USA – Doctors face ‘a perpetual rollercoaster’ as abortion returns to the Supreme Court

Two cases — one concerning medication abortion and another about providing the procedure in medical emergencies — could further upend a profession already under siege.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
January 19, 2024

Less than two years ago, the Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to an abortion, a decision that the court’s conservative majority suggested would remove them from further litigation of abortion rights..

”The Court’s decision properly leaves the question of abortion for the people and their elected representatives in the democratic process,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/01/doctors-emtala-mifepristone-impact-abortion-supreme-court/

19.01.2024

abortion pills

Brett Kavanaugh

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Abortion Pills Are Being Widely Used In Nigeria: Women And Suppliers Talk About Their Experiences

1/18/2024
Akanni Ibukun Akinyemi

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Unintended pregnancy is common among women of reproductive age in Nigeria and a substantial number end in abortion. Annually between 2015 and 2019 , almost three million pregnancies were unintended. Forty eight per cent ended in abortion.

Many of these abortions are unsafe and some result in serious maternal morbidity or death . The main reason for this is that termination is only allowed legally in Nigeria if a woman's life is in danger. This drives women to obtain abortions clandestinely through unqualified providers using inappropriate methods.

Continued: https://menafn.com/1107740822/Abortion-Pills-Are-Being-Widely-Used-In-Nigeria-Women-And-Suppliers-Talk-About-Their-Experiences

18.01.2024

Commentary

Research

abortion pills

clandestine abortions

US women are stocking up on abortion pills, especially when there is news about restrictions

BY LAURA UNGAR
January 2, 2024

Thousands of women stocked up on abortion pills just in case they needed them, new research shows, with demand peaking in the past couple years at times when it looked like the medications might become harder to get.

Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., and typically involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at requests for these pills from people who weren’t pregnant and sought them through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service that prescribes them for future and immediate use.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pill-mifepristone-roe-1a257ab09aeeb6528ccca2f70363577c

02.01.2024

stock up on abortion pills

What Are ‘Missed Period Pills,’ and How Do They Work?

Menstrual regulation—sometimes referred to as “missed period pills"—is a new front in women's battle for bodily autonomy. Here's how it works and what you need to know.

Dec 30, 2023

Cari Siestra first learned about menstrual regulation when they were working on the Myanmar-Thailand border. At the time, abortion was broadly criminalized in both countries. But if a person’s period was late, it was relatively easy to get access to pills that would induce menstruation in just a few days. In Bangladesh, where abortion is largely illegal, menstrual regulation is available up to 10 weeks after a missed period, and public health advocates routinely talk about it as a promising way to reduce maternal mortality and rates of unsafe abortion.

Menstrual regulation isn’t completely unknown in the United States. Melissa Grant, chief operations officer and cofounder of Carafem, recalls friends who would have their periods brought back through manual vacuum aspiration in the 1980s, when early pregnancy tests weren’t as common. But in recent years, it hasn’t been a widespread option, and for a while, Siestra wasn’t sure if there was a place for menstrual regulation in the US.

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/missed-period-pills-menstrual-regulation-how-it-works/

Access to abortion pills has grown since Dobbs

How activists, clinicians, and businesses are getting abortion medication to all 50 states.

By Rachel M. Cohen
Dec 27, 2023

Eighteen months after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, and with a new Supreme Court challenge pending against the abortion medication mifepristone, confusion abounds about access to reproductive health care in America.

Since the June 2022 decision, abortion rates in states with restrictions have plummeted, and researchers estimated last month that the Dobbs decision led to “approximately 32,000 additional annual births resulting from bans.” Journalists profiled women who carried to term since Dobbs because they couldn’t afford to travel out of their restrictive state.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/12/27/24015092/abortion-pills-mifepristone-roe-reproductive-misoprostol

27.12.2023

Commentary

Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine

abortion pills

abortion support networks

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Elisa Wells

Expanding Medication Abortion Access

Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project

medication abortion

mifepristone

misoprostol

misoprostol only abortions

National Abortion Federation

Plan C

Red State Access

Reproductive Health Initiative for Telehealth Equity and Solutions

self-managed abortion

shield laws

Society of Family Planning

telehealth abortion

telemedicine abortion

‘The Choice is Yours’: Why a feminist coalition is pushing for expanded abortion rights in Iraqi Kurdistan

A local NGO is leading the first campaign of its kind to expand women’s legal access to abortion in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Maxine Betteridge-Moes
14 December, 2023

When 21-year-old Tre* found out she was pregnant, she was shocked and panicked. As an unmarried woman in Iraqi Kurdistan, she was using protection because she was not ready to have a baby. After missing her period, she went to a local clinic for an ultrasound. When the doctor congratulated on her pregnancy, she burst into tears.

