World

As conservative US states rush to enact abortion bans following the Supreme Court’s bombshell decision, the fight over reproductive rights in America is poised to shift to a new battleground: abortion-inducing pills.

With little other means at its disposal, the Biden administration will focus on expanding access to abortion pills for women living in states where the procedure is banned or restricted — while those states and powerful conservative groups are sure to mount legal challenges to prohibit their use.

Hours after the high court shredded 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion rights on Friday, President Joe Biden ordered health officials to make sure abortion pills were available to American women.

“I will do all in my power to protect a woman’s right in states where they will face the consequences of today’s decision,” he said in televised address to the nation.

The pills, which can be used without significant risk to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks’ gestation, already account for half of all abortions carried out in the United States.

Demand is set to soar further after 11 states mostly in the Republican-led conservative South moved to severely restrict or fully ban abortion, with others set to follow suit.

Already Saturday, some activists rallying outside the Supreme Court in the US capital Washington held up posters with instructions on where women can get abortion pills, while others chanted “My body, my choice.”

Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who runs Aid Access, an Austria-based organization that provides abortion pills over the internet, is confident that the situation now faced by American women is not as tragic as it was 50 years ago, before the landmark Roe vs. Wade ruling of 1973 that enshrined abortion rights in America.

“The abortion pills cannot be stopped,” Gomperts told AFP in a phone interview. “So there is always access to a safe abortion if a woman has an unwanted pregnancy.”

But after Friday’s ruling, that may be easier said than done.

– A legal grey area –

The Food and Drug Administration, America’s health regulator, approved the use of abortion pills two decades ago and last year allowed for them to be prescribed via telemedicine and delivered by mail.

But their use in anti-abortion states remains a legal grey area and will likely become a front line in future court battles over reproductive rights.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports access to abortion, 19 US states require that abortion pills be physically administered by a clinician, thus prohibiting their delivery by mail.

And in states that ban all methods of abortion, women may be prohibited from seeking tele-health appointments with out-of-state doctors or foreign clinicians, like Gomperts’ group. 

In this case, they may have to travel to a state where reproductive tele-health appointments are allowed and get the medication delivered to an out-of-state address.

But there is another complication.

A medication abortion requires two drugs: first, a dose of mifepristone is taken to block the hormones that support a pregnancy; then, 24 to 48 hours later, misoprostol is taken to induce contractions.

That raises a question: can a woman from an anti-abortion state be prosecuted if she receives the first dose elsewhere, but takes the second dose after returning home?

As liberal states take action to facilitate abortions for women from other parts of the country, there are fears that conservative states may seek to prosecute health workers and advocacy groups involved in those efforts — and even the patients themselves.

Anticipating such plans, Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday warned that states cannot ban abortion pills, authorized by the federal regulator, “based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy” since federal law preempts state law.

As these legal battles prepare to play out, anti-abortion advocate Savannah Craven said she and her colleagues will work on getting all methods of abortion, including with pills, banned across the United States.

“I believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life. Life begins in the womb, life begins at conception,” she said.

But the argument fell flat with Elizabeth Kellogg and her husband Dan Reitz, who showed up to protest outside the Supreme Court with their eight-month-old daughter Lorelei.

“If it were about life, they’d be worried about the life of the birther, they’d be worried about life after birth,” Kellogg told AFP. 

“Very little is being done to actually hold up the sanctity of life in the way that it is proclaimed.”

While workers laboured on a large construction site in the Gaza Strip, a security guard noticed a strange piece of stone sticking out of the earth.

“I thought it was a tunnel,” said Ahmad, the young guard, referring to secret passages dug by the Islamist group Hamas to help it battle Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, ruled by Hamas and repeatedly ravaged by war, people are more familiar with burying the dead than digging up their heritage.

But what Ahmad found in January was part of a Roman necropolis dating from about 2,000 years ago — representative of the impoverished Palestinian territory’s rich, if under-developed, archaeological treasures.

After the last war between Israel and Hamas in May 2021 left a trail of damage in Gaza, Egypt began a reconstruction initiative worth $500 million.

As part of that project in Jabaliya, in the north of the coastal enclave, bulldozers were digging up the sandy soil in order to build new concrete buildings when Ahmad made his discovery.

“I notified the Egyptian foremen, who immediately contacted local authorities and asked the workers to stop,” said Ahmad, a Palestinian who preferred not to give his full name.

