‘Women are capable of doing this’: the doctor defying local laws to provide safe abortions by sea or mail

Dr Rebecca Gomperts made waves providing abortion in international waters around the world. Now she’s prepared to help American women

Moira Donegan
Sun 12 Dec 2021

It’s Sunday morning, less than a week after the US supreme court signaled that it was ready to pave the way for new restrictions on abortion rights in the US, and I’m on the phone with a Dutch abortion provider who has watched the proceedings from half a world away.

Dr Rebecca Gomperts tells me that she’s shocked with the situation in Texas, which recently enacted a near total ban on legal abortion – not because the state government passed the law, but because doctors in the state are largely complying with it.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/12/rebecca-gomperts-doctor-defying-laws-abortions

USA – ‘You have to stand up to illegitimate authority’: what veteran abortion activists can teach us in the Trump era

‘You have to stand up to illegitimate authority’: what veteran abortion activists can teach us in the Trump era
The pioneers who struggled for legalisation in the 60s are seeing the same battles being fought all over again

Laura Barton
Sat 18 Jan 2020

The telephone sat in the dormitory hallway, and when it rang it might have been for any of the residents – young women in their teens and early 20s, all students at the University of Chicago. Calls came from family and friends and boyfriends, from colleagues and classmates and clubs. But sometimes the voice at the end of the line would ask for “Jane”.

This was 1965, and in Chicago the social justice movement was gathering pace – a new era that encompassed civil rights, student rights, women’s rights and resistance to the war in Vietnam. Among those involved was Heather Booth, a 19-year-old social sciences student from New York.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/18/you-have-to-stand-up-to-illegitimate-authority-what-veteran-abortion-activists-can-teach-us-in-the-trump-era

The informal networks resisting Honduras’s abortion ban

The informal networks resisting Honduras's abortion ban
Through hotlines and clinics, activists and health experts are trying to change the stigma associated with abortion.

Anna-Cat Brigida
July 12, 2019

Tegucigalpa, Honduras - At 22 years old, Ana Padilla was certain of one thing: she did not want to be a mother. So when she found out she was pregnant six years ago, she frantically called a friend to see if she knew how to get an abortion, which is illegal under all circumstances in Honduras. The friend calmed her nerves and gave her the phone number of someone she knew who clandestinely sold mifepristone and misoprostol, pills used for at-home abortions.

"I was desperate in that moment," says Padilla, adding that the experience of buying the pills was "mysterious", like a drug deal.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/informal-networks-resisting-honduras-abortion-ban-190712162754747.html

USA: Self-Managed Abortion and Embodying the Principles of Reproductive Justice

Self-Managed Abortion and Embodying the Principles of Reproductive Justice

Jan 12, 2018
Marlene G. Fried & Susan Yanow

Legal and policy barriers too often render the legal right to abortion meaningless, especially for those individuals and communities who are already the most vulnerable.

Worldwide, there is an enormous gap between having the legal right to abortion and being able to access one. This is painfully obvious in the United States. While abortion is legal, its opponents have successfully decreased access to services through restrictive laws; bans on Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance coverage; and violence directed at clinics and providers.

These strategies have successfully put abortion clinic services out of reach for many people. Their long-range goal is to overturn Roe v. Wade and re-criminalize abortion. In the meantime, legal and policy barriers too often render the legal right to abortion meaningless, especially for those individuals and communities who are already the most vulnerable.

Continued at source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/12/self-managed-abortion-embodying-principles-reproductive-justice/

Safe Abortion Information Hotlines

Safe Abortion Information Hotlines

All the hotlines listed below provide free, safe and reliable information about unwanted pregnancy, abortion and post-abortion care, and many also provide information about contraception and emergency contraception. Hotline volunteers have been trained and provide accurate information from reliable sources in confidence, especially the World Health Organization. They are aware of national laws and policies, and the situation for services. They can advise women on how to use medical abortion pills safely, and how to seek help if it is needed.

Please contact us if you know of a hotline number that is not listed here – it may save a woman’s life.

Continued at source: International Campaign foc Women's Right to Safe Abortion: http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/safe-abortion-3/safe-abortion-information-hotlines/

24.02.2017

abortion pills by mail

online abortion

safe abortion hotlines

Should Women Perform Their Own Abortions?

Hotlines around the world are providing women with the information they need to safely terminate a pregnancy, even in countries where abortion is illegal.
By Jill Filipovic
Oct 03, 2016, Cosmopolitan

Inna Hudaya was a woman in trouble. Lying in a shoddy hotel room, she squeezed her eyes closed as an old woman performed an abortion on her with no anesthesia and no painkillers. They barely spoke a word after the exchange of money — a lot of money, money Hudaya had borrowed and for which she had sold many of her possessions including her motorbike to repay. This, Hudaya thought to herself, is how I will die.

But what else was she supposed to do? She was 22, pregnant, unmarried, and living in Indonesia, a country where abortion remains illegal in nearly all cases and out-of-wedlock pregnancy is intensely stigmatized. A medical student, Hudaya was just getting a toehold on a life she hoped would keep her out of Tasikmalaya, the conservative city she fled after high school. Having a baby would mean the end of everything: her studies, her relationship with her family, her freedom.

[continued at link]
Source Cosmopolitan Magazine