Monday, June 06, 2022

Fact check: Abortion-related deaths continued after Roe v. Wade, but occurred less often

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY

The claim: Roe v. Wade marked the end of women dying from abortions

After a Supreme Court draft opinion leaked that signaled a potential reversal of Roe v. Wade, debates about the future of abortion access ignited nationwide.

Some online claim that the watershed ruling did more than just establish a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

"Roe wasn't the beginning of women having abortions," reads text in an image left-wing page Occupy Democrats shared to Facebook May 9. "Roe was the end of women dying from abortion."

The post generated over 30,000 interactions and 20,000 shares in less than a week. Similar posts amassed thousands more interactions on Facebook and Instagram.

But the claim is false.

Experts told USA TODAY abortion-related deaths still occurred after Roe v. Wade was decided, though such outcomes are rare. This declining trend in abortion mortality began before the 1970s, but the Roe decision was a key contributor to that trend.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

USA TODAY reached out to Occupy Democrats and other social media users who shared the claim for comment.

Abortion-related deaths still occurred after Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows abortion-related deaths still occurred in subsequent years but in low numbers.

The CDC defines legal induced abortions as those a licensed clinician performs within state law and illegal abortions as those performed in any other cirumstances.

Fact check:Photo of Ginni Thomas with expensive wine is from 2018, not after Roe v. Wade leak

Abortion deaths for both categories dropped sharply in the mid-1970s and have remained low since, but they still occur, according to CDC data. From 2011 to 2018, the CDC reported two to six deaths per year in legal abortions and one total death in an illegal abortion.

In terms of rate, the latest data showed 0.41 deaths per 100,000 abortions from 2013 to 2018.

The Roe decision was a key driver in this decrease, said Mary Faith Marshall, director of biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia, told USA TODAY.

"Abortion became part of care provided under an accredited health care system with safety standards," Marshall said. "Clinicians had to be trained to perform abortion procedures in a formal way."

Women were also protected in their right to get abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy, which reduced their risk of mortality, Marshall said.

A very small number of abortion-related deaths still occur today due to rare complications and demographics who can't afford medical care, Amanda Jean Stevenson, a sociologist at the University of Colorado, told USA TODAY in an email.

Declining trend in abortion mortality before Roe vs. Wade

Even before Roe v. Wade, the number of abortion-related deaths was steadily declining, Dr. Karen Meckstroth, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told USA TODAY in an email.

A 1978 study found that "deaths from abortion declined more rapidly than deaths from other causes associated with pregnancy and childbirth" between 1940 and 1975. This was attributed to various factors, such as increased availability of legal abortion and more effective contraception, according to the study.

Fact check: False claim about 'domestic supply of infants' and draft Supreme Court abortion opinion

Abortion mortality decreased when antibiotics such as penicillin became widely available in 1945, which increased the safety of the procedure, Dr. Lisa Harris, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan, told USA TODAY in an email.

Abortion-related deaths also declined as a result of states repealing and changing anti-abortion laws, proving wider access to safe procedures. Meckstroth said that by the end of 1970, four states had repealed their anti-abortion laws, and 11 states had changed them.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Roe vs. Wade marked the end of women dying from abortions. Abortion-related deaths still occurred after the landmark decision, though there was a sharp decline. This downward trend in abortion mortality began before 1973, and Roe contributed to it, experts said.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. 

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: False claim abortion-related deaths ended after Roe ruling

Posted by at No comments:
How Mexico ensures access to safe abortion without legalizing it
June 6, 2022

When it comes to abortion, Mexico offers a glimpse of a possible future for the US.

Like its northern neighbor, the country is a federal republic of 32 states in which the legality of abortion varies. It does not have a federal law, or Roe v Wade-like constitutional decision legalizing abortion—a position the US is likely to find itself in by the end of June, when the Supreme Court is expected to officially announce its decision on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The decision, a draft of which was leaked last month, might overturn the precedent stating that a woman has a right to obtain abortion as part of her right to privacy. If the leak is confirmed, it would end the federal protection of abortion, and making its legality dependent on the individual state

This would open the way to restrictive laws in Republican-majority states, many of which have trigger laws ready to go into effect as soon as the Supreme Court ruling is out, including ones that could lead to the arrest of women experiencing miscarriages. But in Mexico, the situation is different in a small, but very significant way: Abortion is not legal, but has been decriminalized federally. On Sept. 7, 2021, Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it was unconstitutional to punish abortion as a crime.

The effects of decriminalization

The 2021 Mexican supreme court decision was propelled by the so-called marea verde, or green wave, a Latin American transnational movement promoting abortion rights, which pushed for the approval of abortion laws in countries including Argentina and Columbia, and in Mexican states. While it stops short of full legalization, its effects are significant in effectively giving women, including those who don’t qualify for an abortion in their home state, broader access to safe abortion.