With rumours on social media of a big discovery, Gaza’s antiquities service called in the French non-governmental group Premiere Urgence Internationale and the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem to evaluate the site’s importance and mark off the area.

“The first excavations permitted the identification of about 40 tombs dating from the ancient Roman period between the first and second centuries AD,” said French archaeologist Rene Elter, who led the team dispatched to Jabaliya.

“The necropolis is larger than these 40 tombs and should have between 80 and 100,” he said.

One of the burial sites found so far is decorated with multi-coloured paintings representing crowns and garlands of bay leaves, as well as jars for funereal drinks, the archaeologist added.

– ‘Treasures’ of Gaza –

Archaeology is a highly political subject in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and discoveries are used to justify the territorial claims of each people.

While the Jewish state has a number of archaeologists reporting on an impressive number of ancient treasures, the sector is largely neglected in Gaza.

Authorities periodically announce discoveries in the territory, but tourism at archaeological sites is limited.

Israel and Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, tightly restrict the flow of people in and out of the enclave administered by Hamas since 2007.

“However, there is no difference between what you can find in Gaza and on the other side of the barrier” in Israel, Elter said. “It’s the same great history.”

“In Gaza, a lot of sites have disappeared because of conflict and construction, but the territory is an immense archaeological site which needs many teams of experts,” he added.

Stakes and fences have been erected around the Roman necropolis, which is watched over constantly by guards as new buildings go up nearby.

“We are trying to fight antiquities trafficking,” said Jamal Abu Rida, director of the local archaeological service tasked with protecting the necropolis and which hopes to find investors for further excavation.

Since Hamas took control 15 years ago, Gaza has endured four wars and numerous escalations of tension.

“The image of Gaza is often associated with violence, but its history is bursting with archaeological treasures that need to be protected for future generations,” said Jihad Abu Hassan, director of the local Premiere Urgence mission.

Demographics add to the pressure.

Gaza is a tiny, overcrowded strip of land whose population in 15 years has ballooned from 1.4 million to 2.3 million. As a result, building construction has accelerated.

“Some people avoid telling authorities if there is an archaeological discovery on a construction site out of fear of not being compensated” for the resulting work stoppage, Abu Hassan said.

“We lose archaeological sites every day,” which shows the need for a strategy to defend the enclave’s heritage, including training local archaeologists, he said.

Over the last few years, his organisation has helped to educate 84 archaeological technicians. Doing so also offers employment prospects, in an impoverished territory where youth joblessness exceeds 60 percent.

– Still hunting stones –

One rare success is the preservation of the Byzantine monastery of Saint Hilarion.

It opened several years ago to the public and includes an atrium, baths and multiple churches, standing as testament to an era when Gaza was a crossroads for Mediterranean pilgrims.

“We receive around 14,000 visitors a year, including school students,” said Fadel al-Otol, 41, a Palestinian archaeologist whose early passion for ancient ruins was formalised with training in France.

As a child during the first Palestinian intifida, or uprising, Otol said he hunted stones to hurl at Israeli soldiers.

“Today I look for stones to prove to the military that we have a great history,” he said.

Wandering around the Saint Hilarion site, Otol pondered his dream: “That we excavate all the archaeological sites of Gaza and that they be accessible to the public to show our history and culture to the entire world.”

If nothing is done, he said, “the sites would disappear forever.”

Like millions of other migrant labourers in the Gulf, one of the world’s hottest and driest regions, construction worker B. Sajay does not welcome summer.

“We work in very high temperatures, this is the nature of our work. And yes, we suffer from severe heat,” the Indian national told AFP in Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Although summer has only just begun, temperatures have already topped 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in parts of the desert region, which is bearing the brunt of climate change.

Summer means suffering for anyone working outside, along with risks of dehydration, heat stroke and heart failure, and Gulf countries have banned working outside in the hottest hours of the day.

“The only thing that relieves us is the period of rest… in the middle of the day,” said Sajay, who has been working on building sites for six years.

Last year, a World Health Organization report found the risk of death doubling or tripling on extremely hot days in Kuwait, with a disproportionate effect on non-Kuwaiti men, who make up the bulk of outdoor workers.

Workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are ubiquitous in the oil-rich Gulf countries, providing cheap labour and filling the jobs shunned by citizens in favour of high-paying government positions.

