The Jim Bakker Show

Food poisoning kills woman and child, hits hundreds at Iraqi camp

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – A woman and a child died and hundreds fell ill in a mass outbreak of food poisoning at a camp for displaced people east of the Iraqi city of Mosul, officials said.

More than 300 people were hospitalized after breaking their Ramadan fast with an iftar meal on Monday night, aid groups told Reuters.

Many started vomiting and some fainted after eating rice, chicken, yogurt and soup, said Iraqi lawmaker Zahed Khatoun, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s committee for displaced people.

“It is tragic that this happened to people who have gone through so much,” said Andrej Mahecic, from the U.N.’s refugee agency UNHCR, which runs the camp and 12 others in the war-torn area with Iraqi authorities.

Many of the camp residents had fled fighting around Mosul as Iraqi government forces and their allies press an offensive to push Islamic State militants out of the northern city.

The International Organization for Migration said a Qatari aid group had paid a local restaurant to provide the food for the meal, though that was not confirmed by other agencies.

“I don’t know the name of the restaurant, but that’s what our person on the site is reporting today,” IOM spokesman Joel Millman said in Geneva.

“We are told 312 were hospitalized … one child and one adult woman we’re told died,” he added.

The camp in al-Khazer, on the road linking Mosul and Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, houses 6,300 people, the UNHCR said.

About 800,000 people, more than a third of the pre-war population of Mosul, have already fled the city, seeking refuge with friends and relatives or in camps.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

World War Two Rosies celebrated on U.S. day of recognition

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (L) laughs with, (L-R) Marian Wynn, Agnes Moore, Marian Sousa and Phyllis Gould, women who worked during World War II, at the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., March 31, 2014. Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo/DOD/Handout via REUTERS

By Lisa Fernandez

RICHMOND, Calif. (Reuters) – They welded pipes. They drew blueprints. And, of course, they fastened munitions and machine parts together with rivets.

Now, seven decades after World War Two ended, a surviving handful of the women who marched into factories and shipyards, redefining workplace gender roles to help keep America’s military assembly lines running, were honored on Tuesday in the country’s first official National Rosie the Riveter Day.

Eleven Rosies, all in their 90s, were feted with speeches and a U.S. Senate resolution at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, which opened in 2000 just north of San Francisco in Richmond, California.

“Without these amazing ladies, we wouldn’t have won the war,” Kelli English, a park interpreter told a news conference on Tuesday.

The women wore red, polka-dotted blouses and were treated to the planting of a rose bush at the park’s museum in their honor.

“Well it’s about time,” honoree Marian Sousa, 91, said in an interview ahead of the ceremony. “It shows that women are not only capable now, but they were capable then.”

Sousa, a resident of El Sobrante, California, worked as a “draftsman” creating blueprints for warships at the Kaiser Shipyard during the 1940s.

Her sister, Phyllis Gould, 95, and fellow Rosie worker Anna “Mae” Krier, 91, of Levittown, Pennsylvania, led the campaign pushing for a national day of recognition for the last few years.

“This is big,” Gould said in an interview on Monday.

Gould, who worked as a Navy-certified welder at the Kaiser-Richmond shipyards during the war, said it irks her that her slice of history is often overlooked.

Krier flew to Washington for a separate but related event attended by Senator Bob Casey, of Pennsylvania, a chief sponsor of the Rosie resolution, and other members of Congress.

Facing a labor shortage as many able-bodied males joined the U.S. Armed Forces between 1940 and 1945, America’s industrial arsenal turned to women to help fill jobs previously reserved strictly for men to produce ships, planes, munitions and other war supplies.

The share of U.S. jobs occupied by women grew from 27 percent to 37 percent during the war years, with nearly one in four married women working outside the home by 1945, according to the National Park Service.

It is unclear how many Rosies are still living today.

The Senate resolution pays tribute to 16 million women it says worked or volunteered for the U.S. war effort, including many who toiled for the American Red Cross, hospitals, rationing boards and other non-factory settings.

