Uganda – Family Medical Point rescues Kigungu women from death caused by unsafe abortions

NELSON MANDELA | PML Daily Reporter
March 10, 2024

ENTEBBE – Namakula Josephine is a sex worker in Kigungu landing site, Entebbe. She says in 2023, a client deliberately broke a condom thereby impregnating her.

As a poor lady, she was advised by a friend to use herbal medicine to remove the unwanted baby because she couldn’t raise money for a safe abortion. Little did she know this could cost her life.

“I got a lot of complications, bled a lot, and even some foetus parts remained inside which started rotting,” she narrated.

Continued: https://www.pmldaily.com/news/2024/03/celebrating-a-woman-family-medical-point-rescues-kigungu-women-from-death-caused-by-unsafe-abortions.html

10.03.2024

Uganda Demographic Health Survey 2016

Malawi Activists Lobby for Abortion Law Reforms

March 10, 2024
By Chimwemwe Padatha
Video: 2:48 minutes

In Malawi, 35,000 backstreet abortions were carried out in 2022 and 2023, according to its Ministry of Health. These unsafe procedures are just one reason support for abortion rights has increased in recent years. Chimwemwe Padatha has more from Lilongwe.

Continued: https://www.voanews.com/a/malawi-activists-lobby-for-abortion-law-reforms/7521799.html

10.03.2024

The Dark State Of Abortion Rights In El Salvador, And First Signs Of Light

Although the last Salvadorian woman imprisoned on charges linked to abortion was released in December, 11 similar cases are currently pending in the country. Human rights activists acknowledge the progress made, and the work that remains to be done to overturn strict anti-abortion laws.

Mariana Escobar Bernoske
March 09, 2024

BOGOTÁ — In December 2023, Lilian was the last Salvadoran woman to regain her freedom after spending seven years in prison for an obstetric emergency. In 2015, the courts found her guilty of "murdering" her unborn baby by planning an abortion, when in fact, a tear in her uterus had caused the death. Medics had to give her three blood transfusions to stabilize her.

El Salvador is one of Latin America's most restrictive states in terms of women's sexual and reproductive rights. Abortion is banned as the state considers persons to exist from the moment of conception, contrary to the advice of international human rights groups. Under this strict ban, women who have had pregnancy complications, miscarriages or prenatal deaths to be charged with premeditating abortion.

Continued: https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/abortion-righs-el-salvador

Ugandan Women Risk Their Lives to Access Abortion

“Many girls are dying because we have chosen to ignore them.”

Friday, 8 March, 2024
Culton Scovia Nakamya

For Jovia (not her real name), 2023 was the worst year of her life. The 20-year-old business student was gang-raped at a drunken house party in the Kampala suburb of Kansanga and six weeks later realised that she was pregnant.

“I wondered what I am going to tell my parents. For God’s sake, I am just in my second semester of year one, and I didn’t know who did it,” she said.

Her options were limited, as abortion is illegal in Uganda except under rare circumstances. She confided in a female friend, who suggested they visit the Kampala suburb of Nakulabye, an area known as a hub of clinics that administer clandestine abortions, mostly to students.

Continued: https://iwpr.net/global-voices/ugandan-women-risk-their-lives-access-abortion

Library archives uncover long-lost history of Colorado women dying trying to get an abortion before it was legal

By John Daley
Mar. 7, 2024

Abortion access — some states have outlawed it, others have seen scores of patients from out of state — has been in the news since the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the Constitutional right to an abortion two years ago. But looking back through history shows that unplanned pregnancies and access to abortions have been in the news for a long, long time.

More than a century ago, readers of the Rocky Mountain News learned about the death of a young woman who worked in a shop named Maude, who was trying to terminate a pregnancy. A woman named Mrs. Proctor, the wife of the manager of a “remedy company,” was charged with manslaughter in Maude’s death.

Continued: https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/07/denver-public-library-history-of-abortion-access-in-colorado/

‘I can’t bear the pain’: grieving the lives lost to the Dominican Republic’s abortion ban

A decade after Rossa Nelly Aquino died aged 20 in an illegal clinic, her family are still struggling to find answers. And campaigners are still fighting to update the 140-year-old law

Sarah Johnson in Santo Domingo
Mon 4 Mar 2024

One of the walls in Alba Nely Peña’s front room is adorned with graduation photos of her children. She gave birth to three boys and three girls, but only five smiling faces are on display in her house on the outskirts of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.

“My youngest one died. I took her photo down because I can’t bear the pain,” she says, before going into a back room and digging out a framed collage of photos of her daughter. On it are written the words: “We will always remember you, Rossa.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/mar/04/i-cant-bear-the-pain-grieving-the-lives-lost-to-the-dominican-republics-abortion-ban

Empowering mothers, securing futures: The quest for safe motherhood in the Philippines

March 01, 2024
By Gelaine Louise Gutierrez

Bringing a child into the world should be a joyous milestone, not a mortal risk. Yet in the Philippines, over 2,000 women lost their lives while giving birth in 2021 - more than double the number in 2019.

These preventable deaths underscore the urgent need to secure safe motherhood through robust healthcare access and empowerment of Filipino women. Giving birth remains one of the most dangerous moments for women in underserved communities lacking proper medical facilities and prenatal care.

Continued: https://pia.gov.ph/features/2024/03/01/empowering-mothers-securing-futures-the-quest-for-safe-motherhood-in-the-philippines

01.03.2024

Commentary

maternal deaths

maternal mortality

National Safe Motherhood Program

Syria – Despite risks, Women resort to unsafe abortions in Idlib

Enab Baladi
29/02/2024

Women in Idlib province face societal difficulties and pressures when they decide to undergo an abortion. These pressures come from relatives, neighbors, and even doctors, despite the woman’s need for the procedure in some cases.

Some believe that abortion is religiously forbidden in Islam and other religions, and this applies not only to Idlib but to many countries that criminalize such operations, considering it as taking a life.

Continued: https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2024/02/despite-risks-women-resort-to-unsafe-abortions-in-idlib/

29.02.2024

World Health Organization

By bus, car and plane, women journey across Latin America for abortions

By Marina Dias and Terrence McCoy
February 23, 2024

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — She’d taken an overnight bus from the countryside, then a train across the urban sprawl of São Paulo, and now she was staring out the plane window, head full of worry. There was a pink rosary in her pocket. But she didn’t see the point of praying. She feared she was a sinner, a criminal, and this trip, her first time out of Brazil, would be a secret she’d carry for the rest of her life.

Cristina was 35 years old. She was 11 weeks pregnant. She came from a conservative Christian family in a conservative Christian nation where abortion was largely illegal, so she’d decided to travel to a country where it was not and bring an end to the pregnancy she didn’t want.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/23/brazil-latin-america-abortion-restrictions/

Liberia – Unsafe abortion threatens women’s health

--As CSOs seek a joint alliance to target the menace

New Dawn
February 19, 2024

A 2023 report released by the Ministry of Health revealed that about 38,779 induced abortions took place in Liberia in 2021. The Ministry released the report in partnership with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), and Guttmacher.

This translates to an induced abortion rate of 30.7 per 1,000 women of reproductive age and an induced abortion ratio of 229 abortions per 1,000 live births.

Continued: https://thenewdawnliberia.com/unsafe-abortion-threatens-womens-health/

19.02.2024