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      Angela Merkel: A Retrospective

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      Americans like to rate their presidents. In fact, presidential rankings have become something of a cottage industry in political science, ever since the eminent Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. started the tradition in the late 1940s.

      In Germany, we don’t do that, at least not in a formal way. We do have, however, a sense of who was a good chancellor and who wasn’t, and there probably is something of a common understanding as to why. Chancellors stand out if they accomplished extraordinary feats. Konrad Adenauer will always be remembered for accomplishing Franco-German reconciliation and anchoring the Federal Republic firmly in the West; Willy Brandt for initiating a radical turn in West German foreign policy toward the East, culminating in the reconciliation with Poland; and Helmut Kohl for seizing the historic opportunity in 1989 and bringing about the peaceful reunification of the two Germanies.

      The Downward Spiral of Angela Merkel’s CDU

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      What about Angela Merkel, the first woman to hold Germany’s most powerful political office? Her tenure will end in a few months’ time, at the end, one hopes, of a horrific pandemic. On September 26, Germany will elect a new parliament, and Angela Merkel will retire. By then she will have been in office for more than 15 years, second only to Helmut Kohl, who managed to hold on to the office a few months longer. When Angela Merkel took over in November 2005, she was largely dismissed as “Kohl’s girl” who was likely to have a hard time asserting herself in a political party, the Christian Democrats (CDU) largely dominated by men.

      The Anti-Trump

      In fact, shortly after the election, then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder insisted on national television that there was no way that his Social Democratic Party would ever accept an offer from Angela Merkel to form a coalition with the CDU under her leadership. As it so happened, the Social Democrats did, and Schröder was finished. In the years that followed, it became increasingly clear that Merkel was quite capable of asserting herself in the treacherous waters of Berlin’s political scene. In fact, in 2020, Forbes magazine ranked Angela Merkel as the most powerful woman in the world — for the 10th consecutive year.  

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      Throughout her 15 years in office, the chancellor has, on average, received high satisfaction scores. As recently as December, more than 80% of respondents in a representative survey said that Angela Merkel was doing a good job. Appreciation for Merkel, however, has hardly been limited to Germany. In an international Pew poll from September 2020 covering 13 nations, Merkel was by far seen as the most trusted major world leader. More than three-quarters of respondents rated her positively; by contrast, more than 80% saw then-US President Donald Trump in a negative light.

      Poll data also suggest that during Merkel’s tenure, Germany’s stature in the world has substantially increased. In a Pew study of 10 European nations from early 2019, almost 50% of respondents agreed that Germany played a more significant role in the world than a decade ago; fewer than half said the same thing about France and the UK. Germans are, for obvious historical reasons, understandably concerned about the country’s international image and reputation. Not for nothing, Canada’s The Globe and Mail referred to her in 2018 as the “anti-Trump,” only to add that “We need her kind more than ever.” This in itself will secure Merkel an eminent place in post-reunification German history.

      Ironically enough, the article was written at a time when Merkel’s star appeared to be rapidly waning, the result of serious electoral setbacks on the national and regional level. In the election to the German Bundestag in September 2017, the Christian Democrats lost more than 8 percentage points compared to the previous election, which meant a loss of 65 seats in parliament. At the same time, the radical right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered parliament, garnering more than 12% of the vote. In subsequent regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse, the Christian Democrats lost more than 10% of the vote, setting off alarm bells in Munich and Berlin.

      By the end of 2018, Merkel appeared to be up against the ropes, her days numbered. Particularly the upsurge in support for the radical populist right caused alarm, particularly in Bavaria. In response, the powerful Christian Social Union (CSU), Bavaria’s independent arm of the Christian Democrats, seriously contemplated once again to reach beyond Bavaria and create a genuinely national-conservative party, competing with both the AfD and the CDU. The CSU had always maintained that there must never be a democratically legitimated party to the right of the CSU. With the AfD, there clearly was, and Merkel’s Christian Democrats appeared not in a position to stem the tide.

      Corona Winner

      Yet Merkel managed to survive the various challenges to her leadership, despite continued electoral setbacks, which largely benefited the AfD. But skepticism abounded. In late 2018, a majority of Germans thought that Merkel would not serve out her mandate, due to expire at the 2021 parliamentary election. At about the same time, however, 70% of respondents in a representative survey said they wished she would finish her mandate. Once the pandemic hit Germany in the spring of 2020, Merkel’s stock started to soar once again. International media celebrated Germany as a most likely pandemic winner that had proven particularly resilient to the virus.

      What a joke. Only this time, nobody’s laughing. At the time of writing, Germany is a coronavirus disaster zone. The country has proved, once again, to be completely unprepared in the face of the second wave of infections that threatens to overwhelm the health care system. Starting in early December, Germany posted record new infections, and this before the arrival of the UK mutation. By now, the situation in some parts of Germany is nothing short of catastrophic. At the same time, the situation on the vaccination front leaves much to be desired.

      In mid-January, Germany recorded more than 22,000 new infections on a single day and more than 1,100 new COVID-19-related deaths. This is at least partly the result of the German government’s indecisive, hesitant and confusing response to the pandemic, made worse by Germany’s federal system, which provides for a plethora of veto points. This means that not only has it been difficult and quite tedious to arrive at a coordinated policy but also that every Land introduced its own measures, some more stringent than others. The result has been a certain degree of public exasperation. In a recent survey, more than half of respondents said they were annoyed at the measures that were “often contradictory.”

      To be sure, Angela Merkel cannot be held personally responsible for the dramatic deterioration of the situation once the second wave hit Germany with full force. A lot of time was lost in December in attempts to get the various political officials from Germany’s 16 Länder to agree on a common strategy. And even in the face of a potential disaster in early January, Merkel had to do a lot of convincing to get support for more restrictive measures.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Cultural Revolution

      Under the circumstances, Angela Merkel’s other accomplishments as well as her failures are bound to fall by the wayside. They shouldn’t. On one hand, Angela Merkel has dragged the Christian Democrats into the 21st century. The CDU used to be the party of “Kinder, Kirche, Küche” (children, church, kitchen). Politics were a men’s world for, as my neighbor, a woman, used to tell me, politics is a “dirty business” — and dirty businesses should be left to men.

      Angela Merkel dared to appoint a woman to the most male of all ministerial portfolios, defense. The German armed forces did not like her, despite the fact — as even Germany’s conservative flagship publication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has conceded — that she managed to substantially increase their budget as well as and their image. Today, that former defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, heads the European Commission, another novum. She was replaced by another woman, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who in 2018 succeeded Angela Merkel as the head of the CDU.

      Probably nothing exemplifies the cultural revolution Merkel set in motion than the question of sexual and gender identity. Those of us who grew up in the postwar period probably recall that once in a while, our parents would hint that somebody was a “175er.” This was in reference to Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code according to which homosexuality was a punishable offense. The paragraph goes back all the way to 1871, establishing that any sexual activity between two males (there was no formal mention of lesbians) was subject to criminal persecution and punishment.

