‘He kept saying I’m a murderer’: Polish doctor targeted for legal abortion

April 30, 2025
Will Vernon, BBC News in Warsaw

A leading Polish doctor has told the BBC she fears for her patients' safety after being targeted by anti-abortion activists.

Gizela Jagielska says she has received thousands of death threats in relation to her work administering legal abortions in a hospital in the town of Olesnica in southwestern Poland. The facility specialises in complicated pregnancies.

On 17 April, a group of activists led by radical, far-right MEP Grzegorz Braun came to the hospital, prevented Dr Jagielska from leaving her office and attempted to carry out a citizen's arrest.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgkg4y5jpjpo

30.04.2025

French progressives bring abortion pills to Poland

Agence France-Presse
April 30, 2025

French hard-left politicians visited Poland on Tuesday to bring abortion and morning-after pills, in a show of support for activists, to the Catholic country whose termination laws are among Europe’s most stringent.

Representatives from the France Unbowed (LFI) party delivered around 300 pills to activists in Warsaw, and vowed to send more in the future.

Continued: https://globalnation.inquirer.net/275209/french-hard-left-bring-abortion-pills-to-poland

30.04.2025

USA – A Conversation About Abortion Care — and It’s Not All Bad News

Angel Foster of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project on how abortion with pills is here to stay, even as anti-abortion forces double down.

April 28, 2025
By Colleen DeBaise

It can be difficult to find good news in women’s health these days, but here’s a sliver: Abortion, to some extent, is easier and cheaper to access than ever before.

To talk us through how that’s possible in a post-Dobbs world, we spoke to Angel Foster, a professor at the University of Ottawa who in 2023 co-founded the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, also known as the MAP. The MAP currently assists 2,500 patients a month, prescribing and sending abortion pills primarily to U.S. states where abortion is banned or restricted.

Continued: https://thestoryexchange.org/protecting-abortion-care-in-the-u-s-a-conversation-with-a-top-provider/

29.04.2025

Interviews/Podcasts

Dr. Angel Foster

Margaret Carpenter

Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project

shield laws

telehealth abortion

telemedicine abortion

Inside a Czech Abortion Network Offering Pregnant Women from Poland a Lifeline

Apr 29, 2025
By Tamara Davison

Eva Ptasková was waiting in a dimly lit parking lot near the Czech-Polish border at 4 a.m. for someone she’d never met.

“It was empty and dark,” Ptasková recalled about the unusual mid-pandemic encounter, adding that she kept her colleague on the phone for safety.

Eventually, a figure exited a taxi and clambered into Ptasková’s car — a woman from Poland, who had traveled to the neighboring Czech Republic for an abortion. With just hours to spare before the appointment, Ptašková listened to the woman recount her life story as they drove through the night. It was the first time the Polish woman, who was already a mother to a young baby, had left her homeland.

Continued: https://www.moretoherstory.com/stories/inside-a-czech-abortion-network-offering-pregnant-women-from-poland-a-lifeline

Pro-choice protesters halt Prague pro-life march as Europe’s abortion fight heats up

This weekend in Prague saw the March for Life blocked from reaching its destination in Wenceslas Square by women's rights advocates.

Elizabeth Zahradnicek-Haas
28.04.2025

Tensions over abortion rights flared in Prague this weekend as pro-choice activists blocked the annual March for Life, preventing the pro-life demonstration from reaching its planned destination at Wenceslas Square.

Several hundred people from both camps gathered Saturday, with police arresting about 30 pro-choice demonstrators who sat across Kaprova Street in a nonviolent blockade. No major clashes were reported.

Continued: https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/pro-choice-protesters-block-prague-march-for-life-as-european-abortion-rights-debate-intensifies

28.04.2025

pro-choice counter protest

Rural women face barriers to abortion, contraceptive care, MoH review says

28 April 2025
Monique Steele

Access to abortion and contraceptive healthcare has improved in New Zealand in recent years, but there are concerns women who live in remote or rural areas face greater challenges to accessing this care than their urban-dwelling counterparts.

