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Sharing media news about abortion from around the world. No anti-choice crap.
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This Scottish midwife should have stayed suspended. Her duty is to help patients, not refuse them care.

Dozens of women every year make the journey from Scotland to England for abortions – all because of a lack of doctors to perform surgical abortions after 13 weeks north of the border. Stories collected by Back Off Scotland and BPAS show the experiences of those travelling.

In Sweden, a proposed change to abortion law means that midwives could be allowed to prescribe abortion pills . Home abortions without a prior clinic visit to take the pill would also be permitted.

Many of the nearly two dozen anti-choice extremist criminals that President Donald Trump pardoned in January are vowing to launch a new wave of civil disobedience. They had previously broken into and blocked access to abortion clinics and inflicted violence onto staff and patients.

While the Trump administration is gutting U.S. foreign aid across the board, programs aimed at women and girls’ sexual and reproductive health will be among those hardest hit. Crisis Group expert Cristal Downing describes why those living in conflict settings could pay the heaviest price.

In the Yukon Territory (Canada), prohibitive costs, limited services, and stigma make obtaining abortion care challenging.

Views from Australia: From abortion and death to circumcision, vaccination and even amputation, who should have the final say in how we choose to live?

In the Blanket Ban show, the two writers/actors take on around 30 characters, as interviewers, interviewees, doctors, nurses etc. Considering they’re covering a very heavy topic, they’re hilarious, and aside from their view on its stance on abortion rights, the performance is a love letter to Malta.

Eva Wiseman writes from the UK: "It’s no coincidence that the same tactics used to restrict abortion access are used to restrict gender-affirming care, nor that they’re lobbied for by the same conservative groups, who litigate loudly against trans, gay and abortion rights."

The abortion pill was used 1,440 times in Japan in 2023 after it was approved in April that year. It's a small share of the over 120,000 abortions done in 2023, because the law forces women to be hospitalized to take a pill.

A current bill in Brazil threatens women and girls who terminate pregnancies resulting from rape with up to 20 years in prison. Between 1 and 4 million Brazilian women have illegal abortions each year.

Mary Fissells new book "Abortion: A History" reveals that, whatever evangelicals and Trumpists might believe, society’s knowledge and tolerance of abortion has long been a strong, if quiet, thread. Law or no law, women have always found answers to their problems.

Hannah Zobair says that when 20% of pregnant Americans face violence, and many are prone to life-altering injuries and health conditions, pregnancy must be seen as inherently violent and potentially fatal. It's not just about women’s right to liberty and privacy, it's their survival.

A new study about safe access zones cites Canada as a strong example that European countries can follow to pass their own laws protecting patients and providers. The study looks at 22 jurisdictions with these laws, including 7 Canadian provinces. (open access)

Antigua & Barbuda - Last year, abortion rights advocates initiated legal action against aborton criminalization, but their action was denied. An appeals court ruling on Thursday means that the constitutional challenge is expected to proceed to trial as initially ruled.

Some state-run clinics in Russia’s Vologda region are illegally denying women abortions, said a local lawmaker. “When the state prevents women from receiving legitimate medical services, it only exacerbates social tensions.” Private clinics in at least nine regions have stopped offering abortion.

In this interview, Dr. Jean-Claude Mulunda of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) speaks about the challenges of providing abortion care in humanitarian settings, how Ipas DRC is working toward building resilient health systems despite decades of protracted conflict, and the impact of U.S. policies.

Rebecca Nall is the founder and creator of INeedAnA.com, a website launched in 2016 that gives people seeking abortions options for possible care. It was Nall's own experience getting an abortion in Texas in 2012 that prompted her to start this service.

In Nigeria, a two-day advocacy workshop for health workers and law enforcement agents was held in Oyo State, to educate them unsafe abortion and the impacts of the restrictive abortion law.

Congratulations to Dr Eunice Brookman-Amissah of Ghana on her appointment by the President to the Council of State! Dr Brook­man-Amissah is an Ambassador, physician and advocate who has dedicated her ca­reer to improving women’s reproductive health and rights in Africa and globally.

The play Blanket Ban is centred around the restrictive abortion laws in Malta and documents real-life stories. Playwrights Marta Vella and Davinia Hamiltonhave opened up about the flurry of hate comments they’ve received over the years.

Montana’s unprecedented proposed law would criminalize pregnant people and their supporters for seeking legal abortion care across state lines, pushing the boundaries of fetal personhood and state control.

UK - Stuart Worby secretly gave abortion drugs to a woman to induce a miscarriage without her consent, in 2022. He has had his sentence increased to 17 years after it was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Solicitor General under the "Unduly Lenient Sentence" scheme.

Anti-choice lawmakers in Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region voted Thursday to outlaw the act of “coercing” women into having an abortion (an excuse to restrict abortion). If fully adopted, Krasnoyarsk would become the 18th Russian region to implement such a ban.

Republican lawmakers in more than 10 states have introduced bills that would redefine abortion as homicide by defining a "person" or "human being" to include a fetus. They want to charge women with murder.

