Bangladesh – Ensuring Choices and Rights

The Daily Star in association with Team Associates and Marie Stopes Bangladesh organised an online discussion titled “World Population Day: Ensuring Choices and Rights” on July 8, 2021. Here we publish a summary of the discussion.

Wed Jul 28, 2021
Monjun Nahar, Lead, Advocacy and Communication, Marie Stopes Bangladesh

This year, the World Population Day focuses on comprehensive rights and choices on sexual and reproductive health. The theme itself refers to the global consensus that reproductive health rights are integral and indivisible parts of human rights. Particularly for women reproductive rights are deeply connected with their life and livelihood. The ability to take decisions about their sexual and reproductive health is a key indicator that women are in control of their own lives.

However, we are talking about rights and choices in a context where women have very little independence to take decision by herself. A woman's education, marriage, profession are mostly dependent on her family members.

Continued: https://www.thedailystar.net/round-tables/news/ensuring-choices-and-rights-2138396

Nigeria – Healthcare Givers Free To Access Global Funding With GAG Rule Repeal —PAI

By Sade Oguntola
On Apr 8, 2021

Following the withdrawal of the Global Gap rule by President Joe Biden, groups and stakeholders into reproductive and sexual reproductive health have been urged to come forward to access global funding for supporting provision of comprehensive health services for women in Nigeria.

Director, Policy and Advocacy at Population Action International (PAI,) Mr Jonathan Rucks, speaking at the virtual training for media practitioners on “Global Gag Rule Rescindment: Implications and Next Steps” by IPAS in collaboration with PAI stated that the four years of US President Donald Trump’s administration global gag rule had globally led to increase in the cases of unsafe abortion and poor health of women.

Continued: https://tribuneonlineng.com/healthcare-givers-free-to-access-global-funding-with-gag-rule-repeal-pai/

Maternal Health Around the World

Apr 7, 2021
Sarah Moore, M.Sc.

The term maternal health refers to women’s health throughout the stages of pregnancy and childbirth as well as during the postnatal period. Maternal health has a direct impact on both the mother and child.

Every day, approximately 810 women die from causes related to preventable childbirth and pregnancy. Providing good quality maternity care in order to prevent these includes supporting the nutrition of mother and baby, treating diseases, supporting women who are exposed to intimate partner violence, and providing universal access to sexual and reproductive care.

Continued: https://www.news-medical.net/health/Maternal-Health-Around-the-World.aspx

Practicing self-care: empowering women to manage their own health

Médecins Sans Frontières
4 March 2021

We all want the power to invest in our wellbeing, to be able to take care of our emotional, physical and mental health. But without reliable information and appropriate tools, reasonable options and adequate support, it’s not always possible.

Self-care is changing the face of healthcare. It focuses on equipping and entrusting people to take a central role in their own health. For women, this can involve an important shift to being able to make decisions about their own care, when they may not have had this autonomy before.

Continued: https://www.msf.org/empowering-women-practice-self-care

04.03.2021

Commentary

Featured

abortions self-care

Covid-19 and abortion

Médecins Sans Frontières

self-care

self-care interventions

self-managed abortion

sexual and reproductive health

World Health Organization

Global

Health

Human Rights

Biden readies sweeping rollback of Trump-era abortion crackdown

"We have a ton of work to do to undo the harm over the last four years," said Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson.

Jan. 18, 2021
By Chloe Atkins, NBC News

President-elect Joe Biden is poised to roll back several of the Trump administration's most restrictive sexual and reproductive health policies, including limits on abortion.

Reproductive rights advocates expect Biden to quickly overturn Trump-era rules, like banning federal funds for foreign and national health organizations that promote and provide abortion and giving employers more freedom to deny free contraceptive coverage for their workers.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-readies-sweeping-rollback-trump-era-abortion-crackdown-n1254552

Welcoming positive change in US foreign policy

The incoming Biden administration is set to adopt policies that promote equality and human rights around the world, says Katherine Zappone

Katherine Zappone
TUE, 15 DEC, 2020

One of many reasons to welcome Donald Trump’s departure from the White House is that a deeply damaging and harmful piece of foreign policy is expected to exit with him.

The so-called ‘Global Gag Rule’, a policy which prohibits US aid to foreign nongovernmental organisations who refer to or advocate abortion services, has cost the lives of tens of thousands of women and girls in the poorer regions of the world during the past four years.

Continued: https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40190628.html

A Biden Promise About Overseas Abortion Funding Could Prove Difficult To Implement

December 3, 2020
Nurith Aizenman

Among the promises that President elect-Biden is expected to fulfill immediately upon taking office: lifting a ban that President Trump imposed on U.S. foreign aid dollars related to abortion.

Specifically, the ban prohibits foreign aid funding for privately-run overseas-based groups that "perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning" for women. Among the activities that are barred: providing referrals for abortion or offering advice or medical information on the procedure. And this is prohibited even if the group funds their communications around abortions with non-U.S. sources.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/12/03/933052858/a-biden-promise-about-overseas-abortion-funding-could-prove-difficult-to-impleme

Vietnam promotes reproductive health care for adolescents, youths

Providing young people with knowledge about sexual and reproductive health combined with life skills education is a necessary and urgent issue, a top health official has said.

VNA Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Providing young people with knowledge about sexual and reproductive health combined with life skills education is a necessary and urgent issue, a top health official has said.

Many Vietnamese youths have limited knowledge of sexual intercourse or pregnancy, Nguyen Duc Vinh, director of the Department of Maternal and Child Health, Ministry of Health, said at a recent workshop on sexual and reproductive health for adolescents and youth in Hanoi. The recent national survey on sexual and reproductive health by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Vietnam and the Ministry of Health showed 15 percent adolescents and young people have premarital sex before marriage.

Continued: https://en.vietnamplus.vn/vietnam-promotes-reproductive-health-care-for-adolescents-youths/189813.vnp

04.11.2020

sexual and reproductive health

UNFPA

United Nations Population Fund

How Trump has sown global chaos for women and girls

Opinion by Terry McGovern
Posted Oct 27, 2020

I am haunted
by the memory of a very young, pregnant girl I met at a clinic in Kisumu,
Kenya. She had been raped. Her mother had brought her to the clinic saying she
had a stomachache. The girl stared at the floor and didn't speak. No one told
the girl that terminating the pregnancy was an option, even though there was an
abortion clinic literally across the road. Looking at her tiny frame, I
wondered if she would survive a pregnancy.

I was witnessing the Trump administration's handiwork. Kenya had liberalized
its abortion law in an effort to reduce maternal mortality, but the country's
decision and that girl's choice was effectively overridden by our government.
Time and again, President Donald Trump and his administration have taken the
political stance that it is they who should control the bodies of women and
girls.

Continued: https://www.kctv5.com/how-trump-has-sown-global-chaos-for-women-and-girls/article_b4b94b01-d89d-592f-8940-95cd01a738a5.html

27.10.2020

sexual and reproductive health

Africa

Kenya

United States

U.S. signs international declaration challenging right to abortion and upholding ‘role of the family’

By Miriam Berger
Oct. 22, 2020

The United States joined Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda on Thursday to co-sponsor a nonbinding international antiabortion declaration, in a rebuke of United Nations human rights bodies that have sought to protect abortion access.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar participated in the virtual signing ceremony. The Geneva Consensus Declaration aims to promote women’s health, “defends the unborn and reiterates the vital importance of the family,” Pompeo said at the ceremony.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/10/22/trump-geneva-consensus-abortion-family/