The phenomenon was captured in the iconic “We Can Do It!” posters from the era, picturing a determined-looking woman in blue factory togs, her hair swept back in a red scarf, rolling up a sleeve to show off her biceps.

Marian Wynn, 91, a former welder now living in Fairfield, California, agreed the honor was long overdue.

“I think we deserve it,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler and Andrew Hay)

Israel’s women combat soldiers on frontline of battle for equality

A female Israeli soldier from the Haraam artillery battalion takes part in a training session in Krav Maga, an Israeli self-defence technique, at a military base in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Nir Elias

By Yuval Ben-David

ISRAELI MILITARY BASE, Golan Heights(Reuters) – Not far from the Syrian border, two Israeli soldiers – a man and a woman – faced off in a training session of Krav Maga, an Israeli self-defense technique.

“I want you to be aggressive, give him the fight of his life,” physical education officer Lotem Stapleton urged the woman, a soldier in the Haraam artillery battalion, the Israeli military’s longest-running mixed-gender combat battalion.

As the world marks International Women’s Day on Wednesday, whose theme this year focuses on “women in the changing world of work”, the Israeli military says it is ahead of the curve in providing combat roles for female soldiers.

At an army base – which under military censorship rules could not be identified – in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Stapleton shouted encouragement at a pack of 13 soldiers who confronted a stream of “enemy combatants” in a training circuit.

“Today, 85 percent of (combat) positions are open to women. We are also talking about opening more and more positions,” Stapleton said.

The Haraam battalion began accepting women in 2000. Overall, female soldiers now make up 7 percent of the fighting ranks in the Israeli military, where men and women are conscripted at the age of 18.

Men serve for three years and women for two. Israel’s Arab citizens and ultra-Orthodox Jewish community are largely exempted from military service.

“I think that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is very advanced by giving women equal opportunities,” Lieutenant-Colonel Oshrat Bachar, an adviser to the office of the chief of staff on gender issues, told Reuters at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

“I believe that we are much more advanced than other armies in the world because (service) is mandatory and of course because we believe in equal rights,” she said.

Rachel Fenta, a female combatant in the Haraam battalion, said she spent a year sitting at a desk before she became determined to join a fighting unit.

“I wanted to test my limits,” she said.

Matan Paull, a commanding officer in the battalion, said female combatants were generally more creative and mentally flexible than their male counterparts. But he said the women tended to get injured more easily.

Mai Ofir, another female member of the unit, would agree.

“Our bodies aren’t built the same,” she said. “But just as a guy can shoot a rocket, so can a woman.”

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Alison Williams)

Women in U.S. plan to stay off the job, rally in anti-Trump protests

People listen to speakers in the rain at a rally for International Women's Day in Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 5, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

By Peter A Szekely

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Women in the United States plan to use International Women’s Day on Wednesday to stay off the job and stage demonstrations across the country in an effort to seize on the momentum built from the massive marches held a day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

On “A Day Without a Woman,” those who are able to do so will stay away from work or school, much as immigrants did on Feb. 16 to protest Trump’s immigration policies.

All are part of the series of anti-Trump demonstrations that have taken place since the day after his Nov. 8 election.

Objectives of Wednesday’s events include calling attention to the gender pay gap in which women trail men, and deregulating reproductive rights.

“For years and years, March 8 has been International Women’s Day, and it has been a happy, happy day, which is fine,” said Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. “But the political climate that we find ourselves in right now requires us to have political power.”

Demonstrations will target a Trump “gag order” that bars foreign health providers receiving U.S. funds from raising abortion as an option, O’Neill said.

Early Wednesday morning, Trump urged others via his personal Twitter account to join him in honoring the critical role of women in America and around the world.

“I have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy,” the Republican president wrote (@realDonaldTrump).

Trump has been heavily criticized for his inflammatory comments when discussing women, including his boast in a 2005 video about grabbing women by the genitals, and referring to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as a “nasty woman” during a presidential debate.

