Dear Supreme Court of Brazil, Use Your Power to Protect Women

Video by Eliza Capai (11:34 minutes)
Text by Joanna Erdman
Sep 26, 2023

Ms. Capai is a Brazilian filmmaker. This short film is adapted from her feature-length documentary “Incompatible With Life.” Ms. Erdman is a professor of health law and policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, state anti-abortion laws came into immediate effect, clinics closed the same day, and people desperately searched for care against the clock of pregnancy. That is to say, there is an urgency to injustice, much as the time for justice is always now.

These lessons are being tested in Brazil. Last week Brazil’s Supreme Court opened voting in a case to decriminalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. This would be a sea change in the country, as explored in the film above. Today Brazil prohibits abortion, with only narrow exceptions in cases of rape, risk to life and a fatal fetal condition known as anencephaly.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/opinion/abortion-brazil-supreme-court.html

Canada – A choice of options

It's time to talk about self-managed abortion care as a safe alternative in Canada — and the legal risks involved.

BY JULIANNE STEVENSON & JENNIFER TAYLOR
16 SEP 2021

The new Texas law that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy is obviously horrific. It also proves that legal protection for abortion — which we think of as relatively robust in Canada — is more fragile than it seems. But this tragic moment presents an opportunity to reframe our thinking around abortion. That is, we should think of abortion not just in relation to the law, but as something that can happen safely at home in appropriate circumstances, without direct medical supervision or state involvement.

Inspired by the work of scholars like Prof. Joanna Erdman, we believe self-managed abortion (SMA) needs to become a more mainstream part of the abortion conversation in Canada. As part of that conversation, it’s important to evaluate some of the legal risks involved — because, while the law shouldn’t always dictate how we think about abortion, we can’t ignore it either.

Continued: https://www.nationalmagazine.ca/en-ca/articles/law/opinion/2021/a-choice-of-options

Why Some Women Might Want ‘Missed-Period Pills’

Abortion drugs administered as early as 28 days after a woman’s last period can offer comfort in uncertainty to those who want it.

By Patrick Adams
Dec. 3, 2020

The pregnancy test is one of the most ubiquitous home health care products in America. What resembled a child’s chemistry set when it first arrived on the market in 1977 is now the widely available wand. Today, dozens of different devices promise to promptly deliver what any possibly-pregnant person is assumed to want: knowledge of her status.

Now a new study suggests that for all of the ease and convenience of the at-home test, a significant number of women would prefer not to know. Given the choice, they would opt instead to take two drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration to terminate a pregnancy. The first drug, mifepristone, blocks the effects of progesterone, a hormone without which the lining of the uterus begins to break down, while the second drug, misoprostol, induces contractions of the uterus that expel its contents.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/opinion/pregnancy-missed-period-pills.html

South Africa – Abortion is a regular medical procedure, so why do we need a law for it?

With abortion services becoming available through telemedicine and self-managed abortions increasingly gaining traction globally, the relevance and legality of abortion law should be questioned as women demand reproductive justice, and feminists get organising.

By Marion Stevens
14 August 2020

Abortion has always been legal in South Africa, a fact which may surprise many people. The colonial government introduced Roman-Dutch law, which allowed abortions to take place under certain conditions.

The Abortion and Sterilisation Act 2 of 1975 reserved access to abortion for white women, while increasing control over black women’s bodies – all within a population control framework. Under this act, approximately 1,000 white women accessed abortion every year, while the number of black women seeking abortions was not even recorded.

Continued: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-08-14-abortion-is-a-regular-medical-procedure-so-why-do-we-need-a-law-for-it/

14.08.2020

Abortion and Sterilisation Act 2

abortion in South Africa

abortion law reform

backstreet abortions

Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1996

clinical abortion guidelines

cytotec

Dr Helen Rees

Dr Lucía Berro Pizzarossa

Global Gag Rule

Immorality Act No.5

Immorality Amendment Act

Joanna Erdman

MAMA Network

Marie Stopes International

Marion Stevens

maternal mortality

Médecins Sans Frontières

Mexico City policy

mifepristone

misoprostol

Mobilising Activists for Medical Abortion

reproductive justice

self-managed abortion

Sexual and Reproductive Justice Coalition

SJRC

SRJC

telemedicine abortion

D.I.Y. – Self-Managed Abortion

Conscience Magazine, 2019 issue 2, Abortion
By Susan Yanow, Joanna Erdman and Kinga Jelinska
Posted Sep 19, 2019

The advent of abortion pills as a health technology has deep personal and political consequences for how, when and where abortions happen. The “discovery” of abortion pills occurred in the 1980s in Brazil, when women noticed that the label for misoprostol, a drug registered to treat gastric ulcers, cautioned against its use by pregnant women because the drug caused uterine cramping. Use of misoprostol alone to end unwanted pregnancy spread quickly in Brazil and across Latin America outside the formal health system, as abortion is criminalized in most of the region. 1

The use of pills for abortion entered formal healthcare systems when the French pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf developed mifepristone for use with a prostaglandin like misoprostol to end a pregnancy (with higher effectiveness than misoprostol alone, although the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes both misoprostol alone and the combination mifepristone/misoprostol as highly safe and effective).2

Continued: https://consciencemag.org/2019/09/19/d-i-y/

International experts condemn attempt to further restrict abortion in Poland.

International experts condemn attempt to further restrict abortion in Poland.

For immediate release 17-10-2018:

Warsaw, Poland - Women on Waves and the Sisterhood Network teamed up to fight attempts to further restrict abortion rights in Poland. A case bough by the group of Members of the Lower Chamber of The Parliament (Sejm) to the Constitutional Tribunal argues that the current Polish abortion law which allows for a legal abortion in the case of severe fetal malformation, violates the Polish constitutional protection of the life of everyone (incl. fetuses) under the case reference K 13/17.
logo women on waves

Women on Waves, a Dutch non-profit organisation and the Sisterhood Network, an informal support group from Stockholm, Sweden are both supporting women’s right to reproductive freedom by providing access to reproductive healthcare including abortion. Both organizations deal with hundreds of women every month who were denied their right to terminate a pregnancy due to severe fetal anomalies or pregnancy threatening their health or life.

Continued: http://www.womenonwaves.org/en/page/7501/international-experts-condemn-attempt-to-further-restrict-abortion-in-poland

Thirty years after Morgentaler ruling on abortion rights, Canada ‘still dealing with the same issues’

Thirty years after Morgentaler ruling on abortion rights, Canada ‘still dealing with the same issues’
Only one in six hospitals in Canada performs abortions and some provinces have no standalone abortion clinics at all. New Brunswick, meanwhile, continues to refuse to fund abortions at the province’s only clinic.

By Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press
Wed., Dec. 20, 2017

It’s 1979. A 20-year-old student misses her period.

“I was in my third year of university. I used oral contraceptives but I got pregnant,” the woman, now in her late 50s, said in a recent interview from Montreal. “I hadn’t finished my degree. I wasn’t ready for a family.”

She avoided the French-language Catholic hospital where she lived in Moncton, N.B., and instead booked an appointment with a gynecologist at the city’s English-language hospital.

Continued at source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/12/20/thirty-years-after-morgentaler-ruling-on-abortion-rights-canada-still-dealing-with-the-same-issues.html