After Roe, abortion’s underground railroad gains steam

A network of activists is helping women terminate pregnancies in countries where the procedure is banned.

BY CARLO MARTUSCELLI, EMILY SCHULTHEIS, MANDOLINE RUTKOWSKI AND JAKUB KORUS
OCTOBER 29, 2022

RIGA — If you want to get an abortion in Poland, Kinga Jelinska is happy to help. Legally terminating your pregnancy is almost impossible in the Eastern European country. Abortion is only allowed in the case of rape or incest, or when it threatens the life of the woman.

That’s where Jelinska comes in. She’s the co-founder and executive director of Women Help Women, an Amsterdam-based nonprofit that helps provide women with the pills needed for an at-home medical abortion. The service Jelinska’s group provides falls into a legal grey zone; self-induced abortion is illegal in a number of countries, but in Poland, it’s not explicitly banned.

Continued: https://www.politico.eu/article/roe-v-wade-europe-abortion-pill-illegal-underground-network/

The World Is Lifting Abortion Restrictions. Why Is the U.S. Moving Against the Tide?

Dec. 2, 2021
By Mary Fitzgerald

Ms. Fitzgerald is the director of expression at the Open Society Foundations and former editor in chief of the global news site openDemocracy.

The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case currently before the Supreme Court which focuses on the question of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, is unlikely to hinge on global data or the finer points of international law. And yet a growing cadre of briefing papers, political accords and court filings are co-opting the language of international human rights groups to argue against the basic rights and freedoms that most Americans have enjoyed for decades.

These arguments are worth addressing. They tell us worrisome things both about the health of American democracy and about what could happen if the court reverses Roe v. Wade next year.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/opinion/abortion-restrictions-roe-wade-usa.html

Poland – How to Make Abortion Great Again

How to Make Abortion Great Again

Poland has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the European Union, and in practice, it's all but banned. But four women, nicknamed the "Abortion Dream Team," are pushing back, holding workshops around the country teaching women how to obtain and self-manage a medical abortion. With Roe v. Wade at risk of being overturned in the U.S., is their story a cautionary tale, or a possible roadmap for American women?

By Anna Louie Sussman
Nov 4, 2019

On a rainy day in May, in the Polish coastal city of Gdańsk, in a high-ceilinged room on the second floor of an unremarkable building, 16 women and five men sat in mismatched office chairs around a long table, waiting to learn how to administer a medical abortion. Before the workshop began in earnest, one of the speakers, Karolina Więckiewicz, turned to a bald, bearded man on her left, whose papers spread out in front of him suggested he might be from a prosecutor’s office, and asked him to stop recording.

Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a28690537/abortion-dream-team-poland/

Leaked letter suggests US is rallying UN member states to oppose abortion

Leaked letter suggests US is rallying UN member states to oppose abortion
Attempt to ‘roll back the clock’ condemned as governments are urged to oppose UN support for reproductive rights

Liz Ford
Mon 23 Sep 2019

The US is understood to have written to UN member states urging them to join a “growing coalition” of countries rallying against abortion, in what seems to be the latest attempt by the Trump administration to rollback women’s rights.

A letter, seen by the Guardian, is believed to have been sent to governments deemed sympathetic to the administration’s view on reproductive health.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/sep/23/leaked-letter-suggests-us-is-rallying-un-member-states-to-oppose-abortion

How Trump’s latest efforts to stop abortion increasingly undermine global health

How Trump's latest efforts to stop abortion increasingly undermine global health
Canada recently committed a record amount toward safe abortion services. Will that be enough to combat the impacts of the US' revised ‘global gag rule’?

By: Urooba Jamal
July 16, 2019

The dilemma for a health organization is hard to fathom.

In 2018, two young women died at the hands of knitting needles and other everyday objects in Kenya, where seven women die each day in an attempt to induce an abortion on their own, bereft of safer options.

Even two years earlier, their deaths might have been prevented. But a local organization that would have previously referred them to abortion provision services was forced to choose between giving sexual and reproductive healthcare advice or signing a “global gag rule” and stopping that program, in order to continue to provide HIV services to its 10,000 clients.

Continued: https://www.opencanada.org/features/how-trumps-efforts-to-stop-abortion-are-undermining-global-health-programs/

16.07.2019

Global Health Empowerment and Rights Act

International Women's Health Coalition

Open Society Foundation

Organization of American States

Population Action International

Preston Mitchum

Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance

sexual and reproductive health and rights

SheDecides

Siljander Amendment

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency

United Nations Population Fund

South Africa – ABORTION & REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE CONFERENCE – Rhodes University to host critical dialogues in reproductive justice

ABORTION & REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE CONFERENCE – Rhodes University to host critical dialogues in reproductive justice
May 18, 2018
by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion

Rhodes University’s Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction (CSSR) research programme will be co-hosting a flagship conference to address abortion and reproductive justice issues in July.

In cooperation with the Sexual and Reproductive Justice Coalition of South Africa, the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion, the South African Department of Social Development, and the Open Society Foundations, the conference – Abortion & Reproductive Justice: The Unfinished Revolution III – will take place from 8–12 July 2018 at Rhodes’ Barrat Lecture Theatre Complex.

Continued: http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/abortion-reproductive-justice-conference-rhodes-university-to-host-critical-dialogues-in-reproductive-justice/

18.05.2018

Events/Campaigns

News

Abortion & Reproductive Justice: The Unfinished Revolution III

Catriona Macleod

International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion

Open Society Foundation

Sexual and Reproductive Justice Coalition of South Africa

South African Department of Social Development

Unfinished Revolution

IRELAND: US group denies Sipo claims that funding for abortion campaign was political

US group denies Sipo claims that funding for abortion campaign was political

Friday, December 22, 2017
By Joe Leogue

The US foundation which awarded funding to Amnesty Ireland for its campaign against Ireland’s abortion laws has taken issue with the State ethics watchdog’s claims that it had said the money was for “political purposes”.

Open Society Foundations (OSF) said it has written to the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) calling on it to correct the record on the matter.

Continued at source: https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/us-group-denies-sipo-claims-that-funding-for-abortion-campaign-was-political-819944.html

22.12.2017