American women on average earn 79 cents for every $1 that men make, and African-American and Latina women make even less, O’Neill said. Since women account for two-thirds of all minimum wage workers, lifting the hourly wage would significantly narrow the pay gap, she said.

The minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 at the federal level since 2009, although it is higher in many states.

Organizers are attempting to repeat tactics from the Jan. 21 women’s march on Washington and other cities that came together largely through social media.

Women make up 47 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force. If all of them stayed out of work for the day, it would knock almost $21 billion of the country’s gross domestic product, the liberal leaning Center for American Progress estimated.

Organizers, however, realize that many women lack the motivation or cannot afford to take a day off and are urging women to limit their shopping to female-owned businesses or to wear red.

Several schools, including at least two sizeable school districts in Virginia and North Carolina, have canceled classes because a large number of teachers requested the day off.

Rallies are planned in cities across the country, including Washington, New York, Atlanta, St. Petersburg, Florida, Chicago, San Francisco and Berkeley, California.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Lisa Shumaker)

Some U.S. schools to close Wednesday as women request day off to protest

(Reuters) – At least two U.S. school districts have announced plans to close on Wednesday in anticipation of staff shortages for the nationwide “Day Without A Woman” strike.

The one-day protest, which is being held in conjunction with International Women’s Day, is intended to draw attention to the plight of women in the workplace who on average are paid less than men.

The protest is already affecting dozens of schools, which are heavily staffed by women. The strike organizers include some of the planners of the Jan. 21 women’s march on Washington and other U.S. cities.

In Alexandria, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., Superintendent of Schools Alvin Crawley said classes for the entire district, which serves more than 15,000 students, would be canceled on Wednesday after 300 teachers and other staff members asked to have the day off.

“The decision is based solely on our ability to provide sufficient staff to cover all our classrooms, and the impact of high staff absenteeism on student safety and delivery of instruction,” Crawley said in an announcement.

Also canceling classes for the day are Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina, where officials anticipated that 400 to 2,000 staffers would not show up for work. The district, which encompasses 21 schools, said absences on a typical day number around 100 staffers, or 5 percent of its workforce.

The school district stressed that the decision to close was based on student safety and was not meant as a political statement.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Trauma of Islamic State rule follows Iraqi women out of Mosul

By Stephen Kalin

KHAZIR, Iraq (Reuters) – One wrong word to an Islamic State fighter in Mosul last year was all it took to set in motion a harrowing chain of events for an Iraqi woman who became so traumatized that she trembled in fear even after escaping the group’s control.

The widowed mother was being vetted to receive a pension from the ultra-hardline Islamists a few months after they seized the northern city in 2014 and turned it into the Iraqi capital of their self-styled caliphate.

“I made the mistake of telling them my husband had been a victim of terrorism,” she said in an interview on Tuesday at a government-run camp in Khazir, east of Mosul. “One of them hit me and broke my teeth. Then they took me to a house and held me for three days.”

The jihadists locked her up in a filthy room with rats and bugs. She was blindfolded and her arms and legs were bound by chains as one of the men – or perhaps several, she couldn’t tell – raped her over and over again, she said.

Islamic State, which is putting up fierce resistance to a U.S.-backed offensive to retake Mosul, the group’s last major stronghold in Iraq, has been accused of massacre, enslavement and rape since it swept across large swathes of the country’s north and west in 2014.

There was no way of verifying her story, but it reflected others’ experiences coming to light as civilians from the most populous city ever controlled by the jihadists emerge from their grip and grapple with 2-1/2 years of suffering.

A 13-year-old girl who also spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity said her father had married her to a neighbor four years her senior who turned out to be with Islamic State.

The slender adolescent now clutching a pink sequined purse said he had threatened to kill her and permitted his brothers to sexually assault her.

After escaping Mosul a few weeks ago, she learned he had made it to a nearby camp and informed the authorities. They detained him, but the pair remain married.