      During the Nazi period, gays suffered from severe persecution, many of them ended up in concentration camps. After the war, the Federal Republic not only retained the paragraph; it also used the Nazis’ “pink lists” — in the camps, homosexuals were marked by a pink triangle on their prisoners’ shirts — to initiate some 100,000 proceedings against homosexuals. It was not until 1994 that the “gay paragraph” was finally abolished, not least because of East German insistence during the negotiations on reunification.

      More than 20 years and many gay parades later, in 2017, the German Bundestag voted on legalizing same-sex marriage. On the occasion, Angela Merkel allowed representatives to vote their conscience rather than following party discipline. Quite a few Christian Democrats came out in the support of the law, which was passed by a substantial majority, much to the chagrin of Germany’s conservatives. Some of them defected to the AfD given its vocal opposition to the law, which, as one of its leaders suggested, threatens to undermine Germany’s traditional values and harm society. Polls showed, however, that a substantial majority supported the law. In June 2017, 60% of men and more than 70% of women came out in favor of same-sex marriage across Germany.

      We Can Handle This

      Angela Merkel’s resolute position during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015-16 also comes out as a positive. In order to understand the enormity of the event, it might be useful to recall one of the great Lebenlügen (delusions) of the Federal Republic, the notion that Germany was “not a country of immigration.” Given the fact that by the 1980s, Germany was home to millions of guest workers and their families, many of whom had permanently settled in Germany, the notion ignored the reality on the ground. Yet it was not until 2001 that an expert commission of the German Bundestag came to the conclusion that the notion was “no longer tenable.” By 2015, a significant majority of Germans agreed with that statement, and in 2019, more than 70% of respondents agreed that in the future, Germany should accept as many refugees as in the past.

      This is quite remarkable, given the storm Angela Merkel provoked when in 2015 she cleared the way for welcoming a million refugees, many of them from war-torn Syria. Her main argument was that Germany is a strong country: “Wir schaffen das,” Merkel announced — “We can handle this.” The German public was not entirely convinced. Perhaps they remembered Merkel’s predecessor, Helmut Kohl, who in 1990 had promised that unification would lead to “blossoming landscapes” in the eastern part of the country. The reality, of course, was the opposite. The West German taxpayers would have to pay the bills for decades to come while in the east, resentment continued to grow only to erupt in substantial support for the AfD.

      Under the circumstances, German skepticism in 2015 was quite understandable. In early 2016, around 80% of the population expressed concern that the government had lost control over the refugee situation; among AfD supporters, it was virtually 100%. As expected, the radical right made the refugee crisis the central focus of their mobilization — a winning strategy, as the party’s success in subsequent elections demonstrated. But in the end, Merkel prevailed; early concerns that the refugee influx would lead to major social problems were largely proved wrong, and, in late 2018, a comfortable majority of Germany’s public agreed that the chancellor had done a good job with respect to her refugee policy.

      Embed from Getty Images

      With Angela Merkel, the CDU moved to the left — or so her critics have insisted and complained. Others have argued that the left-wing turn of the CDU is largely a myth. The reality is somewhere in between. Empirical studies suggest that in the aftermath of reunification, all major German parties gradually moved to the center. With reunification, Germany added millions of citizens from a socialist regime whose value system and views on major social issues, such as abortion and homosexuality, were considerably to the left of the dominant value system that prevailed in the western part of the country. As a result, the conservative ideational elements in the CDU got progressively weakened, provoking vocal protest from the party’s right wing. A study from 2017  (but based on interviews held before the refugee crisis of 2015) found that CDU members largely agreed. They saw their own party “distinctly to the left” of their own position and that way before Angela Merkel’s now-famous “Wir schaffen das.”

      Grey Spots

      Yet against all party-internal resistance and opposition, despite calls for her to hand in her resignation, Merkel once again prevailed — a remarkable feat in these turbulent times. Future historians are likely to consider Angela Merkel’s 15-year tenure in an overall positive light. To be sure, there are grey spots, such as Germany’s handling of the fallout of the financial crisis of 2007-08 and, more recently, Berlin’s intransigence with regard to Italian pleas for “Corona bonds” during the first wave of the pandemic.

      Another grey spot regards the question of gender equality. Officially, the European Union has been committed to gender mainstreaming since the mid-1990s. More often than not, the results are wide off the mark, particularly in Germany. To be sure, even here critics would concede that Angela Merkel has “contributed fundamentally to the recognition of women as leaders and decision-makers in Germany.”

      In other essential areas of gender politics, her record is rather dismal. Her government did little to nothing to narrow the pay gap between men and women or to do away with Germany’s “anachronistic tax system” that privileges married couples “as long as one of the two (usually the husband) has a high income and the other one (usually the wife) earns little or nothing.” And actual reforms, for instance regarding child care and parental leave, were less intended to promote gender equality than to enhance the position of the family, in line with traditional Christian Democratic doctrine.

      The record was equally dismal with regard to public life. As a semi-official account from late 2018 put online by the Federal Center for Political Education noted, in the course of Merkel’s tenure, the number of women in her cabinets progressively declined, from 40% in her first cabinet to 30% in her forth. At the same time, the CDU failed to attract new women members. In 2018, women made up around 25% of party ranks.

      Things were not any better with respect to the composition of Germany’s Bundestag. At the end of the red-Green coalition in 2005, the share of women MPs had been more than 40%. After the election of 2017, it had fallen to a bit more than 30%. In the Christian Democratic parliamentary group, women made up barely 20%. And although Angela Merkel appointed a woman as defense minister, the most important ministries — interior, foreign affairs and finance — remained firmly in the hands of men.

      This was to a large extent also true for Germany’s civil service. In 2020, 35% of top positions in the public sector were held by women. And, as the ministry for justice and consumer protection recently noted, “the higher up in the hierarchy, the lower the share of women.” But at least here, change is underway. By 2025, all senior positions are supposed to have closed the gender gap.

      Klimakanzlerin

      If Germany is a laggard with regard to gender equality, it has prided itself to be a leader when it comes to the environment. The reality, however, is somewhat different. In fact, when it comes to arguably the greatest global challenge, the fight against global warming and climate change, Angela Merkel has been a major disappointment.

      As a reminder: Angela Merkel entered office as a strong advocate of decisive action against climate change. In fact, in the years that followed, German media nicknamed her the “Klimakanzlerin” — climate chancellor. Yet over time, she gradually abandoned her convictions, caving in first to the demands of German’s powerful automobile sector and then to the coal industry. Germany continues to rely heavily on coal for the production of energy. To a significant extent, it is the environmentally most disastrous type of coal, lignite.

