Mexico Decriminalizes Abortion. Meanwhile, in That American "Shithole" Lone Star State...

[Herman Adler]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/07/mexico-abortion-supreme-court/

Mexico’s supreme court voted unanimously on Tuesday to decriminalize abortion, a striking step in a country with one of the world’s largest Catholic populations and a move that contrasts sharply with tighter restrictions introduced across the border in Texas.

Eight of the 11 supreme court judges had expressed support for decriminalization in arguments that began Monday, making the decision virtually inevitable.

The vote comes as a powerful women’s movement is transforming Mexico, where female politicians now make up half of Congress. While abortion remains illegal in most of Latin America, there has been a surge in demonstrations demanding more rights for women, particularly focused on rising violence.

Mexico's bold break with machismo: women are now half of Congress and gender parity is the law

“This will not only have an impact in Mexico; it will set the agenda for the entire Latin American region,” said Melissa Ayala, coordinator of litigation for the Mexican feminist organization GIRE. She called the ruling “a historic moment for feminists and activists” who have pressed for women’s rights for years in Mexico’s state legislatures, health ministries and law schools.

Four countries in Latin America allow abortion under virtually all circumstances early in pregnancy: Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay and Guyana. Some nations forbid abortion for any reason. In El Salvador, women accused of aborting a fetus can be prosecuted on assault or homicide charges, and face decades in prison.

Four of Mexico’s 32 federal entities have broadly legalized the procedure — Oaxaca, Veracruz, Hidalgo and Mexico City.

One of Mexico’s biggest opposition parties, the conservative National Action Party, declared its opposition to the arguments advanced in the supreme court. “We are in favor of defending life from the moment of conception until natural death,” it said in a statement. It called for more measures to avert abortion, such as improving adoption services and providing more assistance to pregnant women.

Yet the decision was out of the hands of politicians.

The court was asked to rule on a law in the northern state of Coahuila that establishes jail terms of up to three years for women who procure illegal abortions.

Abortion wouldn’t instantly become widely available, but the ruling will “outline a route, a criteria” that states will use to change their laws, said Diego Valadés, a former supreme court judge. The decision will automatically free women who have been jailed for getting abortions, he said.

“It will have very broad effects,” he said.

Mexico has the world’s second-largest population of Catholics, after Brazil. Around three-quarters of Mexicans identify themselves as members of the faith, according to census data. But the government is officially secular and the church has been losing influence, due in part to clerical sex-abuse scandals.

In addition, women’s groups and social media have driven home the severity of the problem of unwanted pregnancies, especially among teenagers. More than 1 million abortions are performed each year in Mexico, most clandestinely and in unsafe conditions, according to estimates by the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute.

“The effects on women’s health, including the number of deaths registered due to clandestine abortions, and the number of child pregnancies, represent a profound social problem,” said Valadés. “So the attitude of most of society toward abortion has changed, despite the resistance of ecclesiastical authorities.”

[Hippie]

Just following their Mayan ancestors by sacrificing children. You just can't weed out their heathen DNA.

[Herman Adler]

Probably quite a few cultures, in the way back times, did things we abhor today.  You have no relevant "point" here, mark.

Texas is effectively one of trump's "shithole" states, in terms of the pandemic and in terms of women's rights to decide what happens to their bodies.

[Fritz the Cat420]

Texas is now Howdy Arabia. 

[plainolamerican]

Bush's sordid Saudi ties set template for Trump – he was just more subtle

President George HW Bush is greeted by King Fahd on his arrival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in November 1990. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

The former president has been widely praised for his command of foreign policy. The reality, writes the author of House of Bush, House of Saud, was much more complex – and dark

Craig Unger

Tue 4 Dec 2018 01.00 ESTays after his death, reverent tributes continue to pour in for former president George HW Bush, celebrating his adroit handling of the end of the cold war and his victorious leadership in the 1991 Gulf war, all leavened with nostalgia for a bygone era in which an American leader could stand astride the world stage without causing the entire planet to titter in nervous laughter.

George HW Bush thought the world belonged to his family. How wrong he was

Refined, gracious and genteel, Bush, in many ways, was the polar opposite of the current resident of the White House. Nevertheless, his decorous manner often concealed objectives that were far darker than the “kinder, gentler” vision he promoted.

