What’s Current: COVID-19 bans threaten women’s access to essential health services

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  • Up to 9.5 million women and girls could be denied crucial reproductive health services due to COVID-19, potentially resulting in millions of unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and deaths. Women in Texas and Oklahoma are already being turned away from abortion clinics after state lawmakers deemed pregnancy termination a non-essential procedure.
  • Officials in Peru and Panama are limiting citizens’ movement based on sex in order to stop the spread of COVID-19, with women only allowed in public on some days and men on others. Critics argue these policies are unfair after a trans-identified male was fined for going out on a day reserved for women.
  • Jessica Yaniv is suspended from Twitter after posting an image of a cheque for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which represented 16 mostly-immigrant estheticians who Yaniv tried to sue after they refused to wax his genitals.
  • New York State overturns its ban on paid surrogacy as lawmakers approve a sweeping budget package which also outlaws the “pink tax.” 
Meghan McCarty

Meghan McCarty is an undergraduate student and aspiring journalist living in the United States.