Are you too “soft spoken and shy?”

What are your school grades like?

Be careful with your answers, because you’re being judged – both literally and figuratively. A court is about to decide whether you are allowed to control your body or not. And your future is at stake.

You’re in the US state of Florida, where a harmful law forces people under the age of 18 to obtain parental consent for an abortion. And those without a supportive parent or guardian have to ask a judge for a waiver – and prove to them that they are mature enough to make the decision themselves.

Having to request permission like this to control your own body is traumatizing and absurd. It’s your future. It’s your healthcare. Why are they making you go through this?

But most of all: why does the state think young people are too immature to make an abortion decision but somehow mature enough to remain pregnant and raise a child?

A new report today documents how, even though abortion remains legal in Florida in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, judges in the state often deny people under the age of 18 their right to access abortion care. Judges are forcing young people to continue a pregnancy against their wishes.

Those who can afford it may then travel outside the state to get the healthcare they seek. Others may try to manage an abortion outside the healthcare system – with the serious health risks involved.

And the questions Florida’s judges are asking: about demeanor, about grades… It’s all so highly subjective – and bizarre. Is a student who gets Bs in school more or less “mature” than a student who gets Cs? They might as well ask you your shoe size.

You shouldn’t be in front of a judge in the first place. The whole process is dehumanizing and incompatible with your right to health.

The law is wrong. As my colleague and the author of the new report, Margaret Wurth, says: “judges should not hold the power to determine a person’s ability to obtain basic health care.”

If you know anything at all about oft-ignored Eritrea, you know it’s one of the most repressive countries in the world. And you’d maybe think that things couldn’t possibly get worse there.

Well, they have…

In recent months, the Eritrean government has been punishing relatives of thousands of alleged draft evaders as part of an intensive forced conscription campaign.

Eritrea has long had a policy of indefinite national service, including compulsory military conscription. You get drafted, and you simply don’t know when you’ll be released. It’s a core aspect of repression in the country.

But the government’s greed for uniformed bodies has likely increased lately. Eritrean security forces have been heavily involved in operations – not to mention appalling abuses – in the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region next door.  

So, Eritrean authorities have been conducting waves of roundups in Eritrea to identify people the government considers draft evaders or deserters. And they are punishing family members of those seeking to avoid conscription or recall.

Older parents as well as women with young children have been temporarily detained for days, some reportedly longer, and have been expelled from their homes.

An Eritrean woman abroad whose relatives have been evicted told us: “The confiscation of homes, we’ve never seen this before. It’s an act of desperation.”

After any natural disaster, the free flow of information is critical. Those desperately in need of emergency services have to be able to communicate with those able to provide them – and by all means possible. It is a matter of life and death.

That’s why it’s inexplicable that Turkey’s authorities restricted access to Twitter in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes. The block came just as some people were relying on the service to exchange information, respond to urgent pleas, and connect with relatives.

My colleague and Turkey expert, Emma Sinclair-Webb, called Turkey’s throttling of Twitter, “a callous abuse of rights.”

She also highlighted how the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had last year passed a law permitting increased throttling of social media platforms to censor content.

The Turkish government has now apparently lifted the restriction on Twitter, but why did it happen in the first place?

(compiled by Emily Palomo)

• Investigation finds AI algorithms objectify women’s bodies (The Guardian) 
• EU buries head deeper in sand over Israel's apartheid (EU Observer) 
• Racial disparities persist in efforts to eradicate cervical cancer (HRW)
• In Syria, a Hospital ‘Filled With Tragedy’ (NY Times)