the nonprofit Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, recently recalled the country’s history of anti-Asian xenophobia.

In 1854, the California Supreme Court ruled in People v. Hall that people of Asian descent could not testify against a white person in court, a decision that was based on the opinion that Chinese people were “a race of people who nature has marked as inferior, and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point.”

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act restricted immigration based on race and class.

A century later, in 1982, Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese American man was beaten to death in Detroit by two auto workers. He was killed during a time when America’s auto industry was suffering, as sales from Japanese auto manufacturers took off in the United States.

In 1989, a gunman opened fire at an elementary school in Stockton, California and killed five Southeast Asian refugee children.

“Why haven’t we heard about them? I feel it wasn’t until the murders in Atlanta that I began to see in mainstream media real coverage of the historical violence toward Asians like the Chinese massacre of 1871 in Los Angeles or the 1885 Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming that many people don’t know,” Hires said in an email. 

Smartphone videos have allowed ordinary passers-by to document racist incidents during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing the media with more stories to report, he added. Yet it’s important while reporting on these recent incidents to ensure there is context about the systemic racism Asian Americans have faced since the beginning of the country.

“If there was consistent coverage of the systemic needs of the working class, immigrant Asian community and the systemic racism and xenophobia Asians of all backgrounds experience, more attention and resources could go the underlying issues that make our communities unsafe — we could hold ourselves accountable for equitably taking care of our communities,” he said.

Wilson noted that mainstream media also fell short in its frequent citation of the suspect’s “sex addiction” without providing more context. The reports assumed and implied that the businesses and victims engaged in sex work, without seeking to verify that, she added.

“The reporting did not discuss the harsh conditions, exploitation, and other significant barriers that Asian immigrant women face in supporting their families, especially those working in service industries with limited worker protections,” Wilson said. ”In centering the suspect’s beliefs without providing a fuller picture, the media coverage perpetuates the racialized misogyny that continues to harm and kill Asian women.”

Jeong Park, a reporter for The Sacramento Bee, said Korean media in the U.S. covered the shootings well early on because there was more reporting from eye witnesses, community members and families of the victims.

He felt that mainstream media was able to catch up a few days after the shooting by providing deeper coverage about it and what it meant for the Asian American community. But one of the ways he said the media could’ve done better sooner was to focus less on whether or not the shootings were a hate crime.

“That misses the point of what this kind of event does to the community,” he said. “The effect of this — whether it can legally be considered a hate crime or not — it’s still the same on the community. A lot of them are still terrified to go out, to work, or go outside because they are afraid that they might be the next to get targeted. They’re concerned about their families.”

Hires said media coverage of Asian Americans should more often highlight the lack of resources they face, including health care, educational equity and housing. The model minority myth and the aggregation of more than twenty Asian American subgroups into a single category leads to the assumption that they are all doing well. This, in turn, masks the needs of many Asian American groups, and results in a lack of coverage of those needs.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Mainstream media fell short in Atlanta shooting coverage, activists say appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“Our country mourns the loss of a giant, an icon and a warrior for democracy, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In her nearly three decades of service on our nation’s highest court, she fundamentally changed life for women in America, and changed our entire nation for the better,” stated Congressmember Lee. “Justice Ginsburg was a pioneer for reproductive rights, civil rights and equal protection under the law. Without her leadership and conviction, the world would be a different place for women, people of color and other marginalized communities. Her tenacious fight for gender equality in the face of powerful opposition, and her historic opinions and dissents on the bench, bent the arc of history towards justice. As courageous as she was intelligent, her decency, her legal brilliance and her commitment to a democracy that serves all, rather than the few, make her a model for the next Supreme Court Associate Justice and for all justices that will follow her.”

“California Democrats are saddened by the passing of Justice Ginsburg,” said Hicks. “As we reflect on her life, we are determined to continue the march towards progress. We will honor the legacy of Justice Ginsburg by making our voices heard in the halls of power, in the streets of our communities and at the ballot box on November 3rd,” Hicks stated.

Vargas, School Board Trustee in Stockton lead the event in remembering RBG by stating, “As a Latina, former foster kid, survivor of a household of domestic violence and sexual abuse, and mother of two brilliant little brown girls, I wanted to share what RBG meant to me,” said Vargas. “Her life was a revolution that paved the way for young women to be seen, heard, believed and valued. Justice Bader Ginsburg spent her life rising above – despite adversity. She fought against gender discrimination, unified women across the world, and stood firmly against patriarchy and sexism.”

During the event, California leaders applauded the record-breaking number of registered voters in the Golden State. “Voters are fired up and ready,” said Padilla. “We have over 21 million registered voters in California. Nearly 85 percent are registered to vote – a rate we have not seen in nearly 70 years. But that means there are still 4 million unregistered and eligible. And there are an unknown number of voters who need to update their registration – they moved, been displaced by fires, or maybe they’re college students back at their parent’s house since their campus is closed,” continued Padilla. “There is no time to rest – keep registering voters!”

“Almost every aspect of our lives has something to do with voting,” said Lewis. “People have fought and died for us to be able to vote freely. They’ve literally sacrificed their lives so that our voices could be heard, so that we would have a voice in the democratic process in our cities, counties, states and country,” Lewis concluded.

During the event, CADEM encouraged all of Californians to get involved in the Vote 2020 Truth Squad and the Voter Protection Team. The volunteers will share facts about voting in 2020 and vote-by-mail as well as provide resources to community members through the Voter Protection Hotline, which is scheduled to open up October 20 until the polls close on November 3rd.

For more information, visit https://cadem.org/vote/voter-and-vote-by-mail/ or https://cadem.org/vote/voter-protection-team/.

-CADEM

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Hundreds of Activists Joined California Democratic Leaders to Remember Justice Ginsburg During the Vote 2020 Day of Action appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.