Contextualizing the Nigerian Government’s Forced Abortion Program

By Hilary Matfess, Robert Nagel
Sunday, February 12, 2023

In December 2022, Reuters released a shocking report detailing a forced abortion campaign by the Nigerian government that targeted women who were impregnated by members of Boko Haram. The report suggests that the program involved at least five hospitals and five military bases and affected roughly 10,000 women over the course of nearly a decade, which would almost certainly require a degree of oversight and endorsement by senior authorities in the Nigerian government. The accounts from women who were subjected to these forced abortions are harrowing; they reported being given pills or injections to induce abortions without understanding what effect the treatment would have. The program was reportedly justified as a means of eradicating the threat of future insurgents and operated despite Nigeria’s strict regulations on abortion. The Nigerian government has denied these allegations. But in a conflict that has been marked by distressing levels of gender-based violence—including the abduction of women and girls into the ranks of the insurgents—the report added another dimension of systematic state violence against Nigerian women

Continued: https://www.lawfareblog.com/contextualizing-nigerian-governments-forced-abortion-program

Leave My Disability Out of Your Anti-Abortion Propaganda

July 31, 2022
By Kendall Ciesemier

Thirty years ago, when my mother was pregnant, an ultrasound revealed troubling abnormalities: the fetus’s organs were misarranged. This condition, she was told by her doctor, correlated with a wide variety of disabilities that could cause the baby to die at birth. The doctor told my mother that she could seek an abortion. She wanted her to know her options.

My parents had good health insurance, a steady income and a strong support system. They chose to proceed with the pregnancy. A few months later, I was born to a crowd of doctors waiting to assess and treat my condition. I had my first of many major surgeries at 8 weeks old. My parents went to sleep every night praying I’d see another birthday.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/31/opinion/disability-rights-anti-abortion.html

31.07.2022

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Reproductive control of Indigenous women continues around the world, say survivors and researchers

Survivors of forced sterilization and coerced contraception from Canada, Peru and Indonesia will meet with researchers to share stories, heal and advocate for change.

June 27, 2022
by Gillian Rutherford

Survivors of forced sterilization and coerced contraception from Canada, Peru and Indonesia will gather with academic researchers at a summit in Edmonton this summer to share stories, heal through art and ceremony, and set an agenda for change.

The full extent of reproductive control practices around the world is not known, but they have been historically — and continue to be — targeted at Indigenous, poor and migrant women, according to principal investigator Denise Spitzer, professor in the School of Public Health and former Canada Research Chair in Gender, Migration and Health.

Continued: https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2022/06/reproductive-control-of-indigenous-women-continues-around-the-world.html

27.06.2022

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USA – Harassment at Abortion Clinics Is Already Bad. It’s Worse When You’re Black.

We need to explicitly name white supremacy and racism as the core drivers of abortion bans and restrictions, as well as violence and harassment.

Apr 21, 2022
MiQuel Davies, Rewire News

Abortion providers and people accessing abortion care are at high risk of violence and harassment. We know this from the well-documented history of providers being murdered, clinics dealing with arson and regular hate mail, and protesters stationed daily outside many abortion clinics, where they harass providers and patients.

What we don’t always talk about—or name explicitly—is that the violence and harassment faced by patients and providers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color is often heightened and racialized. At Physicians for Reproductive Health, we know this is true from the countless experiences of physicians in our network as well as those working day to day on the ground, especially in hostile states. Unfortunately, this reality is often dismissed or minimized in an attempt to disassociate racism and white supremacy from attacks on abortion rights.
Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2022/04/21/harassment-at-abortion-clinics-is-already-bad-its-worse-when-youre-black/

Tubectomy: Last hope for hapless women

Women are willing to face any risk to undergo sterilisation in order to avoid unintended pregnancies through mostly unprotected sex

Saturday, 09 April 2022
Swapna Majumdar

In August last year, over a hundred women, majority of them tribal, underwent tubectomy surgeries in the Surguja district of Chhattisgarh. Unbelievable as it may sound, all the 101 sterilisation procedures were carried out by one surgeon within a span of eight hours in a small community centre. Under the central Government’s National Family Welfare Programme guidelines, a doctor can conduct a maximum of 30 sterilisations in a day.

When issued a showcause notice by the state health department asking why this was done, the concerned doctor contended he had been pressurised to do so by the villagers. He said the villagers told him that they had travelled long distances for the procedure and it would be difficult for them tocome again. Hence, all the women had to be operated the same day.

Continued: https://www.dailypioneer.com/2022/columnists/tubectomy--last-hope-for-hapless-women.html

Histories That Both Diverge and Converge: Birth Control in India and Canada

The sexual health markets emerged in response to the demand for birth control, however, they did not deliver in terms of quality or efficacy of product, even less so, towards women’s wellbeing.

Urvi Desai
April 1, 2022

On a sticky February afternoon in 1936,
Margaret Sanger, an American birth control advocate, attended the first
All-India Population Conference held at the famous Cowasjee Jehangir Hall in
Bombay (present-day Mumbai). The conference was attended by the wealthy of
Bombay society, the who’s who in the field, as well as doctors, advocates,
government officials, and more. At around the same time, family planning
societies began to emerge in India. These societies promoted birth control and
advised women who visited their centres about possible birth control
techniques. Varied as the organisations were, they shared the common goal of
insisting that poor women use birth control products to control reproduction.

Continued: https://thewire.in/history/histories-that-both-diverge-and-converge-birth-control-in-india-and-canada

It’s the 100th anniversary of the first conference on birth control. Here’s a look at contraception’s lesser-known legacy.

Hannah Good, The Lily
November 6, 2021

One hundred years ago, a group of prominent doctors, social workers, economists and advocates convened at what was then called the Hotel Plaza in New York City for a first of its kind conference. Their aim was to explore the benefits and legality of a technology that was simultaneously novel and impossibly ancient: birth control.

“Our definite aim is to repeal the laws so that the medical profession may give women at their request knowledge to prevent conception,” organizer Margaret Sanger said in her opening speech at the conference. “We believe that with the assistance of the intelligent members of the community we can bring this about in a very short time, but we need your help.”

Continued: https://www.thelily.com/its-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-first-conference-on-birth-control-heres-a-look-at-contraceptions-lesser-known-legacy/

How Texas abortion law is undermining Native American women’s reproductive justice

"It's certainly a whole other level of mental anxiety and cruelty that's forced upon us," one activist said of the law, the most restrictive in the nation.

Sept. 4, 2021
By Erik Ortiz

For Native American women living on tribal lands, obtaining an abortion has long been a difficult and daunting process.

For Native women in Texas, that challenge has been magnified after the U.S. Supreme Court refused this week to block the state's ban on most abortions, underscoring the unique health disparities that Indigenous women have long faced and the potential threats to their health, said Charon Asetoyer, executive director of the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/how-texas-abortion-law-undermining-native-american-women-s-reproductive-n1278494

China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization

By The Associated Press
June 30, 2020

The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.

While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.”

Continued: https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c

China is forcibly sterilizing Uighur women and giving them unwanted abortions

Bill Bostock
June 29, 2030

New evidence has come to light exposing the draconian tactics Chinese authorities are using to persecute Uighur Muslims, including forced abortions, birth control, and sterilization.

An Associated Press report published on Monday cited interviews with 30 former prisoners, family members, and a former detention-camp instructor, as well as government statistics and state documents.

Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-forcibly-sterilizing-uighur-women-xinjiang-abortions-contraception-ap-2020-6

29.06.2020