In Mexico no outcome of a pregnancy is criminalized—including miscarriages, no matter how they occur—so women who get abortions outside of the medical infrastructure, for instance by inducing an abortion with medication at home, can seek medical attention at any time without putting themselves in danger of being reported to the authorities.

Medical abortion in Mexico is offered in medical settings via two medications, mifepristone and misoprostol. But women who choose to have a medical abortion at home, because they don’t qualify for legal abortion in their state, or prefer to deal with it independently, typically take misoprostol only, following World Health Organization protocol (pdf). Abortions done with misoprostol alone are just as safe as those with the combination of drugs, but easier to obtain without a prescription as it’s sold over the counter as a medication to treat ulcers in every state.

The right to support women who have abortions

Veronica Cruz, a leading pro-abortion activist who founded Las Libres, an organization that provides accompaniment to women who wish to terminate unwanted pregnancies in the state of Guanajuato, says things have changed since the decision even in very anti-abortion states like her own. Las Libres has been operating for 22 years, and has developed a so-called “escuela de acompañamento“—a training for women who want to offer physical assistance as well as medical and legal information to others seeking a termination of a pregnancy.

Even prior to the 2021 decision, Las Libres didn’t shy away from providing abortion accompaniment and information despite the legal risks. “When the law restricts a right, it isn’t right, and if the law isn’t right we have to reject it,” says Cruz. The goal of the abortion movements remains to legalize abortion in all states, she says, but decriminalization has helped reduce some of the stigma around abortion and has allowed activist networks to move more freely and safely.

This includes facing fewer risks in organizing and facilitating travel for women in anti-abortion states—in both Mexico and, increasingly, from the US—end their unwanted pregnancies. Women who face significant cultural and social obstacles to abortion in their home state—for instance Guanajuato, where the stigma against abortion is strong—can seek financial, logistical, and emotional support from pro-abortion networks to travel to another state to terminate the pregnancy through surgical abortion, even after the first trimester, when misoprostol is most effective.

Believe women, by law

This works alongside an instrumental legal provision, introduced in 2013 to actualize the right to abortion for victims of rape, who have a right to end their pregnancy in every state in the country.

The decision states that in order to obtain an abortion under the rape exception a woman doesn’t need to provide a police report of the assault—as was the case in several states prior to the decision. Instead, her word that it happened is sufficient.

A linked provision, upheld by the supreme court late this past May, confirmed that for minor victims of rape, defined as those between the ages of 12 and 18, there is no need of for parental consent to obtain an abortion, freeing many teenagers to seek abortions despite familial opposition or incest.

“Sometimes the patient doesn’t want to present the report to the police, and we respect that,” says José Luis Flores Madrigal, a doctor and director of the maternal and infant health hospital Esperanza López Mateos, in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco. “I simply have to believe her.”

“That really struck me in the hospital, when we were learning about the rape exception, when […] I asked if [women] needed to prove anything and [the doctor] just said, ‘no, we just believe women,’” says Julie von Haefen, a North Carolina state representative who was present at a meeting with Mateos. “I will remember that forever probably, just the matter-of-factness of that statement was just so revealing, because not everyone in the United States believes women.”

The post How Mexico ensures access to safe abortion without legalizing it appeared first on Quartz.

Posted by at No comments:
UPDATED
Mexico snub throws Americas' summit into disarray

Shaun TANDON
Mon, June 6, 2022

President Joe Biden's plans to reboot US engagement with Latin America -- especially on critical topics like migration -- took a major hit after key partner Mexico snubbed a regional summit opening Monday in Los Angeles to protest Washington's exclusion of three far-left countries.

What was meant to be a week-long showcase of cooperation looks more likely to become a display of division that reflects diminishing clout over a region where long-time US economic and diplomatic influence faces a growing Chinese challenge.

Confirming it was not inviting Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the Summit of the Americas, a senior White House official cited "reservations regarding the lack of democratic space and the human rights situations."

In response, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would stay away.

"You cannot have a Summit of the Americas if you do not have all the countries of the Americas attending," Lopez Obrador announced, complaining of US "hegemony" and "lack of respect for nations."

Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will represent Mexico instead, but the leftist populist leader's absence will diminish the impact of a summit where US-Mexico relations are at the heart of major immigration and trade issues.


The senior US official did not directly respond to Lopez Obrador's boycott, saying only that "the United States recognizes and respects the position of allies in support of inclusive dialogue." The official also said non-governmental representatives from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela would be present.

In Havana, the communist Cuban government issued a statement calling Biden's decision "anti-democratic and arbitrary."

Biden is expected to make announcements at the summit on economic cooperation and fighting Covid-19 and climate change, said Juan Gonzalez, the top White House adviser on Latin America.