      Lignite power plants are among Europe’s worst polluters. Most of them operate in Germany and Poland. And while a number of EU countries, such as France, Italy and the Netherlands, have decided to stop coal-fired power production by or before 2030, Germany won’t phase out its coal plants until 2038. Mining lignite is an important sector in the southeastern part of former East Germany, in Lusatia, around the city of Cottbus. Electoral considerations, particularly given the AfD’s strength in that part of the country, of course have nothing to do with the Merkel government’s reluctance when it comes to coal. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Overall, Merkel’s climate policy has been suboptimal, to put it mildly. As a former environmental minister recently put it, for the government, political opportunism and convenience counted more than tackling an essential problem. That was before the pandemic hit. COVID-19 appears to have caused somewhat of a reconversion. By now, Angela Merkel has once again started to promote herself as the Klimakanzlerin. And for good reasons. COVID-19 has largely been associated with environmental destruction, the dramatic loss of biodiversity and global warming. Polls show that Germans are quite sensitive when it comes to these issues. A recent survey found around 85% of the German population not only concerned about these issues, but also willing to make lifestyle changes to “protect the climate.” Under the circumstances, Merkel’s return to her environmentalist roots is hardly surprising. It makes a lot of sense, politically speaking.

      Despite a vigorous 15-year resume as chancellor, it is now it is clear that COVID-19 will define how Angela Merkel will be judged once she leaves office and by how well Germany will master this challenge over the months to come. This might be unfair. After all, Merkel is what Americans call a “lame duck.” But, as Donald Trump so eloquently put it, it is what it is. The German government’s recent frantic attempts to regain control of a situation that has largely spun out of control are an admission of unpreparedness paired with incompetence and mismanagement paired with wishful thinking. In March 2020, Angela Merkel stated on national television that COVID-19 represented the “greatest challenge since the Second World War.” She was right.

      As long as Merkel holds Germany’s most powerful political position, she is in charge and ultimately bears responsibility. At the moment, a large majority of Germans have full confidence that once again, she will be at the top of her game and handle the challenge. It is to be hoped that their confidence is justified.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Amidst the Pandemic, Central and Eastern Europe Witnesses an Erosion of Democracy

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      Nearly a year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, its effects on people’s lives, countries’ economies and health care around the world are becoming clearer. In some Central and Eastern European countries, however, this pandemic has had repercussions in another crucial area: democracy. This begs the question of whether the COVID-19 pandemic is emboldening the rise of illiberal politics in certain parts of the region. Indeed, the US-based Freedom House concluded earlier this year that Hungary and Serbia are no longer democracies but are “in a ‘grey zone’ between democracies and pure autocracies.”

      One democratic process affected by the COVID-19 pandemic around the world was elections. Indeed, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, elections have been canceled or postponed in at least 67 nations around the globe. Central and Eastern Europe was no exception. Serbia’s parliamentary election, originally set for April 26, was postponed by two months even though it was boycotted by much of the opposition due to the steady decline of democracy and media freedom in the country, resulting in a turnout of less than 50%.

      The controversial election secured another term for President Aleksandar Vucic with over 60% of the vote, granting his Serbian Progressive Party 190 seats in the country’s 250-seat parliament. As a result of the election and in-person voting, while the rest of Europe is now in its second wave of the pandemic, Serbia is now in its third.

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      Leading up to the elections in Poland, the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party proposed a change to the constitution to postpone the election for two years due to the pandemic, automatically extending President Andrzej Duda’s term in office. In the end, elections were held in June and July, with Duda narrowly beating the opposition Civic Platform’s candidate.

      Beyond elections, the pandemic has been used to mask legal and constitutional changes in the region. In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s government first passed the Authorization Act during the first wave of the pandemic, effectively giving the prime minister the power to rule by decree. The government’s first action was to pass a law mandating that transgender people only be recognized by their sex at birth. The government also announced that disseminating “fake news” about the pandemic or the government’s response to it was a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

      As a result, although no one has yet been charged under the new laws, several people were arrested and detained after criticizing the government on social media, which some commentators likened to being picked up by the notorious black cars driven by the secret police during the communist era.

      In November, as the country entered its second wave of the pandemic, the Orban government announced the Second Authorization Act for a period of 90 days. The following day, proposed amendments to the constitution were announced that would make it mandatory for children to be raised amid “Christian cultural values,” defining the mother as female and the father as male, as well as prohibiting changing gender after birth. These amendments bar same-sex couples from adopting, but single parents can request an exemption through special ministerial permission.

      Additionally, one minute before midnight on the day before new curfew measures went into effect, the government proposed a change to the election law, making it impossible for coalitions to contest elections, effectively wiping out the opposition.

      Embed from Getty Images

      At the same time that Hungary adopted its first Authorization Act, Poland adopted the Act on Special Solutions Related to the Prevention, Counteracting and Combating of COVID-19, which was ultimately used by the Polish government and PiS to limit social dialogue. A few weeks later, the “Stop Abortion” bill was enacted by the Polish parliament. Already among the strictest abortion laws in Europe, the high court’s October ruling that it was unconstitutional to abort a fetus with congenital defects effectively baned all abortions, bar in the case of incest, rape or a danger to the mother’s health.

      This new ruling was met with mass protests around the country, even spreading to church services in the devoutly Catholic Poland and seeing as many as 100,000 people on the streets of the capital Warsaw. This attack on women’s health was also met by a push to leave the European treaty on violence against women, known as the Istanbul Convention, citing that it is “harmful” for children to be taught about gender in schools. Hungary refused to ratify the treaty in May, stating that it promotes “destructive gender ideologies” and “illegal migration.”

      It is likely that what the world is seeing in these countries is what Ozan Varol calls “stealth authoritarianism” that “serves as a way to protect and entrench power when direct repression is not a viable option,” with the ultimate goal of creating a one-party state. The pandemic seems to be helping authoritarian leaders to secure their grip on power. In Serbia, Vucic gained popularity during the first wave and, even after criticism from the opposition and supporters alike, Orban maintained his popularity in Hungary, as shown in a recent Závecz Research poll.

      Findings from interviews carried out as part of a project, Illiberal Turn, funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, suggest that while people were predominantly supportive of democracy in the months before the pandemic, some of those interviewed in Hungary, Poland and Serbia during the first wave in the spring seemed to have a change of heart, expressing more sympathies toward authoritarian forms of government. This trend is worrying, as it shows the potential effects that crisis can have on democratic values. These abuses of power in Central and Eastern Europe cannot be ignored. It is crucial to pay attention to how these times of crisis can further exacerbate the already existing illiberal tendencies across the region.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Why Does God Allow Miscarriage?

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      The Senate hearings on Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court did not sit well with American feminists. An ultra-conservative judge belonging to an ultra-conservative Catholic faith group vehemently opposed to abortion and anything gay was hardly a candidate one would expect feminists to endorse. Interestingly enough, feminists zeroed in on one particular aspect defining the candidate, the fact that she is a mother — and a working one at that — to a relatively large family: five of her own, two adopted. This fact provoked a prominent feminist to tweet, “It’s a very weird thing to watch these old creeps congratulate a handmaid on her clown car vagina.”

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      For those unfamiliar with the terms, the Urban Dictionary defines “clown car sex” as “the act of trying to place as many penises as possible into a single vagina like many clowns try to fit into one car somehow.” The term “handmaid” as used in the tweet presumably comes from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” where women of all statuses living under a totalitarian theocratic state (in the US Northeast and parts of the upper Midwest) “are stripped of their rights, forcing them to live out lives of servitude in a patriarchal society” ” and made “(through servitude and rape) to carry children for the powerful.”

