Israel’s Health Minister Wants to Make It Easier to Get Abortions
December 3, 2021
As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Washington on the most significant abortion case to reach the court in decades, Israel’s health minister laid out his plans to simplify what he called Israel’s “chauvinistic” abortion process on Wednesday.
“It should be a given — the rights to a woman’s body are the woman’s alone,” Nitzan Horowitz told the Israeli news site Ynet. “Any decision or medical procedure such as the choice of whether to perform an abortion must be in the hands of the woman. We have no moral right to decide for her how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.”
Horowitz, head of the left-wing Meretz Party, wants to allow women to terminate a pregnancy within its first 12 weeks without approval by a committee, which is currently a requirement for all abortions in Israel
While abortions are legal in a number of cases in Israel, women seeking an abortion have to present their reasons for ending the pregnancy before a committee of three people. Committees approve abortions for women under the age of 18 or over the age of 40, in cases where birth defects are expected; when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest; when the woman is unmarried; or when the pregnancy may endanger the woman’s life or mental or physical health.
Story by SHIRA HANAU/JTA for Jerusalem Post
Comentários