In the Media: Abortion and Sexuality

Supreme Court decision on partial-birth abortion:

• The US Supreme Court reversed course on abortion on Wednesday when it upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5-to-4 decision. The court’s newest justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr, voted in favour of the ban.
• Mark Sherman writes about the Supreme Court decision:
  

  For the first time since the court established a woman’s right to an abortion in 1973, the justices upheld a nationwide ban on a specific abortion method, labeled partial-birth abortion by its opponents.

Human sexuality:

• Africa is in denial about homosexuality. The Economist writes:
  

  Most African leaders still frown on homosexuality. Several call it ”subhuman” and ”un-African”. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has called homosexuals ”worse than dogs and pigs”. The late J.M. Kariuki, a Kenyan populist MP, called homosexuality ”that vice for which we Africans have no name”. Such views help ridicule African homosexuals and hamper the fight against AIDS, albeit a scourge transmitted mainly heterosexually in Africa.

• A new study from Malmö suggests that 10% of Swedes visiting youth centres have either bought or sold sex over the internet.