Update on Women on Waves - an open sea abortion service

[Pah]

Complete Article here

In December 2004, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts gave a speech at a Buenos Aires cultural center. Anti-choice activists gathered to protest. They proffered pamphlets and hoisted signs. Some scuffled and threw punches. Gomperts, the Dutch physician who sails to anti-choice nations teaching women about the abortion pill, RU-486 (mifepristone) and, in rare cases, administering the drug in international waters under the pro-choice laws of her ship's Dutch flag, was labeled an "assassin" by angry protesters.

Gomperts, the confrontational founder of Women on Waves (linked) and one of the world's most hardball activists, spoke to AlterNet recently from her group's headquarters in the Netherlands. She talked about confrontations with Portuguese warships, Polish right-wing nationalists, the growing threats to reproductive rights and the global backfires of Bush administration family planning policies. The 39-year-old doctor has joined the high-profile likes of Gloria Steinem and Planned Parenthood's Gloria Feldt in an uphill battle to secure reproductive rights in the face of theocracy and overreaching conservatism.

The Bush administration has also held up $34 million in congressionally appropriated aid from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which deals in voluntary family planning assistance in 140 countries. The Alan Guttmacher Institute[pah- a pro-life organization], quoting UN officials, says the funding clog will mean 2 million unwanted pregnancies per year, nearly 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths.

Gomperts finds another posture held by the United States particularly symbolic: On May 10, 2002, at the United Nations special session on children, the Bush administration stood alongside Iran and Iraq – two "axis of evil" nations – to eliminate references to "reproductive health services and education" as a right held by the world's children.