Remembering a lifelong champion for women’s health and rights

Professor Mahmoud Fathalla, former FIGO president, boldly spoke the truth

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2023
ANU KUMAR, Ipas President and CEO

My colleagues and I are deeply saddened by the news of Professor Mahmoud Fathalla’s passing. As an OB-GYN who served in various positions with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), Fathalla devoted his life to advancing women’s reproductive health and rights.

What many of us at Ipas admired most about Fathalla was his willingness to call out how patriarchy prevents women’s reproductive health care from receiving the attention, funding and sense of urgency it needs and deserves.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/remembering-a-lifelong-champion-for-womens-health-and-rights/

17.11.2023

Commentary

Anu Kumar

FIGO

International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics

Reproductive health advocates take the fight for abortion rights to the United Nations

Oct 26, 2023
By Kaitlyn Kennedy

Geneva, Switzerland - As a slew of abortion bans take effect around the US, advocates are fighting back during the 139th session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

They argued that guaranteeing access to abortion falls within the scope of the US' international obligations, as bans can deprive pregnant people of their right to life under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Continued: https://www.tag24.com/topic/abortion-rights/reproductive-health-advocates-take-the-fight-for-abortion-rights-to-the-united-nations-2988945

Kenya – Time to put a stop to needless deaths resulting from unsafe abortion

By Wangari Ireri
Oct 2, 2023

Lack of access to safe abortion due to known barriers remains unacceptably high. Unsafe abortion is a public health concern and according to 2013 findings of the 'Magnitude and incidences of unsafe abortion' study conducted by the Ministry of Health, unsafe abortion in the country is among the highest in Africa.

Maternal mortality is high at about 6,000 deaths per year, 17 per cent of them from complications of unsafe abortion. The study, conducted by the African Population and Health Research Centre in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Ipas, Guttmacher Institute and other partners estimated that 464,690 induced abortions were conducted in Kenya in 2012, corresponding to an induced abortion rate of 48 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age (15-49 years), and an induced abortion ratio of 30 abortions per 100 births.

Continued: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/health-opinion/article/2001482684/time-to-put-a-stop-to-needless-deaths-resulting-from-unsafe-abortion

02.10.2023

Opinion

African Population and Health Research Centre

Guttmacher Institute

International Safe Abortion Day

Ipas

maternal mortality

World Health Organisation

Ghana – Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, longtime Ipas leader and abortion rights advocate, receives prestigious Right Livelihood Award

Ipas
Sept 28, 2023

Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, a Ghanaian physician and advocate for safe abortion who helped lead Ipas’s work across Africa, is a recipient of this year’s Right Livelihood Award.

The award has honored courageous people solving global problems for over 40 years, and Right Livelihood’s jury selected Brookman-Amissah “for pioneering discussions on women’s reproductive rights in Africa, paving the way for liberalized abortion laws and improved safe abortion access.”

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/eunice-brookman-amissah-receives-right-livelihood-award/

28.09.2023

Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah

Ipas

Right Livelihood Award

The US Supreme Court took away abortion rights. Mexico’s high court just did the opposite.

Marc Ramirez, USA TODAY
Sept 9, 2023

A ruling this week by Mexico’s Supreme Court to decriminalize abortion continues a broadening push in recent years to expand abortion access in Latin America, placing the region more in line with global reproductive-rights trends than the United States, where Roe v. Wade was struck down last year.

Counter-intuitively, the Mexican court's decision toward opening up abortion access comes in a country with lower support for abortion rights than in the United States, where abortion access has been widely restricted in recent months.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/09/mexicos-highest-court-opened-up-abortion-rights/70797288007/

Mexican Supreme Court’s abortion decision expands access to millions, stands in contrast to US

By Fabiola Sánchez And Megan Janetsky, The Associated Press
Sep 7, 2023

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The decision by Mexico’s Supreme Court to invalidate all federal criminal penalties for abortion opened access for millions of people in the sprawling public health system a year after the court’s U.S. counterpart went in the opposite direction.

Wednesday’s ruling did not have the same immediate impact as Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing women’s access to abortion. But it was a dramatic change in this predominantly Catholic nation that could lend momentum to efforts to legalize abortion across the country.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/mexico-abortion-decriminalize-supreme-court-82cd9798abe91106fda1e7afddf91c34

07.09.2023

News

abortion law reform

Fernanda Díaz de León

Ipas

Marina Reyna

Mexico Supreme Court

National Institute for Women

Latin American abortion rights activists just notched another win in Mexico

The Mexican Supreme Court decriminalized abortion nationwide. It’s a big deal for the whole region.

By Nicole Narea
Sep 7, 2023

Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion nationwide Wednesday, making it one of many Latin American countries that has eased restrictions on the procedure in recent years.

Wednesday’s decision comes after a narrower 2021 ruling that decriminalized abortion only in the state of Coahuila, which sits along the US-Mexico border. Though some states moved to liberalize their laws around abortion since that ruling, federal law defining abortion as “unconstitutional,” as well as laws penalizing medical providers who perform the procedure, still stood until Wednesday. Now, abortion will become available in all federal Mexican health institutions in every state where women could have previously faced criminal penalties for undergoing the procedure.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/9/7/23863267/mexico-abortion-decriminalize-supreme-court-ruling

07.09.2023

News

Anu Kumar

Civil Association for the Rights of the Conceived

decriminalization of abortion

Mexico decriminalizes abortion, extending Latin American trend of widening access to procedure

BY FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ AND MEGAN JANETSKY
September 6, 2023

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion Wednesday, ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights in a sweeping decision that extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access.

The high court ordered that abortion be removed from the federal penal code. The ruling will require the federal public health service and all federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/mexico-abortion-decriminalize-d87f6edbdf68c2e6c8f5700b3afd15de

Abortion: Women more at risk of death in fragile and conflict-affected settings

5 September 2023
Médecins Sans Frontières

Complications following unsafe abortions are up to seven times more severe in fragile or conflict-affected settings: these are the findings of one of the very first studies on the subject, carried out in two referral hospitals in Bangui in the Central African Republic and Jigawa State in northern Nigeria. Behind the statistics, real stories of real women – and a universal vulnerability.

“I was distraught. I had drunk the traditional medicine. Before that, someone had shown me how to insert a piece of iron into my vagina... It was a piece of iron like this [she shows the interviewer the size],” says Rasha*, a 32-year-old woman admitted to Bangui referral hospital with potentially life-threatening abortion-related complications.

Continued: https://www.msf.org/abortion-women-more-risk-death-fragile-and-conflict-affected-settings

Government of Canada commits to increasing sexual and reproductive rights including access to abortion services

IPAS
July 21, 2023

Ipas is pleased to announce a partnership with the government of Canada to increase access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care for women and girls in Bolivia, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Canadian government has pledged $10 million CAD for programmatic work in Bolivia, Indonesia and Nigeria to increase the sexual and reproductive autonomy of women and girls by expanding their access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services and enhancing their ability to make decisions about their own sexual and reproductive health.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/government-of-canada-commits-to-increasing-sexual-and-reproductive-rights-including-access-to-abortion-services/