Abortion Pills Go Global

Regardless of the law, women can now access their own safe and effective abortion procedures in the form of these pills.

November 10, 2023

After Ohio’s recent vote to enshrine the right to have an abortion into the state’s constitution, host Robert Scheer dives deeper into one of the underappreciated and underreported aspects of the fight for abortion rights on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.

Sydney Calkin, a senior lecturer in the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London, discusses her newest book, “Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom Across Borders,” and breaks down the myths and misconceptions about one of the biggest tools for bringing women’s reproductive rights to the forefront.

Continued: https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/10/abortion-pills-go-global/


‘I feel called to do this’: US providers sending abortion medication by mail

The documentary Plan C embeds with the organization sending FDA-approved abortion pills to recipients in all 50 states

Adrian Horton
Thu 9 Nov 2023

The question of why hangs over Plan C, a new documentary on efforts to expand access to medication abortion in the United States. Why seek a medication abortion? Because it’s safe, says one woman. (The two-pill combination of mifepristone and misoprostol, both certified by the FDA, are approved for the termination of pregnancy in the first trimester in 90 countries, although its use is severely restricted in the US.)

Because of the comfort and safety of being in one’s own home, says another in a montage of phone calls seeking medication abortion by mail. Because the fear of facing screaming protesters at clinics, because her family’s military doctor refused to tie her tubes at 24, because “I felt more comfortable doing this at my own pace, at my own time”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/09/plan-c-documentary-mail-abortion-pill-ban


Poland: A hunt for traces of abortion pills in women’s blood

How researchers test for traces of misoprostol and mifepristone — the two drugs used in medication abortions — in women who have experienced a miscarriage.

Sushmitha Ramakrishnan
Nov 6, 2023

A 22-year-old woman arrived at a hospital in Wroclaw, Poland, with a dead fetus. She said she'd had a miscarriage, but hadn't known she was pregnant.

Her apartment, which was subsequently raided by Polish authorities, told a different story. Officials found painkillers, antibiotics, a used pregnancy testing kit and tablets commonly dubbed "abortion pills" scattered around the home.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/poland-a-hunt-for-traces-of-abortion-pills-in-womens-blood/a-67287124


Abortion pill mifepristone: An explainer and research roundup about its history, safety and future

Amid pending court cases and ballot initiatives, journalistic coverage of medication abortion has never been more crucial. This piece aims to help inform the narrative with scientific evidence.

by Naseem S. Miller
November 1, 2023

Access to mifepristone, a medication that’s used for the safe termination of early pregnancy, hangs in the balance while the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to take up a case that could determine the legal future of the abortion medication.

In August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mifepristone should not be prescribed past the seventh week of pregnancy, prescribed via telemedicine, or shipped to patients through the mail. In September, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to consider a challenge to that ruling.

Continued: https://journalistsresource.org/health/mifepristone-research-roundup/


Sixty-one people in US criminalized for alleged self-managed abortions, report finds

Justice group calls some charges in past 20 years ‘illegitimate uses of state power’ and says over 40% of cases involved people of color

Carter Sherman
Mon 30 Oct 2023

Between 2000 and 2020, 61 people, including seven minors, were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly ending their own pregnancies or helping someone else do so, according to a Monday report from If/When/How, a reproductive justice group that helps people deal with legal cases related to pregnancy.

Only 14 of those cases arose in the seven states that had bans on “self-managed abortion” on the books between 2000 and 2020. The report found that the vast majority of those cases were charged under other kinds of laws – ones that prosecutors had made elastic enough to fit the supposed crime.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/self-managed-abortions-arrest-investiagtion-roe-v-wade


Abortion Pills Go Global — Reproductive Freedom Across Borders

By Rose Aguilar, Sarah Lai Stirland
October 26, 2023
Podcast: 52:40 minutes

On this edition of Your Call, social scientist Sydney Calkin discusses her new book, Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom Across Borders.

Calkin examines how the global flow of these pills is changing the politics of abortion in countries with restrictive abortion laws. Here in the United States, women used abortion pills to end more than half of unwanted pregnancies in recent years.

Guest: Sydney Calkin, senior lecturer in the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London and co-editor of After Repeal: Re-thinking Abortion Politics

Continued: https://www.kalw.org/show/your-call/2023-10-26/abortion-pills-go-global-reproductive-freedom-across-borders


What went wrong crossing the Texas-Mexico border to buy abortion pills

By David Martin Davies & Kayla Padilla, Texas Public Radio
October 26, 2023

Many Texans who have an unwanted pregnancy have little choice than to go out of state to access a legal abortion. It’s expensive and difficult but even more so for those living in deep South Texas.New Mexico is far away but Mexico is not. So what are the options for getting an abortion across the RGV border in Mexico? Texas Public Radio’s Kayla Padilla and David Martin Davies went to find out.

… They traveled to the border city of Nuevo Progreso, Tamaulipas. This is their Reporters’ Notebook.

Continued: https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/what-went-wrong-crossing-the-texas-mexico-border-to-buy-abortion-pills/


USA _ A Weekend at Abortion Camp Offers a Glimpse Into the Future of Abortion Access

In the year after Dobbs, the movement has been operating in triage mode, and Abortion Camp was conceived as a conclave where activists could come together to have honest conversations about their work and what they needed from each other.

REBECCA GRANT
Oct 26, 2023

On the wall in the gym at Abortion Camp hung a massive, colorful map of the United States festooned with index cards. Each card had the name, age, pronouns, astrological sign, and affiliation of each of the 50-or-so people who had traveled from across the country, and a few from overseas, to attend the event. As a kickoff activity, the campers had broken into small groups to fill out the cards and then placed them on the map to show where they were from.

Abortion Camp was held in early September at a hotel in the Pacific Northwest. The campers ranged in age from 19 to one woman in her 80s, and spanned professions and geographies. They were doctors, midwives, abortion fund workers, community organizers, nonprofit leaders, poets, digital security specialists, lawyers, clinic escorts, doulas, and researchers. Some attendees had known each other for years, while others were meeting for the first time. What they all shared was a commitment to keeping abortion accessible in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/abortion-camp-activism-dobbs/


A new abortion study is a stunning indictment of Dobbs’ consequences

Criminalization is ineffective because it fails to address the reasons one would consider abortion in the first place.

Oct. 26, 2023
By Mary Ziegler

A study released this week confirmed a surprising fact: The national abortion rate has risen slightly in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The study, released by WeCount, a project of the Society of Family Planning, relied on data from more than 80% of the nation’s providers, along with historical trends and state data. The report matches earlier findings released last month by the Guttmacher Institute, which likewise found abortions had remained steady or even increased since Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health.

With abortion rates not decreasing, opponents will pursue increasingly complex and constitutionally dubious ways to shut down access in and travel to progressive states. The outcome of this ratcheting up of penalties will be just as predictable. While criminalization makes pregnancy far more dangerous, it is ineffective because it fails to address the reasons one would consider abortion in the first place.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/abortion-rates-study-dobbs-roe-republicans-rcna122324


Abortions increased in the US overall in the year post-Dobbs, but there are stark inequalities state-to-state

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN
Tue October 24, 2023

In the year following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision, the abortion landscape in the United States became more fractured than ever.

Abortions increased nationwide, according to a new report from #WeCount, a research project led by the Society of Family Planning — the average monthly change in the 12 months post-Dobbs compared to the two months pre-Dobbs adds up to about 2,200 more abortions over the course of a year.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/24/health/abortion-access-inequality-one-year-post-dobbs-wecount/index.html