Many states had very high proportions of medication abortion in the first year after the loss of Roe v. Wade, including Wyoming (95% of all abortions), Montana (84%), Georgia (83%), Nebraska (83%), Vermont (81%) and Delaware (77%).

New data from the Guttmacher Institute confirms that medication abortion accounts for the majority of abortions provided in nearly all US states without total abortion bans, ranging from 95% in Wyoming and 84% in Montana to 44% in Washington, DC and 46% in Ohio.

Mary Ziegler: "Texas may not want to put women in prison for having abortions, but firing them could be another thing entirely."

UK Armed Forces servicewomen needing an abortion face a unique set of hurdles around access and care, as well as stigma and judgemental attitudes from senior (usually male) colleagues. A new study surveyed 427 servicewomen and 29% had had an abortion.

Alison Brysk talks about her new book: “Abortion rights backlash means a combined decline in legal rights, health system access and social services. And it is always worse for the most vulnerable people in every society, namely racial and ethnic minorities, youth and the poor.”

Doctors in the U.S. are bracing for a possible rollback of a federal law protecting their ability to provide abortions in medical emergencies. Project 2025 wants to remove abortion from EMTALA protection to force more pregnant women to sacrifice their lives for fetuses.

The US Supreme Court declined to take up a pair of cases seeking to challenge buffer zone laws. Abortion rights advocates took the court’s rejection of the cases as a win, but a limited one.

“Emboldened by Dobbs and their own rhetoric, abortion abolitionists now are pushing for laws based on their extremist, minority position that prenatal life should be treated as people.” That means charging women with murder.

Many Ukrainian refugees continue to face serious barriers in accessing essential sexual and reproductive healthcare in some parts of the EU. “Women and girls, already traumatised by war, continue to be denied basic healthcare in countries that should be offering them safety.”

An extremist anti-choice group says they'll respect Scotland's buffer zones during a month-long "vigil". But Scottish Greens MSP Gillian Mackay calls bullshit. "These protests are designed to target and stop patients from accessing the healthcare they are entitled to. They are wrong in every way."

In Kazakhstan, women have the legal right to abortion on request up to 12 weeks. After that, abortion is allowed on medical or social grounds. In practice, however, women frequently encounter judgment – even from medical professionals. Here, some women share their experiences.

There are more than one million ASHA workers (Accredited Social Health Activists) spread across India's villages and cities. They could be the crucial link helping to support women seeking abortion and connecting them with the right health facilities.

The Greens in NSW (Australia) have introduced a bill that would significantly expand access to abortion services across the state. Unfortunately the 2019 law that decriminalized abortion still has too many onerous requirements that hinder access. (No laws are needed on abortion!)

Malta - A planned new documentary will shed light on the realities of life under one of the strictest abortion laws in the world, amplifying the voices of those affected by Malta’s strict reproductive rights laws."Dear Decision Makers" is currently crowdfunding on Zaar,

In Malta, Nationalist Party Leader Bernard Grech stood by his party’s anti-abortion stance. He maintained his stance that the "value of life" is non-negotiable, indicating his conviction that women should never have autonomy or be seen as human beings.

Here's the first month of Trump - a catalogue of anti-choice attacks and outrages compiled by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Abortion providers and clinic staff say that Trump’s rollback of the FACE Act is deeply demoralizing and signals a frightening future where the federal government will not protect them. “It shouldn’t take someone being murdered for the federal government to enforce a law that makes people safe.”

Anti-choice group "40 Days For Life" has pledged not to break Scotland's laws around buffer zones when it holds “vigils” across from the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow from March 5 until April 13. Yeah, as if they can control their members' hatred, harassment and aggression.

Lucy Grieve, founder of Back Off Scotland - which suffered a wave of harassment after JD Vance's falsehoods: "I worry that in light of attacks like this one from JD Vance, women will be put off from sharing their experiences out of fear."

An initiative to enhance Sexual and Reproductive Health education and services for adolescents in rural Ghana has been proposed after a study showed many adolescents are cut off from these services.

The legal consequences that doctors like Maggie Carpenter now face simply for caring for and saving their patients’ lives are “shocking and dangerous,” said her friend Dr. Ingrid Frengle-Burke. “It’s a nightmare."

"Why is the New York Times publishing scurrilous accusations against Planned Parenthood while ignoring the $1.7 billion unregulated antiabortion pregnancy center industry that endangers the lives of American women and girls?" - Carrie N. Baker and Jenifer McKenna

Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion in 2021, ProPublica found in a first-of-its-kind data analysis. The rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester.

An explosive, meticulous investigation by ProPublica. Between 2019 and 2023, they found a 33% increase in maternal mortality rates in Texas, compared with a decrease of 7.5% nationally during the same time.

Rachel Rebouché: "The shield law cases capture the deep disagreement about abortion regulation among the states post-Dobbs. One set of states seeks to protect its residents’ ability to provide legal reproductive care; another set of states seeks to stop abortion in-state and everywhere else."