The 37-year-old widow fled last month to Khazir camp, where she receives counseling from UNFPA, a United Nations agency focused on gender-based violence. She asked that her name be withheld for fear of retribution and donned a face veil that revealed only her eyes.

When Islamic State released her after the assault, the diminutive, round-faced woman returned home thinking her nightmare was over.

She sent her two younger children – now 9 and 11 – to stay with relatives in the nearby Kurdish city of Erbil and planned to join them as soon as she could save enough money to smuggle herself and her eldest son.

But a few weeks later she discovered she was pregnant with the child of one of her Islamic State tormentors. In addition to the trauma of being raped, she feared the stigma in Iraq’s conservative society of an unmarried woman giving birth. Within two months she had rushed into marriage with a man who had agreed to adopt the child as his own.

“DIE OF HUNGER OR GET MARRIED”

“They were forcing widows to get married. This was one of their rules: either die of hunger or get married,” said the woman, who occasionally wept and fidgeted with her hands underneath a loose-fitting garment.

Her new husband, though, also had a troubled past. An engineering student in his last year of university, he had been sentenced to death in connection with a crime of honor before Islamic State seized Mosul. In jail, he befriended jihadists who helped him escape when the group routed government forces in 2014.

Soon after the pair married, Islamic State gave the man an ultimatum: fight with us or we kill you. He yielded, and his new wife found herself back in the militants’ clutches.

When her family living outside Mosul learned that she was now married to an Islamic State member, they severed all connections with her. Her late husband’s brother took custody of her two young children and moved them to Baghdad, vowing never to let her see them again.

When Iraqi forces reached her neighborhood last month, she said, they detained her new husband to investigate his jihadist ties.

She took her eldest son with her to the camp but left the baby, now just over a year old, with her new husband’s second wife who remains in Mosul. His fate and that of hundreds or perhaps thousands of other children born to the jihadists remains unclear as the group loses much of its territory and its bid for statehood.

“They think this is the son of their father, they don’t know the truth,” the mother said of the second wife’s family. “The boy doesn’t look like me.”

She has resolved never to return to Mosul, even if Islamic State is eliminated. “I want to go somewhere far away where nobody knows me.”

Cairo church bombing kills 25, raises fears among Christians

A nun cries at the scene of the Cairo Church bombing

By Ahmed Mohammed Hassan and Ali Abdelaty

CAIRO (Reuters) – A bombing at Cairo’s largest Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people and wounded 49, many of them women and children attending Sunday mass, in the deadliest attack on Egypt’s Christian minority in years.

The attack comes as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi fights battles on several fronts. His economic reforms have angered the poor, a bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has seen thousands jailed, whilst an insurgency rages in Northern Sinai, led by the Egyptian branch of Islamic State.

The militant group has also carried out deadly attacks in Cairo and has urged its supporters to launch attacks around the world in recent weeks as it goes on the defensive in its Iraqi and Syrian strongholds.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but exiled Brotherhood officials and home-grown militant groups condemned the attack. Islamic State supporters celebrated on social media.

“God bless the person who did this blessed act,” wrote one supporter on Telegram.

The explosion took place in a chapel, which adjoins St Mark’s, Cairo’s main cathedral and the seat of Coptic Pope Tawadros II, where security is normally tight.

The United States said it “will continue to work with its partners to defeat such terrorist acts” and that it was committed to Egypt’s security, according to a White House statement on Sunday.

The UN Security Council urged “all States, in accordance with their obligations under international law and relevant Security Council resolutions, to cooperate actively with all relevant authorities” to hold those responsible accountable.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis condemned what he called the latest in a series of “brutal terrorist attacks” and said he was praying for the dead and wounded.

The chapel’s floor was covered in debris from shattered windows, its wooden pews blasted apart, its pillars blackened. Here and there lay abandoned shoes and sticky patches of blood.

“As soon as the priest called us to prepare for prayer, the explosion happened,” Emad Shoukry, who was inside when the blast took place, told Reuters.

“The explosion shook the place … the dust covered the hall and I was looking for the door, although I couldn’t see anything … I managed to leave in the middle of screams and there were a lot of people thrown on the ground.”

