Goethe immortalised the shaming of German women 200 years ago – we’re still at it

Abortion is criminalised and stigmatised – and now the right has found a new female scapegoat in its US-style war on bodily autonomy

Fatma Aydemir
Sat 19 Jul 2025

Every nation has literary classics that shape its cultural identity. Germans have Faust, Goethe’s play about the successful but dissatisfied scientist Dr Heinrich Faust, who makes a deal with the devil. Faust has been performed, referenced and read in schools for more than two centuries now. Interestingly, the most tragic character in this tragedy is not the protagonist, but his “love interest”, Gretchen – a teenage girl groomed by the old man, impregnated and socially ostracised. Her solution? She drowns her “illegitimate” newborn child, accepts her death penalty and rejects Faust’s offer to save her from prison. In God’s mercy, the Christian girl seeks salvation and off goes Faust with the devil to new adventures in Faust, Part Two.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2025/jul/19/germany-goethe-shaming-women-abortion

19.07.2025

Opinion

abortion stigma

Alice Weidel

Alternative for Germany

Fatma Aydemir

Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf

Trump administration to destroy nearly $10m of contraceptives for women overseas

As part of president’s end to foreign aid, destruction of the long-acting contraceptives will cost US taxpayers $167,000

Carter Sherman
Fri 18 Jul 2025

The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.

A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/18/trump-administration-destroy-contraceptives-usaid-africa

18.07.2025

News

Donald Trump

foreign aid for contraception

Jeanne Shaheen

Marco Rubio

MSI Reproductive Choices

Sarah Shaw

U.S. Agency for International Development

Paris dusts off statues of trailblazing women from 2024 Olympics

AFP
Jul 18, 2025

Paris on Friday installed the first of 10 statues of pioneering French women displayed during the 2024 Olympics in a northern district of the capital. The 10 statues featured as part of the French capital's boundary-breaking opening ceremony for the Summer Games in July last year.

They include Simone Veil, who spearheaded the legalisation of abortion in France, and the feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir. The first of them, a golden representation of the campaigning lawyer Gisele Halimi, was set up in the capital's northern La Chapelle district on Friday.

Continued: https://themercury.com/news/national/paris-dusts-off-statues-of-trailblazing-women-from-2024-olympics/article_e2c74213-2696-5499-89e1-405ba83ddbd8.html

18.07.2025

News

Gisele Halimi

Marie-Claire Chevalier

42% of Americans say the overturning of Roe v. Wade has increased deaths of pregnant women; 4% say deaths have decreased

Jamie Ballard
July 18, 2025

About three years after the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade — which had established the federal constitutional right to abortion before being overturned — a new YouGov survey finds that an increasing number of Americans believe abortion should always be legal. Around half believe that the decision caused the number of pregnant women denied care during an emergency to increase.

The share of Americans who believe abortion should always be legal and there should be no restrictions on it has increased since August 2024, to 32% from 27%. Among Democrats, 59% believe abortion should always be legal, up from 48% last August. The share of Independents who say abortion should always be legal has increased to 33% from 22%. (Other YouGov polling has found that over a longer time period, views on this question have been mostly stable.)

Continued: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52616-42-percent-americans-say-overturning-roe-v-wade-increased-deaths-pregnant-women-4-percent-say-deaths-decreased-poll

18.07.2025

News

opinion polls on abortion

United States

Human Rights

Attacks on Abortion Access Are as Old as White Supremacist Patriarchy Itself. Here’s How We Fight Back.

7/18/2025
by Carmen Rios, Ms. Magazine
Podcast: 63 minutes

In the second episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, advocates, lawmakers and experts explore the real roots of abortion criminalization throughout U.S. history — and lay out visions for where the fight for reproductive freedom must go next.

In 1847, the American Medical Association formed — and kicked off a period known as “the century of criminalization” of abortion in the United States. It wasn’t coincidental that the all-male AMA, formed explicitly to grab power and authority from female practitioners across the United States, focused their initial efforts so heavily on restricting abortion. Like the laws restricting and banning abortion that have shaped our reproductive lives in the centuries since, the sexism was by design.

