In coronavirus-hit Mexico, many women are ‘determined to not have babies’

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul
Jan 3, 2022

MEXICO CITY — Everyone knew the pandemic would bring death. Edith García Díaz thought it would also bring birth — lots of birth.

As a state health official, she worried that the crisis would impede access to contraceptives, leading to a rise in pregnancies. Doctors were swamped with covid-19 patients. Couples were hunkering down at home, afraid to go out. Early in the pandemic, Mexico’s population agency warned that the pandemic could result in 120,000 additional unplanned births — an unwelcome reversal in the long battle to tame the fertility rate.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/03/coronavirus-mexico-baby-bust/

USA – Abortion Is Our Right To Strike

Abortion Is Our Right To Strike
Abortion isn’t a “cultural” issue. The production of children, and who will pay for it, is a key economic battlefront.

By Jenny Brown
08.18.2019

For decades, we’ve been told that abortion is merely a wedge issue used by Republicans to split working-class Catholics from the Democratic Party and excite a Protestant evangelical base. “Starting in the 1970s,” feminist law professor Joan C. Williams writes, “Republicans have offered support for working-class anti-abortion views in exchange for working-class support for pro-business positions.”

According to this view, politicians and the one percent really don’t care one way or the other about abortion — they’re just using the issue to get votes. This reading of US politics is so common that if you ask a group of feminists today why abortion is under attack, someone will explain that it is a political ploy to capture the support of conservative “values” voters. Thomas Frank even argues that banning abortion would be against the interests of these political forces because they would lose an issue to mobilize around.

Continued: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/abortion-rights-strike-economic-battlefront-birth-rates

Unintended Pregnancy Rates Declined Globally from 1990 to 2014

Unintended Pregnancy Rates Declined Globally from 1990 to 2014
Larger Declines in Developed Than Developing Regions

March 5, 2018
News Release, Guttmacher Institute

Rates of unintended pregnancy have decreased globally since 1990, according to a new study published today in The Lancet Global Health. While the unintended pregnancy rate fell worldwide from 1990–1994 to 2010–2014, it dropped less sharply in developing regions (16%) than in developed regions (30%). “Global, Regional, and Subregional Trends in Unintended Pregnancy and Its Outcomes from 1990 to 2014,” by Guttmacher Institute researcher Jonathan Bearak and colleagues, highlights the incidence of unintended pregnancies in all world regions, using an updated methodology and a broader evidence base than past studies to examine changes over time.

The researchers found that during the most recent period (2010–2014), an estimated 44% of pregnancies worldwide were unintended. This translates to a rate of 62 unintended pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–44, a decrease from 74 per 1,000 women in 1990–1994.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2018/unintended-pregnancy-rates-declined-globally-1990-2014