Security sources told Reuters at least six children were among the dead, with the blast detonating on the side of the church normally used by women.

They said the explosion was caused by a device containing at least 12 kg (26 pounds) of TNT.

Police and armored vehicles rushed to the area, as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the compound demanding revenge for the attack that took place on a Muslim holiday marking the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday and weeks before Christmas. Scuffles broke out with police.

A woman sitting near the cathedral in traditional long robes shouted, “kill them, kill the terrorists, what are you waiting for? … Why are you leaving them to bomb our homes?”

“EGYPTIAN BLOOD IS CHEAP”

Though Egypt’s Coptic Christians have traditionally been supporters of the government, angry crowds turned their ire against Sisi, saying his government had failed to protect them.

“As long as Egyptian blood is cheap, down, down with any president,” they chanted. Others chanted “the people demand the fall of the regime”, the rallying cry of the 2011 uprising that helped end Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Sisi’s office condemned what it described as a terrorist attack, declaring three days of mourning and promising justice. Al-Azhar, Egypt’s main Islamic center of learning, also denounced the attacks.

Orthodox Copts, who comprise about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are the Middle East’s biggest Christian community.

Copts face regular attack by Muslim neighbors, who burn their homes and churches in poor rural areas, usually in anger over an inter-faith romance or the construction of church.

The last major attack on a church took place as worshippers left a New Year’s service in Alexandria weeks before the start of the 2011 uprising. At least 21 people were killed.

Egypt’s Christian community has felt increasingly insecure since Islamic State spread through Iraq and Syria in 2014, ruthlessly targeting religious minorities. In 2015, 21 Egyptian Christians working in Libya were killed by Islamic State.

The attack came two days after six police were killed in two bomb attacks, one of them claimed by Hasm, a recently-emerged group the government says is linked to the Brotherhood, which has been banned under Sisi as a terrorist organization.

The Brotherhood says it is peaceful. Several exiled Brotherhood officials condemned the bombing, as did Hasm and Liwaa’ al-Thawra, another local militant group.

Coptic Pope Tawadros II cut short a visit to Greece after learning of the attack. In a speech aired on state television, he said “the whole situation needs us all to be disciplined as much as possible … strong unity is the most important thing.”

Church officials said earlier on Sunday they would not allow the bombing to create sectarian differences.

But Christians, convinced attacks on them are not seriously investigated, say this time they want justice.

“Where was the security? There were five or six security cars stationed outside so where were they when 12 kg of TNT was carried inside?” said Mena Samir, 25, standing at the church’s metal gate. “They keep telling us national unity, the crescent with the cross … This time we will not shut up.”

(Additional reporting by Arwa Gaballa, Amr Abdallah, Mohamed Abdel Ghany, Amina Ismail, Mostafa Hashem in Cairo, Philip Pullella in Rome, Michelle Nichols in New York and; Yara Bayoumy in Washington; writing by Amina Ismail and Lin Noueihed; editing by Ros Russell and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Islamic State gone, Mosul district residents adjust to new life

A woman waves a white flag in Mosul, Iraq

By Isabel Coles

GOGJALI, Iraq (Reuters) – Until three weeks ago, many of Abu Osama’s customers were Islamic State militants who brought their wives and children to his pharmacy on the eastern edge of Mosul for injections and treatment.

Now, most of them are Iraqi security forces who recaptured the Gogjali neighborhood earlier this month and are pushing further into the city, which has been under Islamic State control for more than two years.

As the militants retreat, civilians are adjusting to a new reality in their wake and a clearer picture is emerging of what they did to survive the punishments and deprivation of Islamic State rule.

“Whether Daesh (Islamic State) or army: my door is open to everyone,” said Abu Osama, taking the blood pressure of an Iraqi policeman. “If my worst enemy comes here, I must treat him.”

Several Islamic State militants, both local and foreign, lived in Gogjali and it was mainly their families that visited the pharmacy because the militants themselves were often away, Abu Osama said.