The imported labourers typically work on construction sites or collect rubbish, sweep the roads or deliver food.

– Unbearable even in the shade –

Between June and August, the oil-producing Gulf countries — Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — ban working outside for about four hours starting from noon. 

Workers return to their dormitories or nestle in any shade they can find. But increasingly, it’s unbearable even in the shade.

On the first day of summer on Tuesday, temperatures reached 50 degrees Celsius in many places, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait which recorded in May the hottest temperature of the month worldwide, 53.2 degrees Celsius (128.8 Fahrenheit).

“The last 10 years have been the hottest seen in Kuwait,” said Kuwaiti meteorologist Issa Ramadan, adding: “Summer in Kuwait now extends to September, and sometimes to parts of October.”

In Muscat, workers paving a road with asphalt covered their heads with colourful scarves and hats, while others found shade under date palms in the middle of a two-way street. Passersby held umbrellas to protect themselves from the scorching sun.

“In order to complete the eight-hour shift as early as possible, sometimes I start working from six in the morning, stop during the rest period, and then do two more hours,” said Muhammad Mukarram, a Bangladeshi construction worker. 

The region-wide problem has long drawn concern. Human rights groups have urged Qatar, host of this year’s World Cup, to investigate workers’ deaths connected to “heat distress”.

There are no reliable figures on the deaths of migrant workers in Gulf countries, which do not release statistics and have regularly contested estimates released by NGOs and the media.

A recent study by the Vital Signs Partnership, a group of human rights organisations mainly from Asian countries, said that “as many as 10,000 migrant workers from south and southeast Asia die in the Gulf every year”. 

The March 2022 report said that more than half of the cases were recorded as “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest”.

– Deadly heat –

In 2020, a study published in the journal Science Advances found that the Gulf has the hottest and most humid weather anywhere on Earth.

Scientists have calculated that even with shade and unlimited drinking water, a healthy adult will die if “wet-bulb” temperatures — which take into account factors such as humidity, wind speed and cloud cover — exceed 35 Celsius for six hours.

The study showed that there have only ever been 14 occasions on land when the measure exceeded 35C, all in the past two decades and eight of them in the Gulf.

Another study in the journal Nature Climate Change found that “within this century, parts of the… Gulf region could be hit with unprecedented events of deadly heat as a result of climate change”.

“If we do not change course, these temperatures will keep rising over the years, reaching a level where outdoor human activities in the Gulf, such as the hajj pilgrimage, would be nearly impossible in summer,” Julien Jreissati, programme director at Greenpeace MENA, told AFP.

Saudi Arabia is preparing to welcome one million pilgrims next month to perform the annual Muslim rituals.

“The only solution is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels which are the main driver of climate change and transition gradually but quickly towards renewable energy,” said Jreissati.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have pledged to reach net zero domestic carbon emissions in the coming decades, while expanding oil production.

Air traffic is booming this summer, but after European vacations are over will passenger demand hold up?

The question was the focus of the annual congress of the Airports Council International (ACI) Europe in Rome this week, held at the cusp of the approaching peak season.

The summer period is shaping up to be by far the best since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis that has severely affected the airline industry since 2020.

Some airlines, such as Ryanair, and countries, in particular Greece, have already recovered or even exceeded their 2019 daily flight numbers, according to Eurocontrol, a pan-European air traffic agency.

Across the continent, air traffic was last week at 86 percent of the same period in 2019, Eurocontrol said, and expected to reach up to 95 percent in August under its most optimistic estimate.

And companies are filling seats for the coming weeks despite the sharp rise in ticket prices, long lines in various airports from Frankfurt to Dublin to Amsterdam and strikes by flight attendants, pilots or air traffic controllers.  

But after that? 

“Visibility is low because there is a lot of uncertainty,” said Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe. 

“We’re now in a war economy in Europe, we have the prospect of a quite harsh recession, we have inflation at record levels, so how all of this is going to play into consumer sentiment… the jury’s still out.”

The director general for transport and mobility at the European Commission, Henrik Hololei, echoed that thought.

“We really need to tighten the seatbelt because there’s going to be a lot of turbulence,” he told delegates. 

“We are entering… a period of uncertainty which we have never experienced in the last decade. And that of course is the biggest enemy of the business,” he said. 

– Too many unknowns –

Hololei listed the war in Ukraine, high energy prices and shortages of energy, food and labour.  