      The link to Barrett is her presumed membership in a Catholic faith group that, according to ex-members, dominates the lives of its members and preaches the subjugation of women.

      Fertility Shaming

      The term, of course, is hardly new. As early as 2012, the conservative Trump convert, Mollie Hemingway, wrote a piece entitled “Fertility Shaming: ‘It’s A Vagina, Not A Clown Car.’” In it, the author noted that she lived in two fundamentally different worlds. Here, a culture where “large families are considered awesome. You’re not looked down on for being childless or having a smaller family — indeed, my folks only had three children — but large families are considered cool.” There (Washington, DC), a different environment where “large families are mocked or derided. You only have 11 children if you’re retarded.” The latter she referred to as “fertility shaming.”

      Hemingway points out the hypocrisy of those who promoted reproductive rights and, one might add, a woman’s right to choose, but only as long as it means “avoiding our fertility, and doing whatever it takes to not have kids (or more than one or two of them).” Ironically enough, her reference in the text is to Michelle Duggar, the Arkansas mother of “19 Kids and Counting,” who supposedly said “It’s a vagina, not a clown car.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Duggar, unlike Barrett, is not a Catholic. But both women obviously believe artificial (as opposed to natural) birth control methods are fundamentally frowned upon by God. I am not sure where they got that from the Bible, but then I’m not a theologian versed in the intricacies of Bible exegesis. In fact, I started my academic career at a Catholic university where I had a colleague with 11 children, in addition to a number of them who never made it. Initially, even the Duggars were not against birth control — until they saw the light and “vowed to leave how many kids they’d have in God’s hands.” Apparently, the Duggars’ conversion moment was triggered by a miscarriage following the birth of their first son. Duggar blamed herself for the miscarriage thinking that her use of the pill had caused the problem. It somehow never occurred to her that miscarriages are quite common, as are stillbirths. Her miscarriage was not an act of divine punishment but an act of nature, random and unpredictable.

      US statistics suggest that between 10% and 15% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage during the early months of gestation, while one in 160 birth are stillbirths. Research shows that “Miscarriage is the most common complication of pregnancy with 1 in 4 women experiencing at least 1 miscarriage during their reproductive lifetime.” A Swiss website claims that half of all fertilized egg cells end in a spontaneous abortion. Most “natural” abortions occur during the first three months of pregnancy. In a number of cases, women report several miscarriages. And as the age when a woman can become pregnant increases, the prevalence of miscarriage increases too. In fact, after the age of 40, the likelihood that pregnancy ends in miscarriage increases by 50% compared to a woman in her early 20s.

      A recent article in The New York Times recounts the story of a woman desperately trying to have a baby. In the process, she experiences three miscarriages within a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, studies show that the likelihood of a miscarriage after three previous miscarriages increases by 50%.

      What these stories imply is that miscarriages are a fact of life, a “natural” occurrence. They are one of these things that just happen, for no apparent reason. It’s the bad luck of the draw, similar to the fact that some people (such as Germany’s ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt) smoke all of their lives and live prosperously well into their late 80s, while others never touch a cigarette and yet die young of lung cancer. For those who believe that life has no particular meaning, that you get what you get, this is perfectly understandable, perhaps even acceptable.

      It Is What It Is

      For those, however, such as Europe’s dwindling number of true Catholics, and particularly American self-proclaimed Christians, it poses a fundamental problem. America’s “true believers” hold that life starts at conception. They also believe that its termination represents a crime, equivalent to murder in some circles. Unlike abortion, however, miscarriages cannot be blamed on human agency — unlike, for instance, global warming.

      This leaves only one alternative. The termination of human life via miscarriage must be the result of God’s will, similar to the way American Christians explain to themselves the rapid warming of the planet, the eradication of much of the planet’s ecosystem and the potential destruction of humanity. It is all part of God’s plan for humanity. It is, as one of the great sages of our time has observed, what it is.

      To be sure, this is a terrible simplification. And clearly not every American Christian subscribes to this logic. Far from it. At the same time, however, surveys suggest that many do; they certainly act as if they did. The reality is, there is nothing that would suggest that there is any necessity for this planet to survive as a home for intelligent beings. By now we know that over millions of years, this planet was populated by scores of creatures, ferocious and majestic, only to be wiped out by cataclysmic events. Their remnants can be found in museums all over the world, reminders of the fragility of life on Earth.

      The fact that more than 10% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage poses a fundamental challenge to the notion, so dear to Christians, that the termination of a pregnancy represents an abomination in the eyes of God, that life starts at conception and that there is a fundamental “right to life.” God obviously disagrees, otherwise he would not allow for the “natural” termination of the life of millions of fetuses every year. For believers in a merciful God, be they Christians or Muslims, this must be nothing short of frightening. It suggests that God might not be as merciful as they believe or, worse, that God could care less about the fate of humanity.

      Embed from Getty Images

      For non-believers, it is one more piece of confirmation that the existence of God is a myth, that human life is the result of a chain of processes based on trial and error, and that humanity might be nothing but the accidental, and highly destructive, byproduct of natural selection and evolution. We don’t know. For believers, it is all part of God’s plan, like earthquakes, pandemics and the extermination of whole nations.

      Fatally enough, this kind of thinking has failed to imbue us with humility and prudence. Today’s ruling class, from Trump to Johnson, from Bolsonaro to Putin, acts as if the destruction of the natural environment, the extinction of much of the planet’s species and rising average temperatures are of no consequence. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is credited with having noted that one day, the living might envy the dead. Khrushchev is said to have made the remark with regard to the threat of nuclear war.

      Today, other threats are much more urgent than nuclear war. Pandemics, global warming, the extinction of a large part of this planet’s flora and fauna are realities that suggest that human life in the decades to come will be confronted with the quite real prospect of extinction, be it because of intolerable climate conditions, the exhaustion of the planet’s freshwater resources or because of pandemics, similar to the plague in the Middle Ages, that wipe out large parts of humanity. Under the circumstances, the living might very well wish they had been among that 10% to 15% whose potential existence ended in miscarriage.

      Bigger Than Nuclear War

      For the likes of Barrett, Hemingway, Duggar and Simcha Fisher, a Catholic freelance writer and blogger with 10 children, these ideas are most likely heretical, detestable and pernicious to the max, given they prevent women from fulfilling their divinely-mandated destiny of motherhood. They tend to ignore the fact that their pursuit of a grand family is only possible because the vast majority of Americans don’t indulge in it. If everybody did it, the consequences would be disastrous.

      Take the case of a small country like Switzerland, which has a population of just over 8.6 million people. A large proportion of the country’s territory is covered by high mountains and several large lakes, areas that are largely uninhabitable. In 2016, there were roughly 3.8 million private households in the country. If each one of them had produced 10 children, within a few years, Switzerland’s population would increase by more than 30 million — roughly half that of France. Even the most pro-natalist representatives of the Swiss far right would consider this a nightmare scenario. And this despite the fact that Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world, with excellent health and social services.