“This shouldn’t be happening to me. You need to help me,” she pleaded to the doctor.

The doctor, in compliance with the law, refused to help her. Tre went to visit four other gynaecologists who she said rudely dismissed her. Eventually, through a friend, she was able to obtain abortion pills on the black market to terminate her pregnancy. She described the process as scary, humiliating and isolating.

Continued: https://www.newarab.com/features/kurdistan-feminist-ngo-pushes-more-abortion-rights

The Supreme Court will hear its biggest abortion case since it overruled Roe v. Wade

The justices will decide whether to ban mifepristone, a drug used in half of US abortions.

By Ian Millhiser
Dec 13, 2023

The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it will give a full hearing to a long-simmering dispute over whether far-right federal courts may ban the abortion drug mifepristone.

Mifepristone is part of a two-drug treatment that causes the uterus to expel pregnancy tissue. This two-drug regime, which may be taken up to the 70th day of a pregnancy, is often a safer alternative than surgical abortion — and it is also a less invasive procedure. More than half of all US abortions are medication abortions, which use mifepristone.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/13/23992173/supreme-court-abortion-ban-mifepristone-danco-fda-alliance-hippocratic-medicine

Mexico’s activist ‘companion networks’ quietly provide abortion pills and support to U.S. women

By Olivia Goldhill
Dec. 7, 2023

TIJUANA, Mexico — Just over a decade ago, when Crystal Pérez Lira needed an abortion, she had to leave Mexico. The procedure was illegal in her home state of Baja California and so deeply stigmatized that even Pérez Lira supported the procedure only for those who were raped. Until she unexpectedly got pregnant.

She traveled to the U.S. for help, walking alone across the border from Tijuana to San Diego, first for a health check and a compulsory ultrasound, and then back for a second appointment, when she was given pills to induce an abortion. She returned to Mexico, where she went through the procedure at a friend’s house.

Continued: https://www.statnews.com/2023/12/07/mexican-abortion-activist-networks-provides-abortion-pills-united-states/

Putin moves to abolish women’s right to abortion in Russia

BY ILONA GERSH
The Militant, Vol. 87/No. 46
December 2, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin is leading a drive to severely restrict women’s right to get an abortion in Russia, which in recent history has a relatively high abortion rate, an annual average of 46 per 1,000 women. At the same time, his government is seeking to limit aid to Russian families, as the pressures from Moscow’s genocidal war against the people of Ukraine is hitting increasingly hard on working people.

Putin and his cronies are dismayed by the plummeting birthrate in Russia. The rate of population decline has almost tripled since 2020. His war against Ukraine has so far resulted in a death toll of some 120,000 Russian soldiers, with 180,000 more wounded. Close to 1 million youth have left the country since the beginning of the war, seeking to avoid the draft and Putin’s deepening assault on political rights.

Continued: https://themilitant.com/2023/12/02/putin-moves-to-abolish-womens-right-to-abortion-in-russia/

02.12.2023

Russian Orthodox Church

soldiers and abortion

Mexico Has Become a Haven for Americans Seeking an Abortion

“Whoever needs our help, we would be happy to serve.”

ABBY VESOULIS

Nov 22, 2023

One last-minute round-trip flight from Biloxi, Mississippi, to Cancún, Mexico, runs about $171 USD; three nights at a three-star hotel there can cost as little as $129. A three-day car rental in the resort town rings in at just $20 per day. And the price for one surgical abortion at MSI Reproductive Choices’ Cancún clinic would be about $350. The total cost for a trip to Cancún to access reproductive health services no longer available in some American states? $710.

Starting November 23, when the international sexual health organization MSI Reproductive Health Services opens the doors to its first Cancún reproductive health center, a pregnant American from a US state where abortion is banned could find the procedure to be both more affordable and more accessible in Mexico. Quintana Roo, the Mexican state where Cancún is located, has become one of at least a dozen Mexican states to decriminalize abortion in the last two years amid a series of judicial rulings that have strengthened reproductive rights, culminating in a September Mexican Supreme Court ruling that made state laws criminalizing abortion unconstitutional nationwide.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/mexico-has-become-a-haven-for-americans-seeking-an-abortion/