The front of his shop and those next door are marked with the Arabic letter “z” for zakat, meaning alms, and beside it an identification number Islamic State bureaucrats assigned to record donations made at the shop for their self-proclaimed caliphate.

Advancing Iraqi forces have sprayed Shi’ite slogans over it.

The 40-year old opened the pharmacy after Mosul fell to Islamic State and the salary he received as an employee of the Iraqi health ministry was cut by the government as it sought to choke off funding to the militants, who were skimming the pay of public sector workers in areas they controlled.

The militants wanted Abu Osama to work for them in a hospital, but he refused because it would have meant pledging allegiance to the group, and he does not agree with their hardline ideology.

A displaced woman who was injured in clashes and fleeing from Islamic State militants of Mosul, receives treatment at a hospital west of Erbil, Iraq. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari

According to that ideology, the depiction of living creatures is un-Islamic because it can lead to idolatry. After a militant upbraided him for displaying a poster with an image of a baby on the wall of his pharmacy, Abu Osama blotted out its eyes with a black marker pen and then did the same to every label featuring a human being.

The 500 dinar note ($0.40), which bears an image of a statue, was banned for the same reason, according to several civilians.

CHINESE, INDIAN MEDICINE

All medicine came from Syria — Mosul’s only outlet to the world as an array of forces slowly closed in on the city in Iraq. Syrian traders imported cheap Chinese and Indian medicine via Turkey and paid Islamic State a tax to bring it to market in Mosul, Abu Osama said.

By the time medicine reached his still sparsely stocked shelves, the price had tripled, and many of his customers could not afford to buy it, so he sold it to them on credit and is now owed 1.25 million Iraq dinars ($1,016).

Since women were obliged by Islamic State to veil their faces completely, Abu Osama cannot be sure who owes him what, he said.

Standing in the pharmacy, forty-three-year old Sohaib commented that if he became separated from his wife in a crowded marketplace, she would have to find him, as he could not distinguish her from all the other women shrouded from head to toe in black.

Abu Osama could treat women only when they were accompanied by a male relative, and if a female patient lifted her veil before him and Islamic State’s vice squad found out, he would be held accountable. It never happened to him, but the militants punish such infractions with fines and whipping.

Residents of Gogjali said Islamic State’s laws were less strictly enforced there because it is far from the city center.

When Iraqi special forces took the neighborhood, two of the militants left their wives behind, locals said, identifying the women as Russian. The jihadi brides tried to flee Mosul among displaced civilians but were found out and detained by Iraqi security forces, according to a soldier sitting in the pharmacy.

“They were unbelievably beautiful,” he said.

Several doors down, twenty-seven year old Ammar, who runs a grocery shop, said the militants were his best customers because they had more money than anyone else.

“They chatted with us and said we must fight jihad. Everyone preached to us, but each to their own,” he said.

A woman holds up a white flag as she runs to greet her relative in Mosul, Iraq November 27, 2016. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

All the goods he sold came from Syria, he said, but now that route is blocked too, and several traders from the nearby Kurdish region are taking advantage of the opening in the market.

Outside the grocery shop, a Kurdish trader unloaded goods from a van, including items banned by Islamic State such as cigarettes, biscuits made in Iran and Brazilian canned meat.

“It says halal on the tin, but they said it wasn’t,” Ammar said, shrugging.

Occasionally, the sound of a mortar or a burst of gunfire sends people milling in the street scattering and diving for cover, but some, now accustomed to the sounds of war, barely flinch and continue as normal.

(Editing by Patrick Markey and Peter Graff)

Exclusive: Abortion by prescription now rivals surgery for U.S. women

By Jilian Mincer

NEW YORK (Reuters) – American women are ending pregnancies with medication almost as often as with surgery, marking a turning point for abortion in the United States, data reviewed by Reuters shows.