The US president, who flies to Los Angeles on Wednesday, also hopes to secure an agreement to help regulate surges of migration from the region's poorer and violent countries to the United States -- a major concern for US voters and an area where Republican opponents see Biden as vulnerable in upcoming midterm elections.

- Playing down Mexico spat -



State Department spokesman Ned Price played down the seriousness of the spat with Lopez Obrador, saying "we understand his position" and that the US-Mexican relationship is "broad and deep."

"Mexico is an important hemispheric player. We are very gratified that... Foreign Secretary Ebrard will be in attendance. We will have a number of opportunities to engage with our Mexican counterparts."

The Biden administration also notes it has secured the presence of other key regional players, including Argentina's left-leaning Alberto Fernandez and Brazil's far-right Jair Bolsonaro.

Benjamin Gedan, who heads the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Lopez Obrador's absence would mark a "significant void" and said Mexico's leader seemed more focused on domestic political gain.

The boycott has been "a really unfortunate subplot in the run-up to the summit because it has drained an enormous amount of US diplomatic energy for a bizarre cause celebre," Gedan said.

Biden has crafted a positive agenda, avoiding simply summoning Latin American leaders to lecture them on democracy, corruption and China, he said.

But, he added, it was unclear whether Biden will bring substantial resources to the table, in contrast to China's lavish infrastructure spending and trade privileges.

"I think, inevitably, the United States will disappoint," Gedan said.

- 'Progressively less ambitious' -

The Summit of the Americas is the first held by the United States since the inaugural 1994 meeting in Miami, where then-US president Bill Clinton sought the creation of a trade area to cover the whole continent except communist Cuba.

The United States has since soured on free trade, with Biden following the lead of his predecessor Donald Trump, who said such pacts hurt US workers.

Trump championed a hard line on Venezuela and Cuba, and did not attend the last Summit of the Americas, in Peru in 2018.



Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, recently told a congressional hearing that each summit has become "progressively less ambitious."

Los Angeles, he said, "offers the perfect opportunity for Washington to announce a commitment to regional growth and recovery."

Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, said the drama over summit attendance showed Washington's waning hold over the region as China muscles in.

The United States "still has a lot of soft power," Shifter said. "As for political and diplomatic influence, it is diminishing by the day."

bur-sms/sw


Mexico president's summit snub shows limits of U.S. reach in Latin America

Americas Summit in Los Angeles

Mon, June 6, 2022, 
By David Alire Garcia

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican president's refusal to attend a U.S.-hosted summit because of disputes over the guest list highlights how Latin America's leftists are pursuing an increasingly independent foreign policy from Washington.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had said he would not go to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week led by U.S. President Joe Biden unless all governments in the region were asked.

On Monday, he followed through as Washington said it was not inviting its antagonists Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua on the grounds of human rights and democratic shortcomings.

Lopez Obrador's firm line over the past few weeks won backing from other left-leaning governments across Latin America eager to stand up to Uncle Sam, fanning diplomatic tensions just as Washington tries to re-engage with its southern neighbors.

Luis Guillermo Solis, a center-left former Costa Rican president, said Lopez Obrador's determination to clamor for an inclusive discussion showed off his anti-imperialist credentials, striking a tone with centuries of resonance in the region.

"The easiest way to do it is to symbolically fight with the United States," Solis said. "It's a well-known play in our neighborhood."

The summit aims to promote democratic unity, but the dispute exposed divisions between Washington and governments sympathetic to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, self-styled leftists who have long been reviled by the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

Leftist leaders in Argentina, Chile, Honduras, and Bolivia have echoed Lopez Obrador's sentiments, taking U.S. officials by surprise and leaving them scrambling to ensure Biden is not left talking to empty chairs when he arrives on Wednesday.{nL1N2XM1B8]

Biden is under domestic pressure from Republicans as well as some fellow Democrats not to look soft on Cuba and Venezuela with the approach of elections in November that will determine whether his party keeps control of Congress.

The controversy risks overshadowing Washington's desire to prevent democratic backsliding in the region, said John Feeley, a retired U.S. ambassador and veteran Latin America diplomat who helped organize previous regional summits.

Feeley also flagged concerns about Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro undermining confidence in his country's October election and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's push to seek re-election despite constitutional term limits.

"Choppy waters is going to be the reality," said Feeley.

CUBA'S PULL

In March, Cuba began handing down jail sentences of up to 30 years to dozens of people arrested last year at the biggest anti-government protests since the island's 1959 revolution.

That month Citlalli Hernandez, secretary general of Lopez Obrador's ruling party, led a delegation to the communist-run island before he himself went in May, lauding the government and inking a deal to bring Cuban doctors to Mexico.

