Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Women’s rights in danger in US states, activist Steinem warns

863256
863256
minus
plus

NEW YORK: Women’s rights advocates must pay attention to threats in individual US states where policies could set back abortion availability and health- care as much as the plans of President-elect Donald Trump, activist Gloria Steinem said.


Some of the most right-wing politics are found not so much in Washington, D C, but in several of the 50 US states, Steinem said at an evening panel held by Donor Direct Action, an organisation that supports women’s groups.


This month, a law is due to take effect in Texas that requires burial of faetal remains from abortions, which pro-choice advocates call unnecessary and an effort to shame women who have undergone abortions.


In Ohio, lawmakers this week approved a bill that bans abortion once a faetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks after conception.


If signed into law, it would be one of the nation’s most stringent abortion restrictions.


Courts have struck down so-called heartbeat laws in North Dakota and Arkansas, but supporters hope such measures could withstand a legal challenge in the Trump administration.


Trump has promised to appoint an anti-abortion justice to the US Supreme Court and supports stripping federal funding from Planned Parenthood, whose clinics offer women’s healthcare services including abortion.


“The overall political lesson is that we need to pay as much attention to our state legislatures as we do to Washington,” said Steinem, a pioneering feminist who co-founded ‘Ms’ magazine in 1972. “We have not done that,” she said. “The battle is being fought there.”


Steinem said she is heartened by a renewed energy among women’s rights advocates since the November 8 presidential election, such as a planned women’s march on Washington on January 21, the day after Trump takes office.


— Reuters


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon