USA – “Stay Home and Have the Baby”

“Stay Home and Have the Baby”
Texas and Ohio have ordered a stop to abortions, saying they’re not essential medical services. Other states will follow. Right-wing forces are using the pandemic as a pretext to crack down dramatically on abortion rights. We can’t let them.

03.28.2020
By Jenny Brown

Texas and Ohio have ordered a stop to abortions, saying they’re not essential medical services, while state officials in Mississippi and Maryland are edging that direction. Their coronavirus prevention program is “Stay home and have the baby.”

The states argued that equipment such as masks used for surgical abortions could be used for care of COVID-19 patients. And they claim if anything goes wrong emergency services would be needed, exaggerating the risk of a safe procedure.

Continued: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/coronavirus-abortions-health-care

Self-managed abortions should be universally available

Self-managed abortions should be universally available

March 24, 2020
Sam Rowlands, Visiting Professor, Health and Social Science, Bournemouth University

A combination of feminist advocacy, new drugs and the internet is allowing people to safely end early pregnancies themselves when they choose to do so. People can manage abortions using medicines without face-to-face contact with doctors and nurses.

A service at a distance, supervised by a doctor, was first offered by Women on Web in 2005 for countries with no lawful access to medical abortion. Women Help Women offers similar help to women anywhere in the world. And in the US, Aid Access – a fairly new organisation – offers email support. (In the US, online help is increasingly used because access to abortion clinics has been reduced in the last few years.)

Continued: http://theconversation.com/self-managed-abortions-should-be-universally-available-132398

Abortion activists in Poland fret as coronavirus curbs access

Abortion activists in Poland fret as coronavirus curbs access

Alicja Ptak, Reuters
March 21, 2020

WARSAW — Natalia Broniarczyk, an activist with a charity that assists Polish women who want to terminate pregnancies, says its hot line began ringing non-stop after the government announced border closures to stem the coronavirus outbreak last week.

Many callers were worried about their shipments of abortion pills, which are illegal in Poland, and others feared they would not be able to reach clinics abroad in time to have the procedure, which is unavailable in Poland in most cases.

Continued: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/health-pmn/abortion-activists-in-poland-fret-as-coronavirus-curbs-access

USA – What to Know About Giving Yourself an Abortion

What to Know About Giving Yourself an Abortion
Ending a pregnancy on your own means using pills—not coat hangers.

by Marie Solis
Feb 17 2020

Abortions happened before it was legal to get one, and, should it ever become illegal again, they will happen then too—many of them outside of clinics, without direct medical supervision.

But doing your own abortion in 2020 looks a lot different than it did pre- Roe v. Wade. People who self-induced abortions in the decades before the landmark Supreme Court ruling sometimes resorted to drinking toxic chemicals, throwing themselves down the stairs, or using crude instruments like knitting needles or a coat hanger, the latter of which has become a universal symbol of the life-threatening consequences of restricting people’s access to abortion care. The hanger may still function as a powerful image, but it’s no longer accurate when it comes to representing what it means to self-induce an abortion: Self-inducing or self-managing an abortion is now synonymous with taking pills, a safe and effective method of ending a pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884m9x/how-to-do-your-own-abortion-with-pills

Need an Abortion? There’s an App for That

Need an Abortion? There’s an App for That

by Steph Herold
Published on January 22, 2020

If you needed accurate, evidence-based information about abortion, would you know how or where to find it? Most people have a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction when it comes to abortion, and you really can’t blame them: Anti-abortion misinformation is everywhere, from fake pregnancy centers to racist, shaming billboards to your state legislature. And now there’s an even more intimate way to access abortion information that can be truthful and reliable or wildly misleading—an app on your smartphone.

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/abortion-apps-spreading-misinformation

How to Give Yourself an Abortion

How to Give Yourself an Abortion

January 9, 2020
Posted by Arielle Swernoff
Illustrated by Matt Lubchansky

For as long as people have gotten pregnant, people have given themselves abortions. Historically, these methods have varied from the brutal to the toxic to the bizarre.

But history hasn’t always gotten it wrong. From the Bronze Age until the 1st or 2nd century BCE, silphium, a plant native to Libya, was used as a safe and effective contraceptive and abortifacient. It’s said the plant was so popular that it was harvested to extinction. More recently, enslaved black people in the American South devised numerous herbal treatments to terminate unwanted pregnancies, some of which are still used today.

Continued: https://jewishcurrents.org/how-to-give-yourself-an-abortion/

Pro-choice activists launch abortion initiative in Poland

Pro-choice activists launch abortion initiative in Poland
Abortion Without Borders to offer women advice and funds to seek treatment abroad

Shaun Walker, Central and eastern Europe correspondent
Tue 10 Dec 2019

An international group of pro-choice campaigners will launch an initiative in Poland this week to provide advice and funding for women to travel abroad to have abortions.

Poland has some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, and proposals backed by the rightwing government to introduce a total ban on abortions in 2016 were scrapped only after large-scale protests.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/10/pro-choice-activists-launch-abortion-initiative-in-poland

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/

USA – With Abortion Restrictions On The Rise, Some Women Induce Their Own

With Abortion Restrictions On The Rise, Some Women Induce Their Own

September 19, 2019
Sarah McCammon

When Arlen found out she was pregnant this year, she was still finishing college and knew she didn't want a child.

There's a clinic near her home, but Arlen faced other obstacles to getting an abortion.

"I started researching about prices, and I was like, 'Well, I don't have $500,' " said Arlen, who is in her 20s and lives in El Paso, Texas. We're not using her full name to protect her privacy.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/759761114/with-abortion-restrictions-on-the-rise-some-women-induce-their-own

Advocates for Self-Managed Abortions Are Preparing for a Post-Roe World

Advocates for Self-Managed Abortions Are Preparing for a Post-Roe World
Activists are trying to help women navigate the complicated legal landscape around misoprostol and mifepristone, "essential medicines" according to the World Health Organization.

Arvind Dilawar
Jul 12, 2019

One evening last month, half a dozen people, mostly women, met at a suburban home in upstate New York for a remote workshop. Sitting on sofas and fold-out chairs in their host's living room, they enjoyed vegan snacks while waiting for the leader of the workshop to appear on the television above the mantle place. Bottles of wine sat to the side for drinks to follow.

"The atmosphere felt something like a radical Tupperware party," says Kate Krimsky, one of the participants.

Continued : https://psmag.com/social-justice/advocates-for-self-managed-abortions-are-preparing-for-a-post-roe-world