Hernandez hailed what she called Cuba's own version of participatory democracy, its achievements in health and education, and rejected any suggestion it was a dictatorship.

"We deeply respect the process of Cuban revolution," the 32-year-old senator said.

Her support points to the enduring appeal of Cuba's one-party model among a swath of Latin America's left, underlining a sharp split with Biden's center-left Democratic Party.

While Biden partly rolled back some of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump's toughest sanctions, he and most Democrats remain stern critics of Cuba's record on democracy and human rights.

Costa Rica's Solis believes the region's real political fault lines are not between left and right.

"It's a problem between democracy and authoritarianism," he said, describing Maduro's government as "criminal left" and Ortega's Nicaragua as "more like a monarchy".

Venezuela and Nicaragua have criticized the summit as exclusionary, and Cuba's Diaz-Canel said he would not attend regardless of whether he was invited.

Biden is well placed to warn about the risks of weakening democracy, given the false claims of widespread voter fraud and other misinformation pushed by Trump, said ex-diplomat Feeley.

But even the most successful bilateral talks in Los Angeles will unlikely shake the broader trend, he said.

"The overall panorama will continue to be difficult, confused and confusing."

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Dave Graham and Grant McCool)


U.S. 'understands' Mexican position on Americas summit after boycott -State Dept


WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) - The United States "understands" Mexico's position on the Summit of the Americas, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday after Mexico's president made good on a threat to skip the event because all countries in the Western Hemisphere were not invited.

Price said U.S. officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken were in discussions with officials from U.S. neighbors including Mexico in very recent hours over participation in the summit.

"Certainly there are a diversity of opinions when it comes to who should be invited to the Summit of the Americas," Price said. "We have done our best to incorporate the viewpoints of the hemisphere."

Although Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would not be attending, Mexico would still participate and would be represented by Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, Price said.

The boycott of Lopez Obrador and possibly some other leaders could diminish the relevance of the summit in Los Angeles, where the United States aims to address regional migration and economic issues.

Price defended Washington's decision to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the meeting, taking place in Los Angeles this week, saying the convener of the meeting has broad discretion over who participates.

"It is unfortunately notable that one of the key elements of this summit is democratic governance, and these countries are not exemplars, to put it mildly, of democratic governance," Price said, citing the recent jailing of artists in Cuba, shrinking space for civil society in Nicaragua and President Nicolas Maduro's leadership of Venezuela that is not recognized by the United States.

Representatives of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who Washington recognizes as the country's legitimate leader, as well as non-governmental delegates from the three barred countries, would participate in the summit, Price said.

 (Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis Editing by Chris Reese and Alistair Bell)


Mexico leader to skip Biden's Americas Summit

AFP - 

Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Monday he would skip the regional Summit of the Americas in the United States due to Washington's failure to invite countries it views as undemocratic.

© PEDRO PARDO
Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says he will not attend the Americas Summit in Los Angeles

The White House confirmed that President Joe Biden would not be inviting Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to this week's summit in Los Angeles.

"I'm not going to the summit because they are not inviting all the countries of America and I think it is necessary to change the policy that has been imposed on us for centuries: exclusion," said Lopez Obrador in his daily press conference.

Lopez Obrador said Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard would be representing Mexico in his place.

The leftist populist had threatened last month to stay away from the summit unless all countries were invited.

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced he would not attend even if invited, while Guatemala's conservative leader Alejandro Giammattei pulled out after Washington sanctioned his top prosecutor.

The White House had said last week that Biden was eager for Lopez Obrador to attend.

"You cannot have a Summit of the Americas if you do not have all the countries of the Americas attending," said Lopez Obrador, who has also urged the US to end sanctions against Cuba.

"Or you can have it, but we see that as the old policy of interventionism, lack of respect for nations and their people."

A senior US official told AFP that "the US continues to maintain reservations regarding the lack of democratic space and the human rights situations" in the three barred countries.

"As a result, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will not be invited to participate in this summit."

Lopez Obrador said his snub would not affect his "very good relations" with Biden, whom he said was under "pressure from the Republicans" to keep out the three countries.

"I'm really disappointed about this situation, but I do not accept that anyone puts themselves above the countries, I don't accept hegemony, not from China, not from Russia, not from any country," he said.

The Mexican president said that he would still visit the White House in July where he would look to discuss pan-American "integration."

"That's how they created the European Community and then that became the European Union. That's what we need to do in America," he said.

The summit is due to focus on migration, climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic and "the fight for freedom and democracy," the White House has said.

The United States has stepped up criticism of Cuban authorities following the arrest of hundreds of people for taking part in anti-government protests last July.