“We have also interest rates which are going up for the first time in a decade,” he said. 

The price of jet fuel has doubled over the past year, with a refinery capacity shortage compounding the explosion in crude oil prices. 

Fuel accounts for about a quarter of the operating costs of airlines, which have passed them on to consumers in ticket prices as they seek to refill coffers drained by the two-year health crisis. 

Still, strong demand has returned, confirmed Eleni Kaloyirou, managing director of Hermes Airports, which manages the airports of Larnaca and Paphos in Cyprus, where the high tourist season extends into November. 

“People want to take their holidays,” she said, acknowledging, however, “we do worry about next year”. 

The general manager of Athens International Airport, Yiannis Paraschis, similarly expressed fears that “the increase in energy costs and inflation will consume a great part of European households’ disposable income”.

The head of Istanbul International Airport, Kadri Samsunlu, voiced concerns about inflation’s effect in Western Europe.

And if consumer confidence is damaged, “We don’t know what’s going to happen to the demand,” he warned.

The last unknown hanging over European air travel in the medium term is a possible new outbreak of coronavirus.

“Covid has not disappeared, and it is not a seasonal flu either,” Hololei warned.

Leaders of the Group of Seven rich nations will be under pressure to stick to climate pledges in Bavaria from Sunday, as Russia’s energy cuts trigger a dash back to planet-heating fossil fuels.

Germany finds itself in an awkward position as G7 summit host, having recently announced that Europe’s biggest economy will burn more coal to offset a drop in Russian gas supplies amid deteriorating ties over the war in Ukraine.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz nevertheless insists the G7 remains committed to the Paris agreement of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

But concerns are growing that Scholz will use the gathering to push G7 partners to water down a previous promise to stop financing gas and oil projects abroad by the end of the year.

“That would be a real setback,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate policy think tank E3G. 

“Scholz could go down in history as the climate backtracking chancellor.”

US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and their counterparts from Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan will all be joining Scholz at the luxurious Elmau Castle from Sunday to Tuesday.

Thousands of people marched in the city of Munich on the eve of the summit to urge G7 leaders to do more to fight climate change.

– ‘Bitter’ coal comeback –

With the impact of the climate crisis already being felt across the globe through devastating floods, rising seas and crop-wilting droughts, the summit will be closely watched for fresh funding pledges to help poor nations cope.

But hopes of a breakthrough are low, as the conflict in Ukraine dominates the agenda and Western attention shifts to the vast sums that will be needed to rebuild the country.

“Before the war there was a clear intent, also from Germany, to really deliver on climate finance and this seems off the table now,” said Susanne Droege, a climate policy analyst at Germany’s Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

Soaring energy prices and fears that Moscow could abruptly cut off supplies have left European nations scrambling to wean themselves off Russian oil, coal and gas.

With renewables like solar and wind power not yet a widely available alternative, countries including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria are reverting to fossil fuels to plug the gap.

German Energy Minister Robert Habeck, a Green party politician, called the decision to reactivate mothballed coal-fired plants “bitter” but necessary for energy security.

He stressed that Germany was still on track to close its coal plants by 2030 and remained committed to a massive shift towards renewable energy.

Droege said Russia’s aggression in Ukraine had exposed the risks of fossil fuel dependency.

“The only benefit of this war is that… understanding has increased that renewable sources of energy will pay off,” said Droege.

– ‘Empty promises’ –

Environmentalists say a key focus of the G7 climate talks should be on helping the most vulnerable nations that are already bearing the brunt of the climate emergency.

“In the Horn of Africa, a terrible drought is leaving over 18 million people suffering from food insecurity,” Ugandan youth activist Vanessa Nakate told reporters ahead of the summit.

“We are tired of empty promises. We need the G7 countries to put money on the table for loss and damage.”

Scholz himself aims to launch a “climate club” that would see willing nations agree to play by the same rules to avoid competitive disadvantages.

This could include setting carbon pricing standards or uniform regulations on what constitutes green hydrogen. Japan and the United States however have no plans to introduce a national carbon price.

Observers say strong signals are needed from the G7 ahead of the United Nations COP27 climate talks in Egypt in November.

The final G7 statement will be scoured for any walking back of previous pledges, including a promise to largely decarbonise their countries’ electricity sectors by 2035.

A long-standing promise by wealthy nations to spend $100 billion a year from 2020 to help developing countries adapt to climate change remains unmet.