health

Filipinas seek abortions online in largely Catholic nation

BY PAM CASTRO AND ARA EUGENIO

  • In January, a lawmaker filed a resolution calling for an investigation into the growing number of Filipinas resorting to social media for help in ending their pregnancies. 
  • Jane had been bleeding heavily for days before finally seeking help, not from a hospital but from the man who sold her the pills meant to end her six-week pregnancy.
  • In January, a lawmaker filed a resolution calling for an investigation into the growing number of Filipinas resorting to social media for help in ending their pregnancies. 
Jane had been bleeding heavily for days before finally seeking help, not from a hospital but from the man who sold her the pills meant to end her six-week pregnancy.
Abortions are strictly outlawed in the mainly Catholic Philippines, forcing women to turn to a patchwork of providers operating in the online shadows.
While rare in practice, Philippine law allows for prison terms of up to six years for abortion patients and providers, leaving thousands of Filipinas to search for solutions in online forums where unlicensed sellers promote abortifacients.
"It was very painful, as if my abdomen was being twisted," Jane, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, told AFP, describing the visit where the seller, a purported doctor, inserted a pill into her cervix without anaesthesia.
Jane was warned not to disclose the abortion if anything went wrong, she said.
"I heard stories that some women were reported to the police, ignored or left to die when they reached the hospital," the 31-year-old added.
While post-abortion care has been legal for over a decade, many health workers remain hesitant to provide it, over fears of being arrested or losing their licenses, said Junice Melgar, whose Likhaan Center for Women's Health serves Manila's poorest.
"I believe that a lot of providers... would like to help. They might find it ethical, but it's a scary proposition for them," she said.

'A chilling effect'

As women have flocked to online sources, authorities have taken notice.
In January, a lawmaker filed a resolution calling for an investigation into the growing number of Filipinas resorting to social media for help in ending their pregnancies. 
The Senate last year also urged the Department of Health and the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on what a top lawmaker called "brazen crimes".
But Jane, while acknowledging the potential safety issues, said she feared targeting online sources would only further limit access to a much-needed medical procedure.
"There might be a chilling effect, and we won't know where else we can get the proper information," she said.
A reproductive health services law passed in 2012 aimed to normalise comprehensive sex education and free contraceptives across the country.
But the measure faced fierce opposition from the Catholic Church and conservative legislators, who weakened its implementation.
Funding was slashed, healthcare workers were allowed to refuse services, and access to emergency contraceptives like Plan B was heavily restricted.
"The Catholic Church will always oppose abortion and its applications," priest Dan Cancino of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines told AFP, citing its commitment to the preservation and dignity of human life.
In rare situations, such as ectopic pregnancies that threaten a woman's life, interventions that might lead to fetal death can be morally permissible, he said.
But the Church's position against "intentional abortions" is absolute, he said, even in cases of rape or on grounds of mental health or financial hardship.
Cancino said the Church provides support to mothers and children facing unintended pregnancies, though he admitted those efforts remain "very fragmented".
Lawyer Clara Padilla of the Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network (PINSAN), meanwhile, said even legal exceptions for rape, incest or health risks would "not be enough", noting most abortions were sought by married women with at least three children.

'People need this'

More than 250 women are hospitalised every day due to complications from unsafe abortions, according to a PINSAN study. About three of them die.
Padilla said her group has documented cases of women binding their stomachs, inserting wire hangers into their cervix, or even asking people to kick them in attempts to induce abortion.
"Some people are opposing (abortion) because it's against their morals," Padilla said.
"We're just saying that people need this, and you shouldn't be barring them from accessing healthcare that can save their lives."
Even if contraceptives were easily available, abortion would remain a necessary backstop for women for whom an unplanned pregnancy can mean sliding further into poverty and violence, said the Likhaan Center's Melgar.
"There will be rapes, there will be other circumstances where protection simply does not work," she said.
Jane, who said she suffered from abdominal pain, weakness and loss of appetite for up to three months after the procedure, told AFP she would make the same decision if forced to do it over.
"When you talk about abortion in the Philippines, the discussion is reduced to whether it is legal or moral. People forget that abortion is a health issue," she said. 
"This is my body, my health, my life, and it's up to me to decide what happens to it."
pam-ae/cwl/lkd/mjw