The Biden administration refuses to recognize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro or Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega due to alleged election irregularities.

jg/dga/bc/bgs

Mexico's president boycotts US-hosted summit in snub to Biden

Mexico's president has announced that he will not travel to the U.S. this week to attend the Summit of the Americas -- another snub that has distracted from the Biden administration's efforts to use the tri-annual meetings to reassert U.S. leadership in the Western Hemisphere.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called President Joe Biden a "good man" on Monday, but blamed U.S. domestic political pressure for Biden's decision to exclude Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the summit.

"I believe in the need to change the policy... of exclusion, of the desire to dominate for no reason and not respect the sovereignty of countries, the independence of each country, and it will not be a summit of the Americas without the participation of all countries in the America's," said López Obrador, often known by his initials as AMLO, during a press conference.MORE: Amid boycotts, US scrambling to make Summit of the Americas a success

AMLO is not the only head of government to boycott the meetings over the invitation list. The leaders of Bolivia, Antigua and Barbuda, Guatemala, and Honduras have said they will not attend, while others -- including left-wing leaders in Chile and Argentina -- have criticized the U.S. decision while still confirming their attendance.

Biden will travel to Los Angeles later this week with first lady Dr. Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to host the summit, with plans to announce agreements on migration, economic development, public health, climate change, democracy, and more.


© Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty ImagesMexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is seen during his daily morning press conference in Mexico City on June 6, 2022.

But the boycotts have dominated talk around the summit, with some critics saying the administration has not done enough to rally participation around common objectives.

"A lack of robust agenda that speaks to the region has opened the door to distractions in the form of ideological & political theater," tweeted Ryan Berg, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

It's unclear how much of an effect AMLO's absence will have, especially as he announced he would dispatch his Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard in his place. The populist, nationalist president also said he would meet with Biden in July at the White House.

But losing the leader of the world's 15th largest economy and the second most populous country in Latin America is a blow, especially after Biden sent his friend and former Senate colleague Chris Dodd as a special adviser for the summit to Mexico and other countries to shore up attendance.

Biden also "incredibly values personal engagement," according to his top White House official for the region Juan Gonzalez, perhaps making any snubs more insulting. Months ago, the administration publicly floated the idea of inviting AMLO to an LA Dodgers baseball game -- a warm gesture toward a leader who has rhetorically challenged the U.S. and who, some critics say, has undermined Mexican democracy.

Some analysts say, however, that over a year into his administration, Biden has not put enough energy into his stated goal of reasserting U.S. leadership in its hemisphere and promoting democracy in a region that has seen significant backsliding and political upheaval.


President Joe Biden meets with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the Oval Office of the White House, Nov. 18, 2021 in Washington, D.C.



"Unfortunately, the Biden administration did not put all the political capital needed to address more than 10 political problems" from Haiti to Venezuela and to make the summit a success, said Manuel Orozco, the director of the Inter-American Dialogue's migration, remittances, and development program in Washington.

"The quantity of problems that are mounting in Latin America and the Caribbean vis-à-vis the United States is just overwhelming... The political capital wasn't there," he added.

Dodd had more success elsewhere, especially in Brazil. President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right leader of Latin America's largest country, announced last week he would attend the summit and have his first one-on-one meeting with Biden, with whom he's had frosty relations because of his environmental policies, attacks on Brazilian democracy, and close ties to former President Donald Trump.

In addition to Dodd, the administration deployed Jill Biden on a goodwill tour in May to Ecuador, Panama, and Costa Rica, where she was warmly received by heads of states and fellow first ladies and visited hospitals and schools supported with U.S. funding.


© Erin Schaff/APHonduran President Xiomara Castro and Vice President Kamala Harris walk through the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on Jan. 27, 2022.

Vice President Harris also called Honduras's left-wing President Xiomara Castro last month, but less than 24 hours later, she announced she would not participate if there were exclusions.

Harris has been tasked with stemming migration from Honduras and other Central American countries and attended Castro's inauguration in January, trying to secure an ally in the country's first female leader. But she's been criticized for visiting the region for three days in the 15 months since Biden announced her role -- keeping the politically fraught issue at times at an arm's length away.

U.S. officials have said they could not invite the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua because of their crackdowns on civil society and democracy, arguing that the region's countries agreed in the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter that any "interruption of the democratic order" in one country "constitutes an insurmountable obstacle" to its participation in the summit.

Instead of attending, AMLO announced he would travel on Thursday or Friday to the Mexican state Oaxaca, which was hit by Hurricane Agatha last week, to survey the damage and the reconstruction efforts.
Posted by at No comments:
MEXICO
López Obrador's party wins 4 of 6 gubernatorial elections, consolidating its power

Mon, June 6, 2022

Supporters of then-presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Morena party await him in Mexico City in July 2018. (Emilio Espejel / Associated Press)

The party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has continued its consolidation of power by winning four of the six governorships on the ballot in local elections, according to electoral authorities Monday.

