Breaking the Silence: Abortion Rights in Kenya – BBC Africa Eye documentary

BBC News Africa
Nov 26, 2023
Film: 45 minutes

Across the world, debates are raging about access to safe abortion. Complications from unsafe, backstreet procedures are a leading cause of maternal death in developing countries. In Kenya, where almost two-thirds of pregnancies are unintended, unregulated terminations are estimated to claim the lives of over 2,000 women every year.

BBC Africa Eye reporter Linda Ngari investigates a hidden crisis that has led to an estimated seven Kenyan women dying from unsafe abortions every day, with many more facing life-altering complications.

Continued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI3AKMFgVKQ

Kenya – ‘We Lost Our Daughters To Unsafe Abortion’

Nov 25, 2023
The Nation

Deep in Kharanda village, a few kilometres from Kakamega town, Catherine Nyongesa, 55, strolls along a fence enclosing her modest homestead.

On the left side of her mud-walled house, she points to an unmarked grave of her late daughter, Naomi. She was her third-born child who died at the age of 14.

Continued: https://www.theafrica.co.za/africanews/we-lost-our-daughters-to-unsafe-abortion-4525522267

25.11.2023

Türk urges progress on ‘unfinished agenda’ of women’s sexual and reproductive health rights

19 October 2023
BY Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

(delivered at UNECE Regional Conference to mark the 30th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development “Population and Development: Ensuring Rights and Choices”)

…When the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development was agreed to by States in Cairo 30 years ago, it promised a profound impact on the lives of women and girls.

It promised them the power to make decisions about their own lives, their bodies, and their futures – rights which should have, in the first place, been non-negotiable.

Continued: https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2023/10/turk-urges-progress-unfinished-agenda-womens-sexual-and

19.10.2023

Commentary

ICPD Programme of Action

International Conference on Population and development

maternal deaths

maternal mortality

Programme of Action

sexual and reproductive health and rights

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

UNECE

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

6 Stories Show the Human Toll of Poland’s Strict Abortion Laws

By Anna Pamula | Photographs by Kasia Strek for TIME
OCTOBER 13, 2023

Krzysztof Sowinski has cried every day since his wife Marta, who was five months pregnant, died of sepsis in 2022; he believes doctors put Marta’s life in danger by not giving them the option to terminate the pregnancy while the fetus’ heart was still beating. Janusz Kucharski also lost his partner Justyna to sepsis in the fifth month of a pregnancy. She left behind two boys.

It is likely, reproductive-rights advocates say, that these women would be alive if not for Poland's increasingly restrictive abortion laws. Abortion has been illegal in the country since 1993, but a 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, which went into effect the next year, removed one of the exceptions to the law—fetal abnormalities—and imposed a near-total ban on abortion. Now women can terminate a pregnancy only if the women’s life or health is at risk (including mental health risks with a psychiatric diagnosis) or if there is reasonable suspicion that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Continued: https://time.com/6320172/poland-abortion-laws-maternal-health-care/

13.10.2023

Commentary

abortion stories

Barbara Zientek

Bartlomiej Chmielowiec

Debski Clinic

Dorota Lalik

Dr. Gizela Jagielska

Dr. Katarzyna Szamotulska

Dr. Krzysztof Preis

European Court of Human Rights

FEDERA

Foundation for Women and Family Planning

Law and Justice party

Mother and Child Institute

Poland Constitutional Tribunal

Poland’s Office for Patients' Rights

total abortion ban

U.N. Committee Against Torture

Australia’s support for safe abortion globally

by Bettina Baldeschi, Daile Kelleher and Anu Kumar
10 October 2023

Last month, Western Australia passed landmark reforms removing barriers to accessing abortion, bringing it into line with other states in Australia. While there are still practical barriers to access, particularly for marginalised groups, every state and territory in Australia has now decriminalised abortion, and the National Women’s Health Strategy lays out a framework for universal access by 2030.