EV

Samsung battery plant turns toxic for Orban's re-election campaign

BY ANDRAS ROSTOVANYI

  • Telex reported that a 2023 intelligence report by the Hungarian security services found that Samsung has been exposing workers to cancer-inducing chemicals far above legal limits, did nothing to end the problem and deliberately tried to conceal it.
  • On the outskirts of the town of God, not far from Budapest, white smoke rises from a Samsung electric vehicle battery factory accused of exposing workers to cancer-causing chemicals, with Hungary's government under attack for failing to shut it down.
  • Telex reported that a 2023 intelligence report by the Hungarian security services found that Samsung has been exposing workers to cancer-inducing chemicals far above legal limits, did nothing to end the problem and deliberately tried to conceal it.
On the outskirts of the town of God, not far from Budapest, white smoke rises from a Samsung electric vehicle battery factory accused of exposing workers to cancer-causing chemicals, with Hungary's government under attack for failing to shut it down.
The allegations revealed by Hungarian news site Telex last month come at a sensitive time for nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban as he faces an unprecedented challenge to his 16 years in power in elections next month.
While Orban and Samsung have dismissed the allegations, opposition leader Peter Magyar, whose party has been polling ahead of Orban's since last year, has said it underlines the corruption he pledges to fight.
The South Korean industrial giant established its battery plant in 2017, and it now sprawls over 50 hectares (123 acres) on the outskirts of God.
With Orban promoting Hungary as a global hub for electric vehicle manufacturing, the factory has received generous subsidies of more than half a billion euros in taxpayers' money to build and expand the facility.
Telex reported that a 2023 intelligence report by the Hungarian security services found that Samsung has been exposing workers to cancer-inducing chemicals far above legal limits, did nothing to end the problem and deliberately tried to conceal it.
The government chose not to seek the plant's closure, Telex claimed, despite concerns among some ministers about the "unacceptable political risk".
Instead it gave Samsung a few months to resolve the problems, it added.
Citing internal documents, the news site said the issues were still not completely solved.
But Samsung insisted last month that the factory "complies with all environmental and occupational safety regulations and operates transparently."
The plant and others like it, including one by China's CATL, have repeatedly seen protests over environmental concerns.

Toxic solvent

When AFP visited God last week, several locals said they were worried about the factory, while others said they trusted the government.
"They keep expanding it... it became huge, and we don't know what is going on inside," pensioner Erika Nemeth, 67, told AFP, complaining about falling property prices.
Another resident, Beata Peimli, said she believed the factory would be shut down if there were problems.
"Such a large factory is probably monitored extensively," said the 45-year-old.
The local council is seeking to calm nerves.
"All accredited tests to date carried out by the local government... have not detected any contamination," acting spokesman Peter David Balogh told AFP. 
But local environmentalist group God-ERT -- founded in 2020 to monitor the battery plant -- is sceptical.
Tests it commissioned detected N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) in local wells. The toxic solvent frequently used in battery manufacturing is highly dangerous to pregnant women.
The plant -- which until 2023 did not need an environmental permit to run -- has repeatedly faced fines for occupational, industrial safety and environmental violations.
Samsung has violated "all kinds of regulations", including "deficiencies in environmental protection" and "occupational safety", said Zsuzsanna Bodnar, a local journalist from investigative outlet Atlatszo and a founding member of God-ERT.
Both God-ERT and Atlatszo have faced probes from authorities over their funding, though neither has been sanctioned.

'Fake issue'

Orban has dismissed the latest claims as a "fake issue" ahead of the April 12 general election, insisting Hungary has "the strictest environmental regulations in place, and our authorities enforce these regulations".
Neither Samsung nor the government responded to AFP's inquiries for comments.
Opposition leader Magyar, who held a rally in God on Thursday, has pledged to review all battery factory licences if his party wins the election.
Magyar's party could win support locally, according to Szabolcs Pek, an analyst at Iranytu Institute think tank.
"But this won't be the issue that brings down the system," he added.
ros/kym/jza/cw/fg

Sports

Mignoni returns as Toulon coach after mid-season 'breakdown'