López Obrador's National Regeneration Movement — known as Morena — along with its allied parties won in Tamaulipas, Quintana Roo, Oaxaca and Hidalgo on Sunday. An opposition coalition won in Aguascalientes and Durango.

The victories give Morena control of 22 of Mexico’s 32 states, an important advantage heading into the 2024 presidential elections.

“With 22 governorships and a well-evaluated president, everything appears to indicate that Morena shores up first place heading into the presidency in 2024,” said Patricio Morelos, a politics professor at Monterrey Tech university.


López Obrador has maintained high popularity while Mexico’s opposition has floundered, steadily losing ground. However, so much of Morena’s success is attributed to López Obrador that there are doubts whether the party will hold together after his term ends, when he says he will retire from politics.

“It is a historic day for ‘Obradorism,’” said Mario Delgado, Morena’s president. “We continue advancing and the people keep confirming with their vote that it is an honor to be with [López] Obrador.”

Mexico’s Ruling Party Expands Power With Local Election Wins



Max de Haldevang
Sun, June 5, 2022,

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s ruling Morena party won four of six states it didn’t already control in local elections on Sunday, consolidating President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s political power further beyond his traditional strongholds in the south of the country.

Morena and allied parties were projected to win the states of Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Hidalgo and Tamaulipas, the latter of which is located in the country’s northeast bordering Texas, according to rapid count results posted by Mexico’s electoral institute on Twitter. A coalition of opposition parties including the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, and the PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of last century, won the states of Durango and Aguascalientes.

The results were broadly in line with expectations by pollsters, even if Morena officials said they aimed to win all six states.

The election was a litmus test of Lopez Obrador’s support after three and a half years of government, and of the strength of opposition parties, which have banded together against him by putting forward joint candidates. Since Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, won the presidency in 2018, Morena and its allies have swept across the country, and with Sunday’s results they will govern 22 of Mexico’s 32 states.

Mexico’s economy hasn’t yet recovered the level when AMLO took power in December 2018 after being greatly affected by the pandemic, with the fifth-most Covid-19 deaths of any country. But the 68-year-old president remains widely popular, in part thanks to his anti-corruption agenda and social programs that give working-class Mexicans monthly cash transfers.

Morena’s strong backing reflects “to a very significant extent the enduring popularity of President Lopez Obrador, his long political coattails, and the impact of the social programs created by the administration,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief Latin America economist Alberto Ramos wrote in a note before Sunday’s vote.

A strong Morena performance would put it in a favorable position to win the presidency again in 2024, when Lopez Obrador steps down after his single six-year term. It could also spell the end of state control by the PRI, which governed Mexico for decades of one-party rule until 2000, Eurasia Group wrote this week.

After Sunday’s results, the party will govern by itself just two states -- both of which are up for grabs next year.
Posted by at No comments:
Biden scrambles to avoid Americas Summit flop in Los Angeles

INVITED BUT WILL NOT ATTEND

AMLO AND BIDEN


NOT INVITED 

Cuba ALBA SummitVenezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, left, and Cuba's President Miguel Diaz Canel, flash V-signs as they pose for a group photo during the XXI ALBA Summit at the Palace of the Revolution, in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 27, 2022. (Yamil Lage/Pool Photo via AP)Less


ELLIOT SPAGAT, JOSHUA GOODMAN and CHRIS MEGERIAN
Sun, June 5, 2022, 8:03 AM·6 min read

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When leaders gather this week in Los Angeles at the Summit of the Americas, the focus is likely to veer from common policy changes — migration, climate change and galloping inflation — and instead shift to something Hollywood thrives on: the drama of the red carpet.

With Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador topping a list of leaders threatening to stay home to protest the U.S.’ exclusion of authoritarian leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, experts say the event could turn into a embarrassment for U.S. President Joe Biden. Even some progressive Democrats have criticized the administration for bowing to pressure from exiles in the swing state of Florida and barring communist Cuba, which attended the last two summits.

“The real question is why the Biden administration didn’t do its homework,” said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who now teaches at New York University.

While the Biden administration insists the president in Los Angeles will outline his vision for a "sustainable, resilient, and equitable future” for the hemisphere, Castañeda said it's clear from the last-minute wrangling over the guest list that Latin America is not a priority for the U.S. president.

“This ambitious agenda, no one knows exactly what it is, other than a series of bromides," he said.

The U.S. is hosting the summit for the first time since its launch in 1994, in Miami, as part of an effort to galvanize support for a free trade agreement stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.