Earlier this month, the Ministry of Health reviewed certain matters under the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act (1977), and how the law was working in the years following a legislative change which decriminalised abortion and integrated other health services to it, in 2020.

Continued: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/559295/rural-women-face-barriers-to-abortion-contraceptive-care-moh-review-says

28.04.2025

News

belief-based care denial

conscientious objection

Jackie Edmond

Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa

Sterilisation and Abortion Act 1977

In Just 100 Days, Trump Has Already Achieved One-Third of Project 2025 Agenda

A new community-based tracker reveals how quickly the Trump administration is advancing policies that erode civil rights, healthcare access and worker protections.

4/28/2025
by Carrie N. Baker, Ms.Magazine

A new community-based resource, the Project 2025 Tracker is closely following the Trump administration’s work to accomplish the 312 objectives of Project 2025. As of Monday, April 28:

One-third of Project 2025’s objectives have been achieved (97 of 312).

One-fifth are in progress (62).

Work on just under half (153) has not yet started.

In Trump’s first 100 days in office, he has achieved over one-quarter of Project 2025 policy recommendations eroding reproductive health and rights and is working on another 17 percent of these objectives.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/04/28/trump-project-2025-plan-reproductive-rights-abortion-lgbtq-childcare-title-ix/

28.04.2025

Federal Court Dismisses Attempt to Revive Guam Abortion Ban

ACLU
Case: Guam Society of OBGYNs v. Guerrero
April 28, 2025

HAGÅTÑA, Guam — The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order today dismissing a request from Guam Attorney General Douglas Moylan to continue his case seeking to lift a permanent injunction against a 1990 total abortion ban. The Ninth Circuit held the case was now moot in light of a decision by the Guam Supreme Court that the ban has been legislatively repealed. The ban had previously been permanently blocked in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Anita Arriola shortly after it was passed 30 years ago.

Attorney General Moylan’s separate request that the U.S. Supreme Court review the Guam Supreme Court decision that the ban had since been repealed was denied in October.

Continued: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-dismisses-attempt-to-revive-guam-abortion-ban

Doctor in Russian maternity hospital fined for refusing to conduct abortion

28 April 2025
Novaya Gazeta Europe

A magistrate in the Vologda region of northwestern Russia has fined the acting chief physician of a maternity hospital 15,000 rubles (€160) for refusing a local woman an abortion, the regional courts’ press service said on Monday.

According to the court, a Vologda woman had inquired at an antenatal clinic about an abortion in February. She was sent to the Vologda city maternity hospital, where the unnamed doctor refused her request. The doctor, who pleaded not guilty to the charge, saying she had refused based on instructions from more senior management, was found guilty of a misdemeanour and issued the fine.

Continued: https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/04/28/doctor-in-russian-maternity-hospital-fined-for-refusing-to-conduct-abortion-en-news

28.04.2025

Poland’s far-right amplifies abortion wars ahead of election

by Barbara Wolk
April 28, 2025

Poland’s abortion debate has once again taken a dangerous turn — this time sparked by far-right MEP Grzegorz Braun, who stormed a Polish hospital to attempt a citizen’s arrest of a doctor performing a medically-indicated late-term abortion. Braun, a presidential hopeful from the extreme-right in the upcoming May elections, accused the doctor of committing “murder,” live-streaming his political stunt to rally his conservative base.

Currently, abortion is only legal in Poland in two circumstances: if the pregnancy is the result of rape (up to 12 weeks), or if the pregnancy poses a threat to the woman's life or health. The third legal reason — severe fetal abnormalities — was abolished in 2020 when the Law and Justice (PiS)-controlled constitutional tribunal ruled it unconstitutional, effectively reducing the number of abortions performed in hospitals by 90 percent. Since then, abortion has become not just a medical issue, but a political weapon of the far-right — used to polarise, control, and distract.

Continued: https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ard15429ac