BY LUCAS BERLOTTO

  • Mignoni added, however, that "I'm still a coach and I'll always be on the pitch.
  • Pierre Mignoni, who has resumed his post as Toulon coach after a sudden mid-season pause, said Friday he had suffered a "breakdown" and had learned that coaching could kill.
  • Mignoni added, however, that "I'm still a coach and I'll always be on the pitch.
Pierre Mignoni, who has resumed his post as Toulon coach after a sudden mid-season pause, said Friday he had suffered a "breakdown" and had learned that coaching could kill.
"My body gave out on me," said Mignoni about his decision to step aside following a loss to Clermont in the French Top 14 on February 14.
"I experienced what you might call a breakdown, a work overload. I felt it coming on, but you always have this feeling of being a superhuman. You're always taking care of others and not much of yourself," said the 49-year-old former France scrum-half who has been in charge at Toulon since 2022. 
"It's a fabulous job; you don't count the hours and you tell yourself it'll be alright. But it's not so much the workload on the field that's heavy, it's the mental load. And at one point, it really hit me hard. It wasn't the defeat that put me in this state; it was the final straw, and my body gave out."
Mignoni said Pierre Dantin, the club's 'high-performance consultant' told him to take a break.
"I'm someone who doesn't sleep a lot, about five or six hours a night, but I slept for five days straight. I felt like my head weighed 20 kilos and I couldn't walk anymore. It took me a week to walk again, to walk around my garden. 
"The doctor even thought I'd had a stroke. I had a brain MRI after my five days of sleep to rule that out."
Mignoni said he felt "much better, otherwise I wouldn't have come back".
"But," he added, "I don't want to go through that again."
He said he was going to change the way he worked and delegated.
"I used to get up at 5am to be in the office by 5:20am, until 6 or 8pm, sometimes 10pm. Now I'm going to forbid myself from getting up at 5am. I've already pushed it back an hour."
Mignoni added, however, that "I'm still a coach and I'll always be on the pitch. I simply need to work better with my staff". 

'I have to be careful'

He said he had considered his future but the club president supported him.
"I asked myself if I had the strength and the desire to continue. Bernard Lemaitre immediately told me that it was unthinkable for him that I would leave.
"He wanted me to take a break, even three months if necessary. Accepting that your coach takes a break is very rare."
He said he recovered "step by step".
"I only started seeing people again last week. Before that, I didn't want to be seen. It's not a question of shame," he said.
"I was happy to be back, a little emotional," he said. "But I have to be careful, I'm still being monitored.
"I've been having a great time, I feel fresher. I took three weeks off, I'd never done that before, not even during my holidays. The players seemed happy to see me again, a little emotional, which is nice. 
"I'm not Superman, even though I didn't think I was. Six months ago I said that if I had to die on the sidelines, I didn't care. I thought it could never happen. Now I know it can.
"How many times has my wife told me to stop?" he asked. "I told her not to worry."
lbe/stt/pb/lp/ea

disease

South Africa's livestock farmers reel from foot-and-mouth disaster

BY CLéMENT VARANGES

  • The blow comes as farmers in the Eastern Cape recover from months of severe drought.
  • Pointing at a calf lying motionless in a green field in South Africa's Eastern Cape province, farmer Igsahn Felix let out a heavy sigh.
  • The blow comes as farmers in the Eastern Cape recover from months of severe drought.
Pointing at a calf lying motionless in a green field in South Africa's Eastern Cape province, farmer Igsahn Felix let out a heavy sigh. "That one is not going to make it," he said.
Home to more than two head of cattle per person, the province is the beating heart of South Africa's livestock industry.
But its endless expanses have been swept by panic since an outbreak of highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, which was declared a national disaster in February. 
The government in January rolled out a 10-year drive to vaccinate nearly 20 million cattle against the highly contagious and sometimes deadly viral infection. 
But farmers like Felix, who is based near the town of Humansdorp, accused the government of allowing the crisis to escalate until it had gone too far.
Nearly 1,000 outbreaks have been reported in South Africa, affecting all of nine provinces. The disease has also been reported in neighbouring Botswana, Eswatini and Zimbabwe in recent months.
On the side of a dirt road near Felix's farm, a large signpost warned ominously: "Foot-and-mouth disease control area".
Every passing vehicle had to be sprayed with a chemical solution to stop the spread of the virus, which can remain up to six months in cow dung.
Of the 245 animals belonging to the farmers' cooperative of which Felix is a member, 128 have fallen ill and 14 did not survive.
Foot-and-mouth causes fever and blisters near the hoof and in the mouth that prevent animals from feeding, as seen in the emaciated survivors.
For several weeks the area, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the town of Gqeberha, formerly called Port Elizabeth, has been under a quarantine prohibiting any sale or slaughter of meat.