But that goal was abandoned more than 15 years ago amid a rise in leftist politics in the region. With China's influence expanding, most nations have come to expect — and need — less from Washington. As a result, the premier forum for regional cooperation has languished, at times turning into a stage for airing historical grievances, like when the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez at the 2009 summit in Trinidad & Tobago gave President Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's classic tract, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

The U.S. opening to former Cold War adversary Cuba, which was sealed with Obama's handshake with Raul Castro at the 2015 summit in Panama, lowered some of the ideological tensions.

“It’s a huge missed opportunity,” Ben Rhodes, who led the Cuba thaw as deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration, said recently in his “Pod Save the World” podcast. “We are isolating ourselves by taking that step because you’ve got Mexico, you’ve got Caribbean countries saying they’re not going to come — which is only going to make Cuba look stronger than us.”

To bolster turnout and avert a flop, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been working the phones in recent days, speaking with the leaders of Argentina and Honduras, both of whom initially expressed support for Mexico's proposed boycott. Former Senator Christopher Dodd has also crisscrossed the region as a special adviser for the summit, in the process convincing far right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was a staunch ally of Trump but hasn't once spoken to Biden, to belatedly confirm his attendance.

Ironically, the decision to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela wasn't the whim of the U.S. alone. The region's governments in 2001, in Quebec City, declared that any break with democratic order is an “insurmountable obstacle” to future participation in the summit process.

The governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela aren’t even active members of the Washington-based Organization of the American States, which organizes the summit.

“This should’ve been a talking point from the beginning,” said former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, who in a long diplomatic career attended several summits. “It’s not a U.S. imposition. It was consensual. If leaders want to change that, then we should have a conversation first.”

After the last summit in Peru, in 2018, which President Trump didn't even bother to attend, many predicted there was no future for the regional gathering. In response to Trump's historic pullout, only 17 of the region's 35 heads of state attended. Few saw value in bringing together for a photo op leaders from such dissimilar places as aid-dependent Haiti, industrial powerhouses Mexico and Brazil and violence-plagued Central America — each with their own unique challenges and bilateral agenda with Washington.

“As long as we don’t speak with a single voice, no one is going to listen to us," said former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, who also faults Mexico and Brazil — the region's two economic powers — for the current drift in hemispheric relations. "With a cacophony of voices, it is much more difficult to find our place in the world."

To the surprise of many, the U.S. in early 2019 picked up the ball, offering to host the summit. At the time, the Trump administration was enjoying something of a leadership renaissance in Latin America, albeit among mostly similar-minded conservative governments around the narrow issue of restoring democracy in Venezuela.

But that goodwill unraveled as Trump floated the idea of invading Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro — a threat recalling the worst excesses of the Cold War. Then the pandemic hit, taking a devastating human and economic toll on a region that accounted for more than a quarter of the world's COVID-19 deaths despite making up only 8% of the population. The region's politics were upended.

The election of Biden, who was Obama's point man for Latin America and had decades of hands-on experience in the region from his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, set expectations for a relaunch. But as popular angst spread during the pandemic, the Biden administration was slow to match the vaccine diplomacy of Russia and China, although it did eventually provide 70 million doses to the hemisphere. Biden also maintained the Trump-era restrictions on migration, reinforcing the view that it was neglecting its own neighbors.

Since then, Biden's hallmark policy in the region — a $4 billion aid package to attack the root causes of migration in Central America — has stalled in Congress with no apparent effort to revive it. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has also diverted attention away from the region, something experts say could come back to bite Biden if rising interest rates in the U.S. trigger a stampede of capital outflows and debt defaults in emerging markets.

There have been smaller snubs too: When leftist millennial Gabriel Boric was elected president in Chile, setting high expectations for a generational shift in the region's politics, the U.S. delegation to his inauguration was led by the second-lowest ranking Cabinet member, Small Business Administrator Isabel Guzman.

Shannon said for the summit to be successful Biden shouldn’t try to lay out a grand American vision for the hemisphere but rather show sensitivity to the region’s embrace of other global powers, concerns about gaping inequality and traditional mistrust of the U.S.

“More than speeches," says Shannon, “”he will need to listen.”

___

AP Writers Matthew Lee in Washington, Daniel Politi in Buenos Aires, David Biller in Rio de Janeiro and Gonzalo Solano in Quito contributed to this report.

___

Goodman reported from Miami.
 

At this week's Summit of the Americas, Canada has stake in U.S. border challenges

WASHINGTON — If foreign policy was purely a matter of geography, one might assume Canada would be free to go check out the buffet at this week's Summit of the Americas once the discussion turns, as it surely will, to the migratory tide flooding the U.S.-Mexico border.



But at the dawn of a turbulent new geopolitical era, evidence is mounting that America's southern frontier — along with the political and economic challenges and opportunities it represents — is closer in many ways than most Canadians might realize.

And if President Joe Biden hopes to realize his vision of a comprehensive, holistic solution to the economic and social ills that imperil the Western Hemisphere, experts say he'll need Canada to be an integral part of that conversation.

