The bill was debated in the House for 24 consecutive hours in what was one of the longest debates in the legislature’s history….reports Asian Lite news
Jared Polis, Governor of the US state of Colorado, has signed a landmark legislation, guaranteeing women’s right to abortion.
Polis signed into law the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which codifies women’s right to make reproductive health-care decisions free from government interference, reports Xinhua news agency.
“In the State of Colorado, the serious decision to start or end a pregnancy with medical assistance will remain between a person, their doctor, and their faith,” he said.
“No matter what the Supreme Court does in the future, people in Colorado will be able to choose when and if they have children,” Polis also told the media on Monday at a bill signing ceremony at the Governor’s mansion in Denver.
The Colorado legislature approved a bill last month, with Republicans spending hours arguing against the measure’s passage.
The bill was debated in the House for 24 consecutive hours in what was one of the longest debates in the legislature’s history.
Abortion in Colorado is currently legal at all stages of pregnancy.
It is one of seven states without any term restrictions as to when a pregnancy can be terminated.
In a recent national poll by the Pew Research Center, 59 per cent of adults said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
‘Almost half of all pregnancies unintended’
Nearly half of all pregnancies around the world, 121 million each year between 2015 and 2019, were unintended, a report of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has revealed.
The number of unintended pregnancies represents a global failure to uphold a basic human right for women and girls. And that failure is expected to grow, warns the “State of World Population 2022” report.
While recent data show that the unintended pregnancy rate worldwide fell between 1990 and 2019, continued global population growth means that the absolute number of unintended pregnancies will keep rising without decisive action. Delivering sexual and reproductive health services will only become more difficult in the face of tectonic shifts like climate change, conflicts, public health emergencies and mass migration, Xinhua news agency quoted the report as saying.
The report finds that social and economic development and higher levels of gender equality strongly correlate with lower rates of unintended pregnancy.
The incidence of unintended pregnancy varies widely by region. In 2015-2019, there were about 35 unintended pregnancies annually per 1,000 women aged 15-49 years in Europe and North America, compared with 64 in Central and Southern Asia and 91 in sub-Saharan Africa.
Many factors linked to reducing unintended pregnancy are themselves core development goals, from poverty reduction to improved maternal health, says the report.
Over 60 per cent of unintended pregnancies end in abortion, safe or unsafe, legal or illegal. Given that an estimated 45 per cent of all abortions remain unsafe, this is a public health emergency, it says.