High costs

Felix's group of 22 subsistence farmers earn about 540,000 rands (over $32,000) in a normal year. Their losses from foot-and-mouth have already cost them 180,000 rands.
"If we were vaccinated early enough, the disease wouldn't have been here and we would have not lost that much money," Felix told AFP.
Adding to the costs was the expensive fodder that farmers had to buy while their herds were unable to graze in the open fields.
Except for the state-sponsored vaccinations, farmers have to carry the financial burden of the outbreak themselves, said cattle breeder Doane Kaizer, who has about 60 cows.
"Sanitisation has a cost too," he said. "I am sure the government can do more. Things need to step up a bit."
The outbreak has led South African beef to be banned in Zambia and China, a key importer.
It was also the reason given by agriculture minister John Steenhuisen in February when he announced he would not seek re-election as leader of the second-largest party, the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA).
"My next chapter must be to eradicate this devastating disease from our shores once and for all," said Steenhuisen, whose handling of the crisis has been sharply criticised.
The outbreak put Steenhuisen -- and his party, which draws significant support from farmers -- in "a weak position", said political analyst Susan Booysen, with local government elections later this year.
"He might even lose his cabinet status," she said. 

Vaccination drive

South Africa lost its status as a foot-and-mouth-free country in 2019, with outbreaks from 2021 spreading across the country. 
It finally received 2.5 million imported vaccine doses in late February for the virus strains currently spreading.
"This is going to be our test because this vaccine has never been used in this country before," said veterinarian Anthony Davis, a member of a dedicated government vaccination task force.
Humansdorp already suffered heavy losses during the previous foot-and-mouth crisis in 2024, which cost between five and seven million rand (around $300,000 to $420,000) for every 1,000 dairy cows, said Rufus Dreyer, one of the farmers severely affected.
The blow comes as farmers in the Eastern Cape recover from months of severe drought.
There are fears the virus will spread to the country's third-largest dairy, Woodlands Dairy, also located in Humansdorp.
The dairy employs more than 1,000 people and the economic impact of an outbreak would be "huge", warned deputy mayor Timothy Jantjes.
With the easily spread virus even carried by the wind, the Eastern Cape -- which has over four million head of cattle, more than any other province -- was holding its breath.
clv/jcb/br/sbk

infertility

'We're not wombs': Japan women seek rights to sterilisation

BY TOMOHIRO OSAKI

  • That's because few want to speak out in a society where "the myth persists that women are incomplete without motherhood", lawyer Kameishi said.
  • When Kazane Kajiya voluntarily sterilised herself in the United States aged 27, she essentially "flipped the middle finger" at Japan's patriarchal society that had long pushed her towards motherhood.
  • That's because few want to speak out in a society where "the myth persists that women are incomplete without motherhood", lawyer Kameishi said.
When Kazane Kajiya voluntarily sterilised herself in the United States aged 27, she essentially "flipped the middle finger" at Japan's patriarchal society that had long pushed her towards motherhood.
In the rapidly ageing country desperate to boost its falling birth rates, women seeking to make themselves infertile were assumed "not even to exist", Kajiya, who has never wanted children, told AFP.
She and four other women are now challenging the constitutionality of Japan's decades-old "maternity protection" law, one of the world's most restrictive barriers to sterilisation.
A verdict in their landmark lawsuit dubbed "maternity is not my body's purpose" is due next week.
Under the law, a woman must have multiple children with her health at risk, or face life-threatening danger from pregnancy, to qualify for sterilisation. Even then, spousal consent is required.
This bans physicians from operating on healthy, childless women like Kajiya, now 29, who flew to the US to have her fallopian tubes removed in what she described as a minimally invasive procedure.
It was her "ultimate no" to being treated as a "future incubator".
To her, the law signals the government is "dead-set against giving freedom to end reproductive capacity to women who haven't fulfilled their 'duties' to bear multiple children for the sake of the nation".
Growing up, she was told her uterine lining represented the "bed for a baby" and that period pain was preparation for labour. 
"I felt like I had been shoved onto a train bound for motherhood," she recalled.
By having the surgery, "I smashed the windows, and hurled myself out of that train.
"We're not wombs, we're humans."