The watershed comes amid an overall decline in abortion, a choice that remains politically charged in the United States, sparking a fiery exchange in the final debate between presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

When the two medications used to induce abortion won U.S. approval 16 years ago, the method was expected to quickly overtake the surgical option, as it has in much of Europe. But U.S. abortion opponents persuaded lawmakers in many states to put restrictions on their use.

Although many limitations remain, innovative dispensing efforts in some states, restricted access to surgical abortions in others and greater awareness boosted medication abortions to 43 percent of pregnancy terminations at Planned Parenthood clinics, the nation’s single largest provider, in 2014, up from 35 percent in 2010, according to previously unreported figures from the nonprofit.

The national rate is likely even higher now because of new federal prescribing guidelines that took effect in March. In three states most impacted by that change – Ohio, Texas and North Dakota – demand for medication abortions tripled in the last several months to as much as 30 percent of all procedures in some clinics, according to data gathered by Reuters from clinics, state health departments and Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Among states with few or no restrictions, medication abortions comprise a greater share, up to 55 percent in Michigan and 64 percent in Iowa.

Denise Hill, an Ohio mother who works full time and is pursuing a college degree, is part of the shift.

Hill, 26, became extremely ill with her third pregnancy, sidelined by low blood pressure that made it challenging to care for her son and daughter. In July, eight weeks in, she said she made the difficult decision to have a medication abortion. She called the option that was not available in her state four months earlier “a blessing.”

The new prescribing guidelines were sought by privately-held Danco Laboratories, the sole maker of the pills for the U.S. market. Spokeswoman Abby Long said sales have since surged to the extent that medication abortion now is “a second option and fairly equal” to the surgical procedure.

“We have been growing steadily year over year, and definitely the growth is larger this year,” Long said.

Women who ask for the medication prefer it because they can end a pregnancy at home, with a partner, in a manner more like a miscarriage, said Tammi Kromenaker, director of the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, North Dakota.

GAME CHANGER

Medication abortion involves two drugs, taken over a day or two. The first, mifepristone, blocks the pregnancy sustaining hormone progesterone. The second, misoprostol, induces uterine contractions. Studies have shown medical abortions are effective up to 95 percent of the time.

Approved in France in 1988, the abortion pill was supposed to be a game changer, a convenient and private way to end pregnancy. In Western Europe, medication abortion is more common, accounting for 91 percent of pregnancy terminations in Finland, the highest rate, followed by Scotland at 80 percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that supports abortion rights.

In the United States, proponents had hoped the medication would allow women to avoid the clinics that had long been targets of protests and sometimes violence.

But Planned Parenthood and other clinics remain key venues for the medication option. Of the more than 2.75 million U.S. women who have used abortion pills since they were approved in 2000, at least 1 million got them at Planned Parenthood.

Many private physicians have avoided prescribing the pills, in part out of concern that it would expose their practices to the type of protests clinics experienced, say doctors, abortion providers and healthcare organizations.

At the same time, the overall U.S. abortion rate has dropped to a low of 16.9 terminations per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2011, down from 19.4 per 1,000 in 2008, according to federal data. The decline has been driven in part by wider use of birth control, including long lasting IUDs.

In March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration changed its prescribing guidelines for medication abortion. The agency now allows the pills to be prescribed as far as 10 weeks into pregnancy, up from seven. It cut the number of required medical visits and allowed trained professionals other than physicians, including nurse practitioners, to dispense the pills. It also changed dosing guidelines.

The changes were supported by years of prescribing data and reflect practices already common in most states where doctors are free to prescribe as they deem best.

Ohio, Texas and North Dakota took the unusual step of requiring physicians to strictly adhere to the original guidelines. Many abortion providers were reluctant to prescribe the pills under the older guidelines, which no longer reflected current medical knowledge, said Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation.

Randall K. O’Bannon, a director at the anti-abortion National Right to Life organization, criticized the new guidelines but said his organization had no plans to fight them.

“What they did was make it more profitable,” O’Bannon said. “It will increase the pool of potential customers.”