      The consequences of unbridled fertility can daily be seen in the news: the treks of desperate refugees from largely Catholic Central American countries such as Honduras and El Salvador, seeking to make their way on foot to the southern border of the United States. Between 1960 and 2010, the population of Honduras more than quadrupled, reaching more than 8.5 million. And this in a country with rudimentary health care and no social services to speak of. The same is largely true for El Salvador.

      To be sure, over the past two decades, population growth in the two countries has dramatically declined, now approaching European levels. At the same time, the influence of the Catholic Church has considerably waned in the region, compensated by a dramatic upsurge in the number of evangelicals, which might to a certain extent explain the collapse in fertility rates. But by now, the damage is done, reflected, in part, by the steady stream of refugees from the region.

      President Donald Trump’s response was to freeze aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, thus further aggravating the situation in these countries. Earlier on, his administration, as Summer Brennan writes in Sierra, had already “stopped contributing to the United Nations Population Fund, the largest global supplier of contraceptives and reproductive services.”

      At the same time, the US named Valerie Huber to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. “Huber,” Brennan points out, is “a longtime advocate of abstinence until marriage, is a proponent of “natural” family planning — in other words, the rhythm method.” Now, if they could only stop God from allowing miscarriages and stillbirths, and prevent Catholic priests from sexually assaulting young boys, Donald Trump could find his place in the history books as the president who restored religion to its rightful place in the center of American life.  

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Femicide Continues to Plague Mexico

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      President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) won the 2018 election on a campaign of combating the underlying causes of the social ailments impacting Mexican society. He vowed to fight violence and narcotics trafficking by eliminating its root cause, poverty. His plan was summarized by his tagline, “hugs, not bullets.” AMLO has sought to be the voice of the marginalized and to end the endemic corruption in Mexican politics. In September, during his state of the union speech, he claimed that most crime was down under his administration, including kidnapping, robbery and femicide. His track record thus far, however, disproves his claims and leaves much to be desired, especially when it comes to violence against women.

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      On August 3, the president celebrated a victory over the arrest of one of Mexico’s most wanted criminals, Jose Antonio Yepez Ortiz, “El Marro,” the alleged leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel. That win was soon followed by the extradition from Spain of Emilio Lozoya, ex-chief of the state-owned oil company, PEMEX, on bribery and money laundering charges, which ultimately implicated ex-presidents and various congressmen.

      Gender-Based Violence

      While Lopez Obrador touted these examples as clear evidence of his administration’s success, he, like many populists in the region, believes that he can shape public opinion and reality solely through his own declarations, despite all the evidence to the contrary. However, on the heels of these so-called victories, a July government report captured a staggering statistic: 17,493 homicides in the first half of 2020, indicating a nearly 2% increase since last year, putting 2020 on track to be the deadliest year on Mexico’s record. 

      Among the record-breaking homicides figure lies a much greater policy failure to combat femicide — the murder of women based on their gender. Femicide is up 9.2% compared to the first half of 2019, totaling 489 deaths through June this year according to the Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection (SSPC). Femicide shot up by 36% alone from May to June. While violence against women has long been problematic in Mexico, COVID-19 lockdowns have only worsened the situation by forcing many victims into dangerous circumstances with their aggressors. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Budget cuts to federal and state programs due to the economic recession and diminishing tax revenues will likely make it harder to respond to domestic abuse calls and to prosecute femicides. Amid these extraordinary developments, AMLO’s response so far has been to downplay the chronic nature of gender-based violence in Mexico. 

      Emergency calls show just how endemic the violence really is. Through the end of July, the emergency helpline had received 154,610 calls reporting gender violence incidents, up 47% from 2019, according to the SSCP. AMLO has claimed in a press conference that 90% of these calls are “false.” While experts agree many of the calls are “inadmissible” or “unfounded,” due to poor connections, the victims hanging up and even prank calls, inadmissible calls don’t exceed 77%.

      The president is attempting to use the inadmissibility argument to refute the verified emergency call statistics of his own government. The figures also cannot account for the many victims who do not contact authorities out of fear. According to an independent NGO, 9 out of 10 women do not report gender-based violence in Mexico. Rather than providing compassion and answers to victims, the president has selfishly claimed that his opponents are using femicide statistics for political attacks.

      Economic Impacts

      Beyond the physical trauma, domestic and state abuse against women can also have profound effects on women’s economic well-being. According to a 2018 report by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (INEGI), over 19 million women reported being victims of domestic abuse, with 64% of incidents leading to severe violence. As a result, each victim lost an average of 30 days of paid and 28 days of unpaid work annually. INEGI estimates that between October 2015 and October 2016, the total cost of lost income by women who missed work due to domestic violence amounted to 4.4 billion pesos ($184 million).

      These losses often perpetuate women’s dependence on their aggressors, worsening what already are unequal economic circumstances. According to the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Gender Development Index, women on average earn $11,254 per year, less than half of men, who make $24,286. More women rely on informal employment, with 56.6% working in the informal sector (excluding agriculture) compared to 48.4% of men. The Mexican Social Security Institute noted that women only comprise 38% of social security beneficiaries. This economic and labor inequality has meant that women have been disproportionately hit by the COVID-19 lockdowns, rising unemployment and lack of access to social security benefits. 

      AMLO has failed to adequately respond to the issue, and the situation is likely to worsen unless the government makes a concerted effort. In August, a reporter confronted the president about a June report showing a cut of 37.5 million pesos to the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women. After the president’s denial, the government released a statement saying that no such cuts would be made because fighting gender violence was an essential task.

      However, the response still falls well short of a meaningful attempt to stamp out the endemic issues in the criminal system and within Mexican machismo culture at large. The president’s austerity measures cannot come at the expense of rising femicide rates and violence against women throughout the country. Rather, a July report from the UNDP recommends that the government take on more debt to spend on protecting the most vulnerable groups from the socio-economic effects of the pandemic.

      As endemic as femicide is in Mexico — it trails only Brazil’s total number of cases in Latin America — gender-based violence is a pandemic that is claiming the lives of countless victims across the hemisphere. According to the United Nations’ Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, the countries with the highest rate of femicide per 100,000 women are: El Salvador (6.8), Honduras (5.1), Bolivia (2.3), Guatemala (2.0) and the Dominican Republic (1.9). Mexico’s rate of femicide is 1.4, which suggests that in addition to national measures taken to halt this pandemic, Latin America as a region has much work to do to protect the well-being of half of its citizens. 

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      No Place for Naivety in Afghan Peace Talks

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      In recent years, there has been widespread talk in the media about how much the Taliban has changed. First, it has been argued that the Taliban’s ideological view has been adjusted, which created the impression that the armed group no longer has a problem with human rights or gender equality. Second, it has been suggested that the Taliban has become more in tune with the transformation taking place in Afghanistan over the past two decades. However, from all available evidence, we see that the Taliban’s vision remains inflexible and exclusionary. This approach to equality in political rights will undermine the peace process.