“If we tell the story of these lands, which were first occupied by Indigenous peoples who were marched off of their lands … exploited, abused, violence put upon them and coercion, there is a reproductive health rights justice story there, too,” legal scholar and Ms. Studios executive producer Michele Goodwin says.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/18/abortion-ban-attack-feminist-women-history-white-supremacy/

Doctors jailed over death of pregnant woman that sparked mass abortion protests in Poland

Jul 17, 2025
Notes from Poland

Three doctors have been handed prison sentences for their negligence in treating a pregnant woman who died in hospital under their care. Her death in 2021 prompted mass protests against Poland’s near-total abortion ban, which had been introduced earlier that year.

The 30-year-old woman, Izabela, was admitted to hospital in the 22th week of her pregnancy following a premature rupture of membranes. Her foetus, which had severe developmental defects, subsequently died, and then so did Izabela herself soon after due to septic shock.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/07/17/doctors-jailed-over-death-of-pregnant-woman-that-sparked-mass-abortion-protests-in-poland/

‘Give Me a Choice’: Activists Urge Russian Doctors to Defend Women’s Right to Abortion

July 17, 2025
Alexander Avilov / Moskva News Agency

Activists are appealing to Russian doctors to protect abortion rights for women as authorities across Russia continue to clamp down on access to the procedure.

“Don’t take part in propaganda. Don’t forget that abortion is still legal in Russia. Don’t delay the process. Help women carry out their choice,” Feminist Anti-War Resistance, a group founded in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, urged medical professionals in the digital campaign, called Give Me a Choice.

Continued: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/07/17/give-me-a-choice-activists-urge-russian-doctors-to-defend-womens-right-to-abortion-a89858

17.07.2025

News

Feminist Anti-War Resistance

Give Me a Choice campaign

Russian Orthodox Church

Abortion: A History – book review

An ambitious attempt at a history of abortion from antiquity to today is valuable and interesting, but does not consider the structures behind the patterns of change, argues Elaine Graham-Leigh

17 July 2025
Elaine Graham-Leigh
Mary Fissell, Abortion: A History (Hurst & Company, 2025), vii, 288pp.Mary Fissell, Abortion: A History (Hurst & Company, 2025), vii, 288pp.

Throughout European history, women have sought to end their pregnancies. Against this constant, the attitude taken to abortion by authorities has fluctuated, with periods of repression vying with periods where abortion is accepted or at least tolerated. Fissell’s history of abortion in Europe and in America after colonisation attempts to track the ebbs and flows of repression and toleration of abortion from the ancient world to the present day.

For Fissell, the shifts for and against in attitudes to abortion over the centuries are linked to ‘larger shifts in gender relations, in the ways a society expects men and women to behave’ (p.4). This formulation doesn’t quite express the clear connection between repression of abortion and the control of the reproduction of labour through women’s oppression, seeming to reduce it to culture or interpersonal relations. It is true, as Fissell states, that ‘abortion restriction has often been gender backlash’ (p.4) but locating it purely in cultural attitudes to women’s behaviour has the effect of hiding the structural nature of abortion restriction as part of women’s oppression.

Continued: https://www.counterfire.org/article/abortion-a-history-book-review/

17.07.2025

SADC’s abortion crisis …6.2 million cases reported annually

2025-07-16
Moses Magadza

The SADC [Southern African Development Community] continues to grapple with the impact of unsafe abortions, particularly among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), despite progress in advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

Regional advocates are now rallying for the adoption of a SADC Model Law on Safe Abortion.

They argue that harmonised, rights-based legal frameworks are urgently needed to stem preventable deaths, improve health outcomes, and protect bodily autonomy.

Continued: https://neweralive.na/sadcs-abortion-crisis-6-2-million-cases-reported-annually/

16.07.2025

News

Boemo Sekgoma

Guttmacher Institute

SADC Model Law on Safe Abortion

Southern African Development Community

India – DCA Issues Notices To 149 Medical Shops Violating Abortion Rules

Telangana DC Correspondent
16 July 2025

HYDERABAD: The Telangana Drugs Control Administration (DCA) on Tuesday found discrepancies in 149 medical shops for violations related to the sale of abortion kits. Show cause notices were issued to the shops and departmental action has been initiated.

The inspections across the state are being conducted to curb the illegal sale of abortion kits, including drugs such as Mifepristone and Misoprostol. According to officials, the violations included the sale of abortion kits without valid prescriptions from registered medical practitioners, failure to maintain or produce sales and purchase bills, and dispensing of drugs without the presence of a registered pharmacist.

Continued: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/southern-states/telangana/dca-issues-notices-to-149-medical-shops-violating-abortion-rules-1891913

16.07.2025