"Canada has an enormous amount to contribute, because Canada is the country in the Americas that has come closest to getting immigration right," said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington D.C.

"There's a lot that the rest of the Americas, including the United States, could be learning from Canada."

The idea behind the summit in Los Angeles, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend beginning Wednesday, is to find a way to address some of the underlying political, economic and social causes of northward migration in the first place.

En route, Trudeau will stop Tuesday in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he and Defence Minister Anita Anand will meet with commanders and military officials from Norad, the joint-command continental defence system that's awaiting a long-needed upgrade.

He'll be joined in California by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, who is scheduled to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mexican counterpart Marcelo Ebrard.

As a cornerstone of Canada's economic growth, federal immigration policy strikes a delicate balance between economic, humanitarian and labour-policy priorities, all the while preserving public buy-in to keep the ever-present political dangers at bay, Selee said.

Those dangers, weaponized to great effect by Donald Trump, now loom larger than ever in North America, where the former president's isolationist, build-the-wall rhetoric has proven so potent that it's become standard Republican doctrine.

And while the migration challenges at Canada's southern border pale in comparison to those that confront the U.S. along the Rio Grande Valley, they are there — and they share a connection.

Despite the more than 2,300 kilometres separating Canada from Mexico's northern frontier, U.S. customs officials as far north as Maine have in recent months encountered dozens of people who entered the country from the south.

It's likely many were headed to spots like Roxham Road, a popular destination for those looking to make a refugee claim in Canada without being returned to the U.S., which is what automatically happens when they show up at an official entry point.

"It would not be surprising if there are people coming from or through Latin America that really want to get to Canada in the end," Selee said.

"Canada has just enough people who come from elsewhere in the Americas that it could become a much more attractive destination over time, particularly if the U.S. is a less hospitable environment."

It's been 28 years since the U.S. hosted the inaugural Summit of the Americas in 1994, "and we're obviously living in different times," said Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council's senior director for the Western Hemisphere.

For starters, Russia has invaded Ukraine, the lasting impact of an ongoing two-year pandemic continues to reverberate, inflation is testing new records and many people on this side of the planet are "really starting to question the value of democracy," Gonzalez said.

Biden will propose what Gonzalez called a strategy of shared responsibility and economic support for those countries most impacted by the flow of migration. It will also include a multilateral declaration "of unity and resolve" to bring the crisis under control.

Leaders of "source, transit or destination countries" will seek consensus on how to tackle a problem "that is actually impacting all the countries in the Americas," he said.

"We need to work together to address it in a way that treats migrants with dignity, invests in creating opportunities that would dissuade migrants from leaving their homes in the first place, and provide the protections that migrants deserve."

The U.S. Border Patrol calls it "push and pull" — the myriad factors that spur people around the world to abandon one country in favour of another, often as clandestinely as possible. Those motivations were muted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but no longer.

Police intercepted nearly 10,000 people entering Canada between official entry points during the first four months of the year, compared with just 3,944 during the same period of 2019. And last month alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 9,157 encounters at or near the Canada-U.S. border — seven times the 1,250 apprehensions in April 2021.

Late last month, two Honduran nationals appeared in court in Montana to face human smuggling charges after they allegedly led a group of migrants into the country by walking across the Canada-U.S. border.

Two U.S. citizens are also facing similar charges in a pair of separate cases — one last month that saw a group of Indian nationals rescued while trying to cross a river that separates Ontario from New York state, and one in Minnesota linked to the January deaths of a family of four from India who died of exposure in frigid conditions in Manitoba.

Agents in Maine have also recently encountered carloads of illegal migrants, including five Romanian nationals who entered from Canada. Two other separate incidents involved a total of 22 people, 14 from Mexico and seven from Ecuador, who entered the U.S. via the southern border.

"There are a number of push-and-pull factors … that make people want to leave their country or come to another country for one reason or another," said William Maddocks, the chief U.S. Border Patrol agent for Houlton Sector, which encompasses Maine.

Human smugglers are always keen to exploit that desire, he added. "Where these people see an opportunity for making a profit, that becomes their business. Anytime we change the laws, there will be people who seek to exploit those changes."

Other summit priorities will include helping countries bring COVID-19 under control, forging new ties on climate and energy initiatives, confronting food insecurity and leveraging existing trade agreements to better ensure more people are able to reap the benefits.

Defending core democratic values will also be a major focus in Los Angeles, which is part of why the U.S. has not invited leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to attend — three authoritarian countries with dubious records on human rights.

Others, including Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Bolivian President Luis Arce, have vowed not to attend unless all of the hemisphere's heads of government were invited. The U.S. has yet to release a final list of attendees.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2022.

James McCarten, The Canadian Press
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)