Should healthcare be a provincial or federal responsibility?

Florida Court Upholds 15 Week Abortion Ban

Florida's top court on Monday upheld a Republican-backed law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy - a decision that allows a stricter six-week ban to take effect - but also cleared the way for voters to decide whether to amend the state's constitution to establish a right to abortion.The Florida Supreme Court's ruling upholding the existing ban - a victory for Governor Ron DeSantis and other Republicans - came in a challenge filed by abortion provider Planned Parenthood and others.The court also rejected a bid by Ashley Moody, the Republican state attorney general, to keep the abortion rights constitutional amendment off the Nov. 5 ballot.The constitutional amendment proposal's backers in January secured the required number of signatures to put it on the ballot. It would ban laws that "prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider."Abortion is illegal after 15 weeks in Florida under a law signed by DeSantis in 2022, two months before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide.DeSantis in April subsequently signed an even stricter ban passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature starting at six weeks of pregnancy. That measure included "trigger" language making the six-week ban take effect one month after the state Supreme Court affirmed the earlier 15-month ban. Six weeks is before many women know they are pregnant.

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Gaza Hospital Is Now a ‘Death Zone,’ U.N. Says After Visit

The United Nations said Sunday that it had sent an inspection mission to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, a focal point of Israel’s military campaign in the strip, and warned that lack of fuel, clean water and other essentials had turned the facility into a “death zone.”The U.N.’s report on conditions in the Gaza City hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, came as fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas militants intensified in northern parts of the city for a second day. Israeli troops are seeking to extend their control of what they say is a key urban stronghold of Hamas’s military wing from the coastline toward the east.In a joint statement, the U.N. agencies that led the mission to Al-Shifa said 291 patients and 25 healthcare workers remained at the hospital after the Israeli military on Saturday ordered the evacuation of some 2,500 people sheltering there. Israel has yet to show clear evidence of what it said are complexes under the hospital used by Hamas’s military wing. The Israeli military has said that it is slowly combing through the hospital in a delicate operation that could take many days.