Polish parliament rejects near-total abortion ban after mass protests

Polish parliament rejects near-total abortion ban after ...
WARSAW, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Poland's parliament overwhelmingly rejected plans for a near-total ban on abortion on Thursday after mass protests by tens of thousands of women, marking an embarrassing setback for the conservative government and the powerful Catholic Church.
The ruling Law and Justice party (PIS) had originally backed the draft proposals drawn up by an independent anti-abortion campaign group but was badly shaken by Monday's protest rallies across Poland attended by up to 100,000 women dressed in black.
Poland already has one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws but the new proposals would have limited it only to cases where the mother's life was in direct danger - a step too far even for many women who helped vote PiS into power a year ago.
Under the rejected plan, women and doctors would have faced up to five years in jail for performing an abortion.
"PiS continues to back the protection of life," party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a devout Catholic, told parliament. "And it will continue to take action in this respect but it will be considered action."
In the vote 352 lawmakers rejected the proposals against 58 in favour, but liberal opposition deputies warned of possible further attempts to tighten the law by the PiS government, which has a big parliamentary majority.
"We have to remain vigilant because we don't know what the future holds for abortion rules in Poland. We can't be sure that PiS won't come up with a new proposal," said Joanna Schmidt, a lawmaker with the new liberal Modern party.
Under current rules, enshrined in a 1993 law that ended the liberal approach of communist times, abortion is allowed in cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother's health or when prenatal tests show serious, irreversible damage to the foetus.
But activists say women are sometimes denied an abortion in such cases when a doctor invokes moral or religious objections.
Poland remains one of Europe's most staunchly Catholic nations, although the clergy has seen its influence steadily eroded by more than two decades of democratisation and market reforms since the 1989 fall of communism.

U.N. Security Council nominates Portugal's Guterres as U.N. Sec General

U.N. Security Council nominates Portugal's Guterres as U.N. ...
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously nominated former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres to be the next Secretary-General, recommending that the 193-member General Assembly appoint him for five years from Jan. 1, 2017.
The General Assembly is likely to meet next week to approve the appointment of Guterres, 67, who would replace Ban Ki-moon, 72, of South Korea. Ban will step down at the end of 2016 after serving two terms.
Ban, speaking during a visit to Rome, described Guterres as a "super choice" as his successor.
"I am sure he will carry the torch on the full range of key challenges, from strengthening peace operations to achieving sustainable development, upholding human rights and easing humanitarian suffering," Ban told reporters.
Guterres was prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and served as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015. Guterres is due to speak to reporters in Lisbon later on Thursday.
"He has great United Nations credentials ... and being High Commissioner for Refugees means traveling the world and seeing some of the most gruesome conflicts we have to deal with and then of course he is a high-level politician," said Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the council for October.
"He is a person who talks to everybody, listens to everybody, speaks his mind, a very outgoing, open person so I think it was a great choice and I'm glad that we rallied around Mr Guterres," Churkin told reporters.

Pakistan parliament passes legislation against 'honor killings'

Pakistan parliament passes legislation against 'honor killings' | Reuters

Pakistan's parliament unanimously passed legislation against "honor killings" on Thursday, three months after the murder of an outspoken social media star.
A joint session of the lower and upper houses of parliament, broadcast live on television, approved the new anti-honor killing law, removing a loophole in existing law that allows killers to walk free after being pardoned by family members.
"Laws are supposed to guide better behavior, not allow destructive behavior to continue with impunity," said former senator Sughra Imam, who initially put forward the bill.
Some 500 women are killed each year in Pakistan at the hands of family members over perceived damage to "honor" that can involve eloping, fraternizing with men or any other infraction against conservative values relating to women.
In most cases, the victim is a woman and the killer is a relative who escapes punishment by seeking forgiveness for the crime from family members.
Under the new law, relatives can forgive convicts in the case of a death sentence, but they would still have to face a mandatory life sentence.
An anti-rape law, which makes it mandatory that a perpetrator gets 25 years in jail, was also passed in the same parliamentary session.
"These bills are hugely important for Pakistani women, where rape conviction rates were almost non-existent, due in large part to various technical obstacles to accessing justice," said Yasmeen Hassan, Global Executive Director at Equality Now.
"We hope that these new laws will help generate a cultural shift in Pakistani society and that women will be able to live their lives in safety," Hassan told Reuters.