I know what illegal abortion looks like, does Amy Coney Barrett?

BY CAROLINA ABUELO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
10/25/20

In the conference room of Hospital Dos de Mayo in Lima, Peru, where I was researching cervical cancer, the medical resident droned through a list of bizarre tropical illnesses that had previously only existed in my North American textbooks. He was piecing together a case of fever and pain in the pelvis of a woman in her 20s. Then he added one more potential diagnosis: botched abortion.

That diagnosis had never occurred to me and was not part of my medical training in the United States. A few weeks later and a few miles away at our apartment in Lima, my baby sitter sat me down at the dining table to tell me that she was pregnant. Knowing that Maria’s husband had been unfaithful to her, I was not sure if congratulations were in order. As it turned out, he did not want to have this child and had encouraged her to pursue termination, even though it was illegal in Peru. He planned for her to take some black-market drugs.

Continued: https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/522635-i-know-what-illegal-abortion-looks-like-does-amy-coney-barrett

Autopsy finds Kenyan right activist died from bad abortion

Autopsy finds Kenyan right activist died from bad abortion

The Associated Press
Published: February 14, 2019

NAIROBI, Kenya — An autopsy shows that a Kenyan rights activist, missing for six days before her body was discovered in a city morgue, died from a botched abortion.

Many had feared that Caroline Mwatha’s disappearance and death had to do with her work at the Dandora Social Justice Center which has been documenting illegal police killings and other violations.

Dr. Peter Muriuki, who conducted the autopsy for Mwatha’s family, said she died of excessive bleeding both internally and externally. He said it was a result of a medical intervention removing the fetus.

Police asked a court Thursday to hold six people for 14 days to investigate Mwatha’s death. They include the owner of the clinic where she died. Abortion is illegal in Kenya unless it’s an emergency to save the mother.

Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/autopsy-finds-kenyan-right-activist-died-from-bad-abortion/

14.02.2019

Dandora Social Justice Center

South Africa: Hospitals have no data on botched abortions – DA

Hospitals have no data on botched abortions - DA
Gauteng / 1 March 2017
Thembelihle Mkhonza

Johannesburg – Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng MPL Jack Bloom on Wednesday said he found out that state hospitals in the province do not have data on illegal and botched abortions.

Bloom said he asked the Gauteng Health Department a question about rates of abortions in the province. He said the response he got had no information on illegal and botched abortions.

Continued at link: IOL news: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/hospitals-have-no-data-on-botched-abortions---da-7990668

01.03.2017

Gauteng Health Department

Brazil: Now that the (sexual) Rio Games are over: what next?

by Safe Abortion | posted in: Brazil, Latin America/ Caribbean, Newsletter | 0

From the point of view of sexual politics, yet more drastically, the city that projected the global image of a Mount Olympus of fit and sensual bodies, as soon as the games were over has once again revealed its face as a gendered slaughterhouse. On 24 August, the press reported that Caroline de Souza Carneiro, 28 years old, had died due to a clandestine, unsafe, botched abortion. Her body was left in the street, repeating the cruel pattern of abjection that has also characterized the deaths of Jandira and Elisângela in 2014. Significantly, the news broke on the same day that the petition on women’s rights in relation to the Zika virus – including the right to pregnancy termination – was presented to the Supreme Court of Brazil. In an article published in Folha de São Paulo, when the news of this death began circulating, the journalist Claudia Colucci asked “For how long will we be collecting women’s dead bodies from the streets?” She added:

“[Abortion-related] deaths that get into the media are not sufficient to disclose the very grave public health problem that is abortions in Brazil… Policy makers and politicians are more concerned with their electoral interests and do not care about these women, who die in despair, abandoned. Or even with those who will suffer from emotional and physical sequelae of unsafe abortions. This is not something that will happen to their wives and daughters because if they need abortions, they will get the best of care. It is the obligation of a state ruled by the principles of laicité to protect women’s health and prevent clandestine abortion deaths. This issue cannot continue to be subject to political trade-offs aimed at gathering the support of the religious electorate.”

SOURCE: Sexuality Policy Watch, 2 August 2016 ; PHOTO: Reprodução

Source: International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion

05.09.2016