      On September 12, the intra-Afghan talks between the Afghan government delegation and the Taliban officially started in Qatar’s capital, Doha. After two weeks of bargaining, negotiations are yet to finalize the procedural rules for these talks. There is disagreement over two issues. First, the Taliban insists that the basis for the intra-Afghan talks should be the group’s deal with the United States, signed in Doha on February 29. Second, the Taliban insist that the framework for the resolution of disagreements should be based only on Hanafi jurisprudence of Islam.

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      Given the Taliban’s sectarian past vis-à-vis the Shia community, widespread concerns have been raised that the group may pursue exclusionary policies. This issue became serious when the Taliban delegation opposed mentioning the name of the Shia branch of Islam. Abdul Salam Hanafi, a member of the Taliban team in Qatar, explained that the choice was made in favor of the Hanafi religion in order to resolve differences in the interpretation of Islamic texts and that “this does not mean that we should discriminate against our Shia brothers.” Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa, a member of the Taliban’s negotiating team, said that they would discuss the “personal status, ritual and rites” of the Shia during talks regarding the Afghan Constitution.

      Regime of Discrimination

      The question arises as to why only one branch of Islam is used as a source of interpretation or as a framework for resolving disagreements when Afghanistan is a diverse country, home to various branches of the Islamic faith as well as non-Muslim communities. Do they only have rights to their religious tradition and practices, or do they also have political rights?

      Given the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic texts and sharia law, their approach became a source of concern for Sunnis as well, including the Hanafi, whose own interpretation differs from that of the Taliban, which leaves no place for moderate Sunnis. Their interpretation of Islam is fundamentally in opposition to human rights, freedom of speech and civil liberties.

      Studies have shown that religious intolerance leads to political, cultural and economic discrimination when religion is considered as the basis for political legitimacy in government. Equating religion with political doctrine or using it as a guide for social and cultural activities jeopardizes civil liberties and citizenship, leading to discriminatory practices. Mohammad Reza Nikfar, a philosopher who has written extensively about religious discrimination, used the term “regime-e tabeez” to describe Iran, which in Persian means “regime of discrimination.” A regime of discrimination not only legalizes inequality in society, but the government sees its own discriminating practices as a divine mission.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Such a regime creates discriminatory distinctions. While implementing such discrepancies, the regime formulates specific principles of behavior, speech acts and institutions. This procedure is based on a regime of truth that defines what is right and wrong or who deserves punishment and deprivation. According to Nikfar’s theory, a regime of discrimination based on religion resembles an Orwellian political system.

      The history of the Taliban regime falls squarely in this category. Taliban ideology is rooted in violent Salafism, and the group wants to establish a “puritanical Islamic state.” The Taliban’s leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has repeatedly called for a “pure Islamic government” — the Islamic Emirate. In principle, the Taliban, like most other extremist groups, do not believe in religious pluralism. Afghanistan is a country of Islamic mysticism, but the Taliban have no respect for either mysticism or philosophy. This makes it difficult for Sunnis, and impossible for the Shia, to have a different interpretation of Islam and Islamic law.

      During Taliban rule, between 1996 and 2001, Afghanistan’s Hindus and Sikhs were ordered to wear yellow armbands to be identifiable from other citizens. At the time, no one was considered a citizen with political rights; instead, the Taliban treated people as subjects and followers. Girls and women were barred from going to school and working. During the regime, women were executed in public spaces such as sports stadiums and are still being shot after being found guilty by the Taliban’s religious tribunals.

      Despite many challenges, the situation for women has significantly improved in the past two decades. Today, millions more girls are in school, and women hold high positions within the government and play a significant role in the country’s political process. Thus, the Taliban’s strict religious approach toward women’s rights is a significant concern in the negotiations, with the group’s ambiguity and evasion on the question of women’s rights and political rights of minorities suggesting they may continue to pursue an exclusionary approach.

      Sociologically, the Taliban’s perception of Afghanistan is based on a tribal mindset, with views on Afghan society and culture rooted in the social ecosystem of a village setting. This lack of cultural capital based on a narrow local perspective cannot bring peace and stability because it fails to acknowledge the cultural plurality of Afghan society. A political philosophy based on tribal village structures cannot successfully govern over a diverse country. The Taliban emphasizes “Afghan values,” but in reality, these are indefinable. A book by Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former senior Taliban official, is a prime example of the Taliban’s perspective, which sees Afghanistan as a homogeneous and tribal society — as he has experienced it.

      The Taliban’s lack of a broad and inclusive view of Afghan society is not just a sign of their ignorance, but it describes a political outlook that could lead to a strategy of cultural violence and, subsequently, physical elimination. To control the diverse voices of Afghan society, the Taliban apply a highly centralized political system presided over by an unelected leader whose legitimacy stems from religion. In this case, the leader has absolute power. However, as the 19th-century historian, John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton, warned, it is clear that absolute power brings absolute evil and corruption. The Taliban’s worldview, by default, would lead to locking the society in an old, rusty box of religious extremism, which would render a durable peace a near-impossibility.

      Challenging Circumstances

      Focusing on civilian causality is peace talks is an urgent issue. Naeem Wardak, a spokesman for the Taliban’s office in Qatar, said that the Taliban had killed “no civilians.” However, a UN report attributed 43% of the 1,282 civilians killed and 2,176 injured between January 1 and June 30 this year to the Taliban, 23% to the Afghan national security forces, with the rest of attributed to other actors such as the Islamic State. Some Taliban commanders publicly threaten civilians with mass killings. One of them, Mullah Niazi, speaks with pride and joy about killing civilians. He explains how he will kill Hazaras, a predominantly Shia ethnic minority, and burn down their houses one by one.

      Afghanistan is on the verge of a monumental shift. So far, the Taliban failed to show their commitment to end the violence and support equality and political rights of each Afghan, regardless of their religious and ethnic background. Any naive or negligent decision during the peace negotiations can lead the country into darkness and violence. But at the same time, the inter-Afghan dialogue is a significant opportunity to end the war and secure lasting peace. Both sides have to take an inclusive approach, respect human rights and accept equal political rights for all Afghan citizens regardless of their gender and ethnic background.  

      The current intra-Afghan negotiations are taking place in challenging circumstances. The government negotiating team is working under pressure from foreign powers and domestic circles as the Taliban continue to attack Afghan security forces. This is dangerous for the peace process.

      The international community and regional countries can play a significant role in encouraging both sides to reduce violence and recognize socio-cultural diversity, respect human rights and gender equality, and avoid creating a discriminatory political regime. Any exclusionary approach will increase distrust and will delegitimize the current peace talks. Violence should never be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations as it will severely undermine the peace process.

      *[The author is one of the investigators on the Carnegie Corporation of New York-funded project “Assessing the impact of external actors in the Syria and Afghan proxy wars” (Grant number: G-18-55949) at Deakin University, Australia.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      America’s War on Abortion

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      Despite the World Health Organization (WHO) releasing a statement earlier this year articulating that, “services related to reproductive health are considered to be part of essential services during the COVID-19 outbreak,” legislators in some US states have been making relentless efforts to declare abortion services as non-essential during the pandemic. Lawmakers in Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Iowa are having to contest extensive lawsuits in connection with the issue.