As head of the CIA under Gerald Ford, and later as vice-president, Bush was a consummate pragmatist capable of rapidly changing political positions as expediency demanded. Highly disciplined, he mastered the arts of compartmentalization and secrecy. Nobody in government was better at keeping secrets. With his posh pedigree and Ivy League credentials, Bush had the perfect résumé to be a spy, and an effective mask with which to disguise his real agendas.

As Murray Waas and I wrote in the New Yorker, that was precisely the case in the summer of 1986, when Bush received a call from William J Casey, the gruff, perpetually disheveled spymaster who succeeded Bush as CIA director. Casey wanted Bush, then vice-president under Ronald Reagan, to run a covert operation that was part of what became known as the Iran-Contra and Iraqgate scandals.

Obstinate Iranian leaders had declined Casey’s secret offer to exchange arms for hostages who were being held in Beirut by terrorists tied to Tehran. Casey decided he had to force Iran’s hand. In August, Vice-President Bush was scheduled to visit the Middle East to “advance the peace process”, as the New York Times reported.

Bush’s true objectives were exactly the opposite of his stated goals. He was there to escalate the war between Iran and Iraq. Specifically, he had been tasked with delivering strategic military intelligence to Saddam Hussein, so that Iraq would intensify its bombing inside Iran. After a series of brutal air attacks, Bush and Casey reasoned, Iran would be forced to turn to the US for missiles and other weapons of air defense.

And they were right. Forty-eight hours after Bush executed his mission, Iraqis launched hundreds of strikes targeting oil facilities deep into Iran. Within a few weeks, Iran was back at the negotiating table. But that wasn’t the end of it. Every time hostages were released, new ones were seized.

As for the Iraqi side of ledger, Bush and Casey were far less wary of Saddam than one might expect. “He and Casey both had great naiveté, thinking you could be friends with Saddam Hussein,” said Howard Teicher, who served on Reagan’s National Security Council.

When Bush became president in 1989, his administration blithely ignored Saddam’s military buildup and human rights violations and proceeded to send funding, intelligence and hi-tech exports, some of which could potentially be used in Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. All of which left Saddam emboldened – and that paved the way for the Gulf war of 1991.

A key factor in Bush’s Middle East policies was his friendship with Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US. The two men were so close that Bandar was known to pop in unexpectedly at Bush’s summer retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine. They went on hunting trips together. Later, when Bush was out of the White House, he even tasked Bandar with teaching his eldest son – George W, then a presidential aspirant with no experience in international affairs – all about foreign policy.

After his presidency was over, Bush and a number of his former cabinet officers also began participating in the Carlyle Group, a giant private equity firm heavily funded by Saudi billionaires – including the Saudi family of Osama bin Laden. As I reported in House of Bush, House of Saud, in the end, nearly $1.5bn made its way from the Saudis to individuals and institutions tied to the extended family of Bush cabinet officials and associates.

President George W Bush speaks to Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar in Crawford, Texas in 2002. Photograph: Reuters Photographer / Reuters/REUTERS

Such ties were particularly noteworthy because of the House of Saud’s alliance with strident and puritanical Wahhabi fundamentalists, many of whom supported a violent jihad against the west. All of which raised disturbing questions after terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people on 11 September 2001 in attacks orchestrated by Bin Laden.

George HW Bush's presidential campaign was nothing to be proud of

Walter Shapiro

Read more

George HW Bush was long out of office and his son had become president. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, when US air traffic was all but shut down, how is it that the White House approved the departure of more than 140 mostly Saudi passengers, many of whom were kin to Osama bin Laden? Why did Saudi Arabia – birthplace of 15 out of 19 hijackers – get preferential treatment from George W Bush’s White House at a time when Arab-Americans all over the country were being apprehended and interrogated? Had the Bushes’ close ties to the Saudis led them to look the other way – even after the worst terrorist attack in American history?

Seventeen years later, of course, a very different White House has turned a blind eye to a very different but equally horrifying Saudi atrocity – namely, the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi after he was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

In response, Trump, predictably, could not have more deeply insulted the intelligence services Bush once led. Just a few days after the CIA determined that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had approved the murder, Trump baldly defied CIA analysts and sided with the Saudis, asserting that Khashoggi’s murder might never be solved.

“We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr Jamal Khashoggi,” he said. “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

With his understated style and his understanding of the diplomatic niceties, George HW Bush, of course, would have handled it very differently. But let us not forget that America’s mercenary relationships with brutal foreign powers began long before Donald Trump.

• Craig Unger is the author of House of Bush, House of Saud and House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. His Twitter handle is @craigunger