Planned Parenthood said both types of abortion typically cost from $300 to $1,000, including tests and examinations. The group charges a sliding fee based on a patient’s ability to pay, regardless of which type of abortion they choose.

VARIED ACCESS

Despite a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that abortion is a woman’s right, access varies widely by state. Some states maintain restrictions on both surgical and medication abortions; others have worked to increase access.

In rural Iowa, where clinics are few and far between, Planned Parenthood is using video conferencing, known as telemedicine, to expand access.

The way it works is, a woman is examined in her community by a trained medical professional, who checks vital signs and blood pressure and performs an ultrasound. The information is sent to an off-site doctor, who talks with the woman via video conference and authorizes the medications.

Since the telemedicine program began in Iowa in 2008, medication abortions increased to 64 percent of all pregnancy terminations, the highest U.S. rate.

In New York, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon, a private research institute, Gynuity Health Projects, works with clinics to send abortion pills by mail to pre-screened women.

“Medication abortion is definitely the next frontier,” said Gloria Totten, president of the Public Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that advises advocates.

And in Maryland and Atlanta, the nonprofit organization Carafem opened centers in the last 18 months that offer birth control and medication, but not surgical, abortions. It promotes its services with ads that read: “Abortion. Yeah, we do that.”

(Reporting By Jilian Mincer; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Lisa Girion)

Almost 80 percent of Indian women face public harassment in cities

A woman adjusts her scarf as the sun sets over Kashmir's Dal Lake in Srinagar

By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Nearly four out of five women in India have faced public harassment ranging from staring, insults and wolf-whistling to being followed, groped or even raped, said a survey by the charity ActionAid UK.

The study – which polled over 500 women in cities across India – found that 84 percent of the respondents who experienced harassment were aged between 25 and 35 years old and were largely working women and students.

“For us in India the findings are not big news, what is noteworthy of the 500 women interviewed in India, is the extent to which women have responded and reported boldly about facing harassment and violence,” Sandeep Chachra, ActionAid India’s executive director, said on Monday.

“It is as if society is telling women that public spaces are not for them, and what is more interesting is that women are asserting their claim of these spaces.”

Indian women face a barrage of threats ranging from child marriage, dowry killings and human trafficking to rape and domestic violence, largely due to deep-rooted attitudes that view them as inferior to men.

There were 337,922 reports of violence against women such as rape, molestation, abduction and cruelty by husbands in 2014, up nine percent from the previous year, according to the latest data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau.

The online survey, which was released on Friday, was conducted by British market research firm YouGov in early May. It polled 502 women living in cities across the country, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata.

It said women faced harassment in multiple places – on the street, in parks, at community events, on college campuses and while traveling on public transport.

“CULTURE OF HARASSMENT”

Over a third of the Indian women surveyed said they had been groped in public or faced someone exposing themselves, while more than half reported that they had been followed.

Forty-six percent reported insults and name-calling in public, 44 percent experienced wolf-whistling, 16 percent had been drugged and nine percent reported they had been raped.

A wave of public protests after the fatal gang rape of a woman on a Delhi bus in December 2012 jolted many in the world’s second most populous country out of apathy and forced the government to enact stiffer penalties on gender crimes.

This included the death sentence for repeat rape offenders, criminalizing stalking and voyeurism, and making acid attacks and human trafficking specific offences.

Since then, a spike in media reports, government campaigns and civil society programs have increased public awareness of women’s rights and emboldened victims to register abuses.

But activists say the figures are still gross underestimates, as many victims remain reluctant to report crimes such as sexual violence for fear their families and communities will shun them.

ActionAid representatives urged authorities to work toward ending patriarchal mindsets and sexist attitudes which they said were to blame for this “culture of harassment.”

“Safety of women is directly related to patriarchal mind sets that manifests itself in streets, homes and workplaces,” said Sehjo Singh, ActionAid India’s director of programs and policy.

“The fear of harassment and violence has a crippling effect on women’s abilities and potential, and in itself it is an attack on women’s rights.”

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, Editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

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