Access to Abortion
Category: Health | Area of Effect: Healthcare
Whereas some rabidly anti-choice nations lack medical professionals willing to perform abortions, meaning the ability to access them is non-existent without funds needed for foreign travel, denying constructively abortion rights because of income and birth location:
And whereas discrimination in state policy or administration of tax on abortion recipients and providers is unfair and grossly unjust:
And whereas people have natural rights to property in their own person:
Be it enacted by this august World Assembly as follows:
- Definitions. In this resolution,
- abortion means a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy deliberately,
- discrimination in tax, in relation to medical procedures, includes placing a burden in excess of that placed on other procedures of similar risk,
- IAO means Independent Adjudicative Office,
- recipient bona fide means a natural person demonstrating a bona fide desire for a commodity or service,
- resolution means General Assembly resolution,
- member means member nation, and
- tax includes solidarity contributions and other compulsory payments made to the state.
- Funding. Members must pay for or provide directly abortions, abortifacients, and contraceptives to any recipient bona fide within their jurisdiction upon request. Members must also provide a means to access such services and commodities speedily and free at the point of service or provision.
- Non-discrimination. No members may:
- conduct discrimination in tax against a recipient or provider of abortion services or contraceptives in tax collection, assessment, or administration,
- discriminate against abortion clinics workers on account of occupation or place of employment,
- prosecute any person for receiving or providing section 7 compliant abortions, contraceptives, truthful medical advice, or education thereon,
- prohibit or levy discriminatory tariffs or tax against section 7 compliant contraceptives or abortifacients,
- fail to provide equal protection before the law to recipients or providers of abortion services, or
- implement policies intended to restrict access to section 7 regulated goods or services.
- Clinics. WA Choice Plus is established and may construct, per section 5, clinics with funds assessed by the General Accounting Office from members in which there does not exist, in the view of the WACC, adequate access to abortion. Such clinics shall offer free and safe abortions to any recipient bona fide. All members must, however, contribute separately to WA Choice Plus in proportion to expenses incurred within their jurisdiction at such clinics for their upkeep and maintenance.
- Members must arrange fully subsidised travel for any recipient bona fide, and one person of their choice, to receive care offered by such a clinic if abortion services are not speedily accessible. No limitation, except to prohibit travel to nations in which there is an on-going armed conflict, may be enforced by a member on a person's ability to exit a member for purposes of travelling to a clinic unless permitted by resolution.
- Clinics shall provide free healthcare and counselling for expectant parents as well as free contraceptives and abortifacients to any address serviceable by post within a member.
- Clinic lease terms. Any member may request the construction of section 4 clinics if they can show to the WACC that construction would expand access to abortion in an area where it is inadequate. The clinics will be built on land donated by members where the member doing so grants to the clinic a ten-year renewable lease in which no (a) direct tax or (b) indirect tax in excess of one per cent may be collected, along with the condition, reinforced by private contract, that upon disestablishment of the clinic, the assignee or seizer must remit to WA Choice Plus the fair market value of the improvements to that land.
- Exceptions. Notwithstanding any other provision of this resolution and unless otherwise indicated by previous resolution, a member may restrict access to or section 2 funding for an abortion if that member can show that a sex-selective basis clearly impels its request.
- Health and safety. The World Health Authority (WHA) must issue regulations to ensure abortions, abortifacients, and contraceptives available to the general public are safe and effective for end-users and those with which they may be in close contact. Such regulations overrule those made by members unless it can be shown to the IAO that those WHA regulations are insufficient in fulfilling the mandates of this section.
- Interpretation. Members shall ascribe personhood to begin at birth. In this resolution, older resolutions overrule conflicting provisions of this resolution, singular words include the plural unless otherwise indicated, and section and list headings have no effect.