Page 28 - bon-dia-aruba-20220915

A28 u.s. news
Diahuebs 15 september 2022

Philadelphia to consider local abortion access protections

PHILADELPHIA (AP) your healthcare and your
— Members of the Phila- body," Gym said.
delphia City Council an-
nounced plans Wednesday Philadelphia isn't the first
to introduce legislation municipality to consider lo-
aimed at protecting access cal regulations around abor-
to abortions inside city tion access.
limits — including a bill
proponents said would be In July, the Pittsburgh City
one of the nation's stron- Council passed three bills
gest privacy protection aimed at protecting access to
laws. abortion locally. Those mea-
sures included a law that pro-
The measures would bar the tects abortion providers from
voluntary sharing of infor- out-of-state investigations
mation about reproductive — known as a shield law and
health choices for the pur- legislation that requires local
pose of prosecution or civil law enforcement agencies to
lawsuits and update the city's deprioritize the enforcement
antidiscrimination laws to of any criminal ban on abor-
include protections for re- tion enacted at the state level.
productive health decisions.
It also would create a right The third Pittsburgh bill in-
of patients and providers to creased scrutiny on practices
counter-sue if they are sued at pregnancy crisis centers,
by out-of-state residents un- with providers to increase and across the country," said ruling that pushed regulat- which often work to dis-
der one of several laws seek- safety at clinics, to create an At-Large Councilmember ing abortions to states. It also suade pregnant women from
ing to prevent people from abortion access task force Helen Gym. comes less than two months seeking abortions. It creates
traveling across state lines to and to support allocating ad- before midterm elections that a complaint process for what
seek abortions. ditional city funds to help Gym said the supporters ex- will likely decide the future the council said were decep-
offset the costs of abortions pected pushback, but she of abortion access in Penn- tive practice and a way to re-
The legislation will be in- and reproductive care among said the bills would hope- sylvania moving forward. fer those complaints for pos-
troduced at Thursday's City other requests. fully set some legal precedent sible criminal investigation.
Council meeting. and "advance new territory" "We did want to push on
"We want to affirm our mu- in protecting reproductive the privacy issue because we Leaders in both Philadelphia
A resolution calls on the city nicipal rights at this time to health decisions. think it's so fundamental and and Pittsburgh have called
to bar city resources from be- be able to establish new pro- it's really the fundamental the cities refuges for people
ing used to cooperate with tections for individuals, for The proposed local legisla- underpinning behind Roe travelling from other states
out-of-state lawsuits, pros- people here in this city and tion comes after the U.S. Su- v. Wade, that (abortion) was that have enacted strict abor-
ecutions or investigations to be able to send that mes- preme Court's June decision and always is a private deci- tion bans to seek reproduc-
related to abortions, to work sage broadly across the state overturning Roe v. Wade, a sion about what to do with tive healthcare.

Package explodes on Boston campus; 1 injured, FBI involved

BOSTON (AP) — A ity studies program. It said was moved outside but that
package exploded on the the FBI was assisting the in- neither he nor his students
campus of Northeastern vestigation. heard an explosion.
University in Boston late
Tuesday, and the college Authorities declined to Michael Davis, chief of
said a staff member suf- elaborate, but Northeastern Northeastern's police force,
fered minor injuries. spokesperson Shannon Nar- told reporters the campus
gi said in a statement that an was secure. Boston police
Authorities said another sus- unidentified university staff didn't say whether any other
picious package was found member suffered minor in- suspicious packages were
near a prominent art muse- juries to his hand in the ex- found.
um and the FBI was assisting plosion. Felipe Colon, a Bos-
with the investigation. ton police superintendent, Harvard University and the
later described the victim as a Massachusetts Institute of
The parcel that blew up was 45-year-old man. Technology, both on the
one of two that were report- other side of the Charles
ed to police early in the eve- Police converged on the cam- River separating Boston from
ning. Boston's bomb squad pus shortly before 7:30 p.m., Cambridge, said they were
neutralized a second pack- and the university asked stu- increasing patrols on their
age near the city's Museum dents who had gathered for campuses as a precaution and
of Fine Arts, which is on the an evening journalism class at urging students and faculty to
outskirts of the Northeastern the hall to evacuate the build- report anything suspicious.
campus. ing.
Tuesday's explosion marked
NBC Boston reported that Northeastern is a private uni- one of the first big scares in
the package that exploded versity in downtown Boston Boston since 2013, when two
went off as it was being with about 16,000 under- bombs planted near the fin-
opened near the univer- graduate students. WCVB- ish line of the Boston Mara-
sity's Holmes Hall, which is TV said one of its reporters, thon killed three spectators
home to the university's cre- Mike Beaudet, was teaching and wounded more than 260
ative writing program and its a class there at the time. Be- others.
women's, gender and sexual- audet told the station his class