Globally, the picture is very different. Half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended. In Asia and the Pacific there are 140 million women with an unmet need for family planning. 13% of maternal deaths worldwide result from unsafe abortions.

Continued: https://devpolicy.org/australias-support-for-safe-abortion-globally-20231010/

10.10.2023

Western Australia abortion law

‘We are fighting for the girls who come after us’: abortion rights at risk in Argentina election

Argentina’s presidential frontrunner, Javier Milei, is threatening to outlaw the abortion rights only won three years ago

Harriet Barber in Buenos Aires
Mon 2 Oct 2023

“We are fighting against the presidential candidates who threaten the rights of women,” says Marilyna, 28, standing hand in hand with her friend outside Argentina’s National Congress last Thursday evening.

Argentina is three weeks away from a national election in which the rights of women and abortion have been put on the ballot, just three years after elective terminations were legalised. Marilyna is one of thousands of women, men and children protesting on the streets of Buenos Aires.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/oct/02/abortion-rights-at-risk-in-argentina-election

International safe abortion day: still a vulnerable right worldwide

By Rédaction Africa news with AFP
Sept 28, 2023

Strictly banned in some countries, heavily restricted in others, access to abortion, which is World Day this Thursday, remains a fragile right in the world.

According to the NGO Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), only 35% of women of childbearing age live in countries where abortion is authorized on simple request. According to the same source, clandestine abortions cause 39,000
deaths per year.

Here is an overview of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) around the world:

Continued: https://www.africanews.com/2023/09/28/international-safe-abortion-day-still-a-vulnerable-right-worldwide/

28.09.2023

Commentary

abortion law reform

Center for Reproductive Rights

clandestine abortions

global abortion laws

International Safe Abortion Day

Africa: World Contraception Day 2023 – A Call to Liberate Women’s Bodies through Equitable Health Leadership

Nearly a third of all women in developing countries begin childbearing at age 19 and younger, and nearly half of first births to adolescents are to children, or girls aged 17 and younger, UNFPA research shows.

Mbuto Machili / UNFPA Mozambique
26 SEPTEMBER 2023

Access to birth control, which empowers women with the agency to decide if, when, and how many children to bear, is a fundamental human right.

While increased use of contraception among women in low- and lower-middle-income countries has successfully prevented over 141 million unintended pregnancies, curbed 29 million unsafe abortions, and averted nearly 150,000 maternal deaths, only 1 in 4 women in these developing nations can realize their desired fertility intentions. This means that an unacceptably large number of women are still having more children than they want - with dire consequences.

Continued: https://allafrica.com/stories/202309260368.html

26.09.2023

Commentary

family planning programs

maternal deaths

Mbuto Machili

UNFPA

World Contraception Day

Africa

Contraception

Fatal abortion in sub-Saharan Africa: ‘She dilated my cervix with a cassava root and the fetus fell out’

A study by Doctors Without Borders and others warns of the proliferation of complications suffered by women following a terminated pregnancy in conflict-affected regions

MONICAH MWANGI, BEATRIZ LECUMBERRI, (REUTERS)
SEP 11, 2023

“I arrived at a hospital in Bangui and a 25-year-old woman had just died in my colleagues’ arms from complications following an abortion,” says Estelle Pasquier, a researcher with Doctors Without Borders (MSF). “This can happen several times a month, but it is a preventable death with the right measures. The doctors there have their hands tied by legal and social impediments, but the vast majority consider that the healthcare in these circumstances is a right for all women because they see the damage wreaked on a daily basis when that right is ignored.” What Pasquier is describing prompted a pioneering study, of which she is co-author, on the complications suffered by women after abortion in particularly volatile regions of sub-Saharan Africa, a corner of the world where 70% of deaths related in some way to maternity occur.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-09-11/fatal-abortion-in-sub-saharan-africa-she-dilated-my-cervix-with-a-cassava-root-and-the-fetus-fell-out.html

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