      On March 23, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked all licensed health care professionals and facilities, including abortion providers, to comply with the executive order issued by Governor Greg Abbott that stated that all surgeries and procedures that are not medically necessary to correct a serious condition or preserve life will be postponed. Thus, all procedural abortions in the state of Texas were banned amid the COVID-19 outbreak to conserve medical resources. After a union of abortion-rights groups, including Planned Parenthood, sued the state of Texas over this temporary yet extremely restrictive measure, the bans were partially lifted, with abortions resuming again at the end of April.

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      According to Marie Stopes International, the suspension of services could lead to anywhere between 1.2 million and 2.7 million unsafe abortions during the pandemic across the 37 countries where the charity operates. A large part of these will occur in the United States, owing to a lack of safe abortion facilities. Thus, the uproar caused by the US restrictions has breathed new life into the standoff between pro-life and pro-choice advocates, an argument the relevance of which has not diminished with time.

      May 15, 2019,was a decisive and divisive date for women in the United States, particularly in the state of Alabama, which saw the passing of the Alabama Human Life Protection Act. Under this law, women who undergo an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy can be held criminally culpable or civilly liable for homicide. The act bears only two exceptions: if the fetus has a lethal anomaly or if the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother’s life. Since the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973, this is the first time abortion is being criminalized in the US. The passing of the act has triggered a domino effect, opening the availability of abortion up for debate in several states. In Georgia, Ohio, Louisiana and Missouri, blanket bans on abortion have been passed.

      Of the 27 Republicans in the Alabama Senate, 25 of those who voted the act through were white men. As Nahanni Fontaine, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, Canada, tweeted, “These 25 men, who will never be pregnant, just legislated more rights to rapists than to women, girls & victims of rape/incest.”

      Hundreds of pro-choice demonstrators marched to the Alabama Capitol to protest the bill, with slogans like “My Body, My Choice!” and “Vote Them Out!” Then-Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg vocalized their opposition to the passage of the act. Celebrities like Jameela Jamil, Ashley Judd, Amber Tamblyn and Busy Philipps talked about their own abortion stories as an act of protest. Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Sophie Turner and Emma Watson have also spoken out against the bans. Even Tomi Lahren, a conservative commentator, has voiced her opinion against the ban, calling it “too restrictive.” The postulate that “Men shouldn’t be making laws about women’s bodies” flooded the internet.

      Pro-Life?

      On the other side of the argument, pro-life supporters think that the 6-week-old embryo is a living being and that aborting it is murder — even in the cases of incest and rape. Often, religion is used to justify such ideology. The main argument that pro-lifers bring to the table is that because at six weeks of gestation the fetus inside its mother’s womb has a heartbeat, it must be recognized as a human being.

      In 2015, 89% of all abortions in the United States happened during the first trimester, prior to week 13 of gestation. During this period of time, the fertilized zygote is generally attached to the wall of the mother’s uterus through the placenta. At this stage, the embryo is incapable of surviving independently from its mother. Hence, the embryo — which becomes a fetus at seven weeks gestation — cannot be considered an entity in itself.

      Pro-life advocates go on to say that adoption is an alternative to abortion and also highlight the fact that abortions may result in medical complications later in life. However, more than 60% of children in foster care spend two to five years, and 20% spend five or more years, in the system before being adopted. Some never do. This can lead to issues like a greater vulnerability to depression, obesity and anxiety. Furthermore, new research shows that only about 6% of children passing out of foster care have actually finished college and less than half are employed at the age of 23.

      When it comes to the safety of abortions, a study by the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health shows that major complications in abortion procedures are rare, occurring in less than a quarter of 1% of procedures, which is safer than having a wisdom tooth removed. Abortions performed in a clinical environment are safe. However, that is precisely what these acts are denying women.

      In the case of incest or rape, pro-life advocates are vocal about punishing the perpetrator. However, Republican Congressman Steve King has defended the blanket bans by saying, “What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled out anyone who was a product of rape or incest?” He went on to ask: “Would there be any population of the world left if we did that? Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages that happened throughout all these different nations, I know that I can’t say that I was not a part of a product of that.” The fact that the birth of a child is a physical burden carried out by women, not men, is glaringly absent from this line of thought.

      Embed from Getty Images

      What legislators seem to be impervious to is that rapists continue to walk free while women are made to carry their children. Nearly 3 million, or 2.4% of American women, experience rape-related pregnancy in their lifetime. However, for every 1,000 sexual assaults that take place in America, 995 perpetrators walk free. According to a CNN investigation, 25 law enforcement agencies in 14 states were found to be destroying rape kits in cases that could still go to trial.

      The American justice system is currently incapable of delivering justice to women. No minor — like the 11-year-old rape victim from Ohio — must be forced to carry her rapist’s child to term. Moreover, in cases of incest-related rape, the child born out of the union can suffer various mental and physical deficiencies. Children born to close relatives often suffer from being more prone to recessive genetic diseases, reduced fertility, heart defects, cleft palates, fluctuating asymmetry and loss of immune system function.

      Conservatives insist that women must be responsible enough to use contraception and not use abortion as an alternative. A Gallup poll shows that at least 78% of all American adults who are opposed to abortion are also pro-birth control. However, between 2011 and 2013, 43% of adolescent females and 57% of adolescent males in the US did not receive information about birth control before they had sex for the first time.

      There is a lack of sex education at the primary and high school levels, and women are expected to be aware of contraceptives in a system that doesn’t teach preventive measures in the first place. Moreover, in 2014, 51% of abortion patients were using a contraceptive method in the month they became pregnant, and this goes to prove that contraception does not always stop conception, especially in cases where people are ill-informed about its use.

      A Nightmare for Women

      The deeper one looks into the issue, the clearer it becomes that pro-life advocates are not really saving lives. They are more simply anti-women. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act states that if a woman does undergo an abortion, the doctor carrying out the procedure could go to jail for up to 99 years — a class-A felony charge.

      The ban will disproportionately affect racial minorities. For example, some 36% of abortions are performed on African American women, who make up just 13% of the population. In Georgia, while African Americans constitute 32.2% of the population, they account for 62.4% of all abortions. Policymakers are conscious of this.

      The bill also fails to address the crucial question of who will provide the basic necessities that a child needs to survive. In the US, the average cost of raising a child up to the age of 18, excluding college education, is $233,610. However, 49% of all abortion patients in the United States of America live below the poverty line, with an annual income of less than $11,770. Childbirth costs for many uninsured Americans can easily extend to over $30,000.

      Furthermore, in 2017, a total of 194,377 children were born to women aged between 15 and 19 — a rate of 18.8 per 1,000 women in this age group, a record low. The states of Mississippi and Louisiana, where attempts have been made to criminalize abortion, rank among the first six states with the highest teenage pregnancy rates. The expenses of having an unplanned child become insurmountable for many of these women.