Japan as an 'outlier' 

A holdover from a wartime era where women were considered resources for population growth, the law effectively "manages all fertile women as potential maternal bodies", Michiko Kameishi, lead lawyer for the case, told AFP. 
Its spousal consent requirement suggests "women are not seen as independent beings capable of self-determination".
The lawyer aims to establish women have constitutionally guaranteed rights to bodily freedom, placing sterilisation on par with plastic surgery or tattooing.
Kajiya once wondered if discomfort with being female explained her feelings but dismissed that "because I hate beards and like pretty clothes", she said. She even came to terms with menstruation.
What she truly loathes, she concluded, is her biological capacity to reproduce.
That innate aversion to fertility, the pressure on women to give birth and the desire for safe, effective contraception have united the plaintiffs. 
Among modern democracies, Japan is an outlier on sterilisation access.
The lawsuit cites a 2002 study by EngenderHealth, a global NGO focused on sexual and reproductive health, that says more than 70 countries -- including many industrialised economies -- explicitly permitted the procedure as a method of contraception.
Japan was among eight countries that forbade or severely restricted it.
In Japan, condoms -- a male-controlled method -- is the most popular form of birth control.
Just 0.5 percent of women choose sterilisation and 2.7 percent use the contraceptive pill, seen as costly, according to one survey.
Contraceptive injections and implants remain unavailable.
And while men's vasectomies similarly require spousal consent, enforcement tends to be laxer with urology clinics openly touting the procedure, campaigners say.
The government, meanwhile, has defended the current system as protecting women from "future regret". 
Given the "irreversible" nature of sterilisation, existing restrictions "help guarantee those considering surgery rights to self-determination over whether they want to have children", the government said in a document filed with Tokyo District Court.

Myths, guilt

These restrictions have historically sparked little debate even among feminists who have strenuously opposed Japan's spousal consent requirement for abortions.
That's because few want to speak out in a society where "the myth persists that women are incomplete without motherhood", lawyer Kameishi said.
"Merely being childless makes them feel a bit guilty, so how could they speak openly about their desire to proactively remove their reproductive potential?"
Another plaintiff raising her voice is 26-year-old Rena Sato.
As an aromantic and asexual person, Sato -- a pseudonym she uses in the lawsuit -- categorically rules out marriage and childbirth. 
"To me, the act of bringing a life out of my body is strongly linked to heterosexual romance, so this function of fertility has no place in my sexuality," she told AFP.
Her only possibility of pregnancy is therefore through rape, she said.
"If I'm forced to maintain my fertility, it'd be tantamount to the state telling me to accept the risk of sexual violence while alive."
Now married to a partner who respects her choice to be child-free, Kajiya has no regrets about getting sterilised.
But she sometimes wonders whether Japan pushed her to an extreme.
"Had I been born in a country where women have the same rights to bodily autonomy as men, and where no one assumes I will become a mother," she said, "I might've not let incisions be made to my body."
tmo/aph/abs

autism

Trump administration does about face on autism treatment

  • But on Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration backed off, citing insufficient evidence that it works for the condition.
  • The Trump administration did an about-face Tuesday on an autism treatment it had promoted with great fanfare.
  • But on Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration backed off, citing insufficient evidence that it works for the condition.
The Trump administration did an about-face Tuesday on an autism treatment it had promoted with great fanfare.
It had said back in September it would approve use of a drug called leucovorin -- synthetic vitamin B9 -- to treat the disorder. 
But on Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration backed off, citing insufficient evidence that it works for the condition.
The initial announcement came from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who for decades has spread debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.
Kennedy touted leucovorin, usually used to alleviate chemotherapy side effects, as an "exciting therapy" that could help children with autism, a disorder whose symptoms vary widely across a spectrum.
"This gives hope to the many parents with autistic children that it may be possible to improve their lives," President Donald Trump said in September at a press conference.
At the event he gave sweeping, unsubstantiated advice on autism, such as insisting that pregnant women should "tough it out" and avoid Tylenol over an unproven link to autism -- statements slammed by scientists.
Studies on a small number of patients have suggested that taking leucovorin can help ease some communication or personal-relations problems linked to autism, but experts say this issue needs more study.
On Tuesday the FDA said it was in fact approving use of leucovorin for a rare condition called cerebral folate deficiency but not for autism. 
The Trump administration's touting of it for autism ran the risk of raising false hopes, dozens of autism specialists said at the time in a joint letter.
"We don't have sufficient data to say that we could establish efficacy for autism more broadly," an FDA official told NBC News.
"It'll be up to patients to talk with their physicians to see if that might be right for them," said the official, whose name was not given.
cha/dw/md