Similar protests have occurred recently throughout the Middle East and North Africa [BBC backgrounder], and have resulted in the resignations of Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak [JURIST reports]. Protests were also widespread in Libya [JURIST backgrounder], where leader Muammar Gaddafi [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] and his inner circle have been accused of perpetrating violence against protesters [JURIST report]. Last month, a three-person commission for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) [official website] appointed to investigate violence in Libya published a report [JURIST report] saying that government forces have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes under orders from Gaddafi and other high-ranking officials. The commission's 92-page report said Libyan authorities have committed crimes against humanity such as acts constituting murder, imprisonment, and other severe deprivations of physical liberties, torture, forced disappearances, and rape "as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population with knowledge of the attack."

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (R) [official website], a known opponent of abortion, approved the regulation at issue in May, one month after signing [JURIST report] two other pieces of legislation restricting abortions. In April, the governor approved the Abortion Reporting Accuracy and Parental Rights Act [HB 2035, PDF], requiring unemancipated minors to obtain notarized parental signatures before an abortion may be performed, and the "fetal pain bill" [HB 2218, PDF], which restricts abortions beyond 22 weeks of pregnancy based on the belief that a fetus can feel pain at that stage of gestation. While states have been busy passing legislation seeking to restrict abortions, the courts are not always on board. In a move similar to the one taken by the District Court of Kansas, a judge for the US District Court for the District of South Dakota [official website] issued a preliminary injunction [JURIST report] earlier this week, blocking a South Dakota abortion regulation [HB 1217] requiring a 72-hour waiting period. Judge Karen Shreier ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota (ACLUSD) and Planned Parenthood Federation of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota [advocacy websites] were likely to succeed on their claims provisions in the law violate doctors' and patients' First Amendment rights and creates an undue burden on woman seeking abortions. The waiting period is the longest passed by any state.