WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama has said he will hold off on plans for a military strike in Syria if the country agrees to surrender its chemical weapons to international gatekeepers, as Russia suggested Monday.
But Obama has doubts that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Western countries are convinced was responsible for gassing his own citizens last month, would cooperate.
“I want to make sure that the norm against the use of chemical weapons is maintained,” Obama told Diane Sawyer Monday during an interview with ABC News. “If we can do that without a military strike, that is overwhelmingly my preference.”
Pro-life activists celebrated the end of the U.S. right to abortion, hoping it will trigger a new debate on a topic that in some places had largely been settled: in favor a woman’s right to choose. But it could also boomerang.
Thousands of people demonstrate against abortion in Madrid
The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a constitutional right to abortion put the United States at the forefront of abortion rights in the world.
Other countries would follow suit in the succeeding years, with France legalizing abortion in 1975, Italy in 1978, and Ireland finally joining most of the rest of Europe with a landslide 2018 referendum victory for women’s right to choose. Elsewhere, parts of Asia and Africa have made incremental steps toward legalizing abortion, while a growing number of Latin American countries have joined what has now been a decades-long worldwide shift toward more access to abortion rights.
But now, 49 years later, with last Friday’s landmark overturning of Roe v. Wade, will the U.S. once again prove to be ahead of the curve? Will American cultural and political influence carry across borders on the abortion issue, reversing the momentum of recent years?
This is the hope for national and local anti-abortion movements around the world, which have not only celebrated the Supreme Court decision, but pointed to the American Pro-Life movement as a model to emulate.
International pro-choice groups, meanwhile, see the risk of spillover of the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, but also an opportunity to mobilize support into new stronger legislation to protect abortion rights.
Tides turning in Latin America
Despite the lasting influence of the Catholic Church in Latin America, abortion has been legalized in recent years in several major countries in the region, including Colombia, Mexico and Argentina, as women’s right to choose appeared to take on an irreversible momentum.
Yet Argentine Congresswoman Amalia Granata, one of the most active anti-abortion activists in the country, pointed to last week’s U.S. ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade as a sign of the times.
"In the world there is justice again. We are going to achieve it in Argentina too," Granata wrote on her Twitter account.
In El Salvador, which still has strict bans on terminating pregnancy, anti-abortion activist Sara Larín tweeted, “The overturning of Roe v. Wade is as historic as the Berlin Wall fall, it is the beginning of the end of abortion, it is as important as the abolition of slavery in the U.S.” She added: “With this ruling it will be possible to abolish abortion in the U.S. and throughout the world.”
The anti-abortion Italian group "Pro-Vita" demonstrates against abortion and end-of-life laws in Rome.
In Europe, the pro-choice stance is widely popular, with 72% support according to a recent Ipsos poll. The reaction from the anti-abortion movement has been more nuanced. The Vatican’s editorial director Andrea Tornielli wrote that the Supreme Court decision “can be the occasion to reflect on life,” and cited various issues including gun control, poverty and the condition of women in society.
Italy, which like Latin America, has seen its politics and culture largely influenced by the Catholic Church, nonetheless registers 77% support for abortion rights. Those outnumbered, like Senator Simone Pillon, a fervent anti-abortion activist, sees a chance to turn the tide: “After 50 years, the American Supreme Court overturned the famous Roe v. Wade ruling, which was founded on a false case,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “Now let’s also ride this breeze of the right to life of every baby, that must be able to see the beautiful blue sky.”
But other anti-abortion leaders have reacted with caution. Popular conservative leader Giorgia Meloni was not (openly) celebrating the U.S. decision, aware that she could lose support on the issue. According to the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, when she was asked about the ruling, Meloni pointed out that Italy has a longstanding national parliamentary law that regulates abortions, while the Supreme Court ruling last week must play out on the state level. “Italy and the U.S. shouldn’t be compared,” she said. “And those that do so are probably in bad faith and have ideological objectives.”
French daily Libération: "Abortion Black Friday"
Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo
Possibility of a backlash
In France, with 81% of the population pro-choice, anti-abortion groups are largely considered on the political fringe, and some have remained cautious in response to Friday’s announcement. Many had rejoiced in early May when Politico first leaked the Supreme Court’s opinion draft regarding the overturning of Roe v. Wade: Conservative journalist Charlotte D’Ornellas then praised the possibility of debating women’s rights to have an abortion in the U.S.
Invited on the right-wing news channel CNews the day after the Supreme Court ruling, Ludovine de La Rochère, president of the anti-abortion and anti-same-sex-marriage organization “La Manif Pour Tous,” expressed a similar opinion. “In France, political correctness requires being absolutely in favor of abortion. (...) It is taboo,” she said. “In the U.S., this debate has never ceased to exist.”
Still, for pro-life advocates, the end of Roe v. Wade could spark a backlash: The party of President Emmanuel Macron and leftist parties have proposed adding abortion rights to the French Constitution. In a column for far-right weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles, right-wing politician Jean-Frédéric Poisson denounced an emotional manipulation of public opinion.
U.S. pro-choice campaigners will be looking closely at Ireland to see what lessons can be learned.
Debates around abortion are still fresh in the minds of many Irish people. The country finally broke with its strong Catholic past to legalize abortion by popular vote in 2018, overturning a constitutional amendment from 1983 that had guaranteed the right to life.
Irish anti-abortion groups, which lost the vote by an overwhelming margin (66% to 33%), welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision. The Irish Pro Life Campaign described the ruling as a “momentous development for the right to life” and predicted it would force people to question “the new abortion regime that exists in this country.”
Pro-choice campaigner Dr Ailbhe Smyth predicted the ruling would not have a huge effect on Ireland. “I don’t have a direct concern for a U.S. impact on Ireland, but I do have a concern for those countries where abortion is not yet legal, where it is completely prohibited or is very highly restricted, and this has repercussions for the safety and the security of women.”
U.S. pro-choice campaigners, meanwhile will be looking closely at Ireland to see what lessons can be learned from the country’s campaign to legalize abortion.
Thousands demonstrate in Madrid against abortion rights and to celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade
Anti-abortion movements in Spain regularly organize demonstrations, and on Sunday, thousands demonstrated in Madrid against abortion. The organizers told El País that they are protesting against the existence of laws that go “against the truth and human nature.”
The news website Allafrica.com warns that the overturning of Roe v. Wade might have a huge impact on some countries’ legislations. Indeed, the U.S. is a major funder of African health programs and NGOs advocating for the decriminalization of abortion and providing support for women seeking to end their pregnancies. Some countries like Kenya have aligned their position on the U.S.’ stance.
In Asia, legislation greatly varies from country to country. According to Professor Walter Woon from the National University of Singapore, it is unlikely that the June 24 ruling will influence Southeast Asian nations. The majority of Asian women have access to abortion except for those living in conservative religious countries like the Philippines or in the Middle East.
In Australia, abortion rights depend on the legislature of each state, but it is legal up to at least 16 weeks across the whole country. Independent Australian news website Crikey reports that the Australian Christian Lobby called the decision a “tremendous victory in the United States” and said, “This is only the beginning.”
Pro-life activists celebrated the end of the U.S. right to abortion, hoping it will trigger a new debate on a topic that in some places had largely been settled: in favor a woman’s right to choose. But it could also boomerang.
As NATO leaders meet in Madrid, Finland and Sweden look much closer to joining the alliance after Turkey dropped its objections to their membership. It's yet another momentous change underway since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
The martyrdom of Mariupol
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
A daughter of Kyiv
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.