      But making abortions illegal will not stop them from taking place. In 2017, over 6,000 abortions were provided in Alabama. This is despite the fact that the number of abortion clinics had been reduced to just five and that some people had to drive hundreds of miles to get to one. In the state of Georgia, 27,453 abortions were carried out in  2017, 8,706 in Louisiana, 20,893 in Ohio, 3,903 in Missouri and 2,594 in Mississippi. It is unrealistic to suggest that all these women will decide to keep the baby just because of the change in the law.

      Baby Lives Matter

      The only change Alabama’s new law will bring about is in the methods women will use to secure an abortion. In countries where abortion is already criminalized, non-clinical and illegal abortions still cause about 8 to 11% of all maternal deaths. America may soon be no different. Women may be forced to seek help online, where they receive suggestions such as injecting themselves with unknown drugs, falling down the stairs and other horrific solutions.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As the Alabama abortion laws remain blocked by a federal judge, Americans are shadowed by uncertainty with respect to their right to abortion. With the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg earlier this week, the right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade comes under threat of a possible conservative majority on the court.

      Following  President Donald Trump’s termination of America’s relationship with the WHO, the US is under no obligation to adhere to the prospects of abortion being an essential service. Despite retaliation from several reproductive rights groups and national medical associations including the American Medical Association, the Trump campaign is selling baby onesies with the slogan “Baby Lives Matter.”

      These bans, though legally restricted to the US, affect women all over the world as they affect any progress toward gender equality and create general disagreement on the issue. According to Marie Stopes International, unless efforts are made to acknowledge the essential nature of reproductive health, 9.5 million women across the world could lose access to contraception, causing up to 3 million unwanted pregnancies and, in turn, between 1.2 million and 2.7 million unsafe abortions and 11,000 pregnancy-related deaths. Considering the current state of affairs around abortion in the US, it is safe to say that a large portion of these figures will be attributed to America.

      Amid deepening economic, social and health care crises spurred on by the global pandemic, the debate over reproductive rights will affect women the world over. When it comes to abortion, laws around it must be written by women, for women. America must listen to its women, who must retain their right to choose, especially during these trying times.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Shamima Begum: The Sensitive Case of IS Returnees

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      Born in the UK to Bangladeshi parents, Shamima Begum left London as a 15-year-old in 2015. Using her British passport, she traveled to Turkey with two of her friends from school. From there, Begum and her friends crossed into Syria, where they met their Islamic State (IS) contacts. While in Syria, Begum married an IS fighter. On February 19 this year, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission had stripped Begum of her citizenship as she was deemed to be a national security threat. On July 16, however, UK authorities granted this now adult British woman, who had joined a terrorist group as a teenager four years earlier, the right to return to Britain to challenge the UK government’s removal of her citizenship.

      The commission ruled that the decision to revoke Begum’s British citizenship did not render her stateless as, by default, the United Kingdom also considered her a Bangladeshi citizen “by descent.” However, the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it did not consider her as a citizen of that country. A statement released by Begum’s British lawyers argued that she indeed had never visited Bangladesh, nor had she ever applied for dual nationality.

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      In the meantime, the press has chastised Begum, who remains a detainee in a camp operated by ethnic Kurdish militias in northern Syria, for making controversial statements such and saying that seeing her first severed head did not faze her “at all” and suggesting that people should “have sympathy” toward her for everything she has been through.

      Why Women?

      England’s Court of Appeal, in turn, unanimously agreed that Begum should be granted the right to have a fair and effective appeal of the decision to strip her of her citizenship, but only if she is permitted to come back to Britain. Of course, that does not guarantee the reinstatement of her citizenship rights, just that she has a right to present her case in person. Regardless of the legal wrangling and the debate about the legality that her case has sparked, this example sheds some light on the issue of contextualizing female IS supporters and terrorists and the legality of stripping Western-born suspects of their European or North American citizenship.

      There has been some academic discussion of why women, especially young women, who were born, raised and educated in the West, migrate to IS-held territory and join terrorist groups, leaving behind family, friends and a way of life while abandoning liberal values and opportunities that countries such as the UK offer them. It is difficult to ascertain whether a particular female, such as Shamima Begum, was a victim of IS, an active supporter or both. The widely circulated stories of “jihadi brides” have projected an image of confused and naïve girls and women traveling to join the Islamic State. While certain dynamics lured a number of females to IS-held territories, many went of their own free will. Yet it is highly debatable to what extent a 15-year-old understands the realities of this extremist group.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Muslim women have migrated to IS-held areas for a multitude of reasons, including the romantic ideal of marrying a “lion” — a supposedly brave and noble warrior — looking for an adventure and contributing to the establishment of an Islamic “caliphate” regulated by strict enforcement of Sharia law. The sense that joining the Islamic State empowers people to live meaningful lives draws many of the migrant women. One study suggests that besides issues of belonging and identity — and a skewed interpretation of Islam — it is, in the case of young women like Begum, online social networks that appeared to be the primary venue and driving factor for radicalization. It turns out that the vast majority of foreign women who traveled to Syria and Iraq served IS primarily as one of several housewives or sex slaves.

      It is only by understanding the motivations and experiences of those who have gone to fight abroad that governments can prevent the recruitment of another generation of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. The enemies of the Islamic State have ostensibly defeated the group in the Middle East, yet unknown numbers of surviving IS fighters have found the means to relocate to Afghanistan. Permutations of IS and other extremist groups are also active in many African countries like Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria and  Somalia, among others. Aside from Afghanistan, other places in South Asia are not immune.

      Displaced Burden

      The UK, US and some other countries have chosen to prevent the return of foreign fighters by revoking their citizenship. Although such actions may prevent the return of foreign fighters in the short term, they do not solve the problem and may also be illegal under both national and international laws. In several instances, this will simply displace the burden and force weakened states such as Syria and Iraq to deal with the consequences of radicalization. It may also instill further grievances and act as a trigger for radicalization into surviving Western-born radicals who may plot terrorist attacks against Western targets.

      In certain cases, citizenship revocation has led to concerns over statelessness. Rendering an individual stateless runs against Western legal principles and is contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In several legal systems, there is a lack of sufficient evidence to prosecute female returnees because of their domestic roles in Syria and Iraq. Another challenge associated with prosecutions of foreign fighters lies with demonstrating intent. This applies both to the intent of the actions committed while in the war zone and the intent of travel for aspiring foreign fighters. There is also an argument that many such individuals, especially the juveniles, were victims of human trafficking.

      A more fruitful approach would be to allow a panel of experts to determine whether an individual returning to the home country is dangerous or disillusioned. The prime example of this approach is Denmark, which has already implemented assessment protocols that allow authorities to determine the individual circumstances for each returnee. Based on the results of such screenings, Danish police, together with social services, develop a plan of action for each returnee. Together, they decide whether a returnee is imprisoned, placed in a rehabilitation program or is assigned a combination of both approaches. It is extremely difficult to separate a victim from a perpetrator, and the boundaries can be particularly murky for foreign fighters.

      *[Gulf State Analytics is a partner organization of Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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