Nigeria – Maternal mortality: Experts warn Ogun residents against patronising quacks

January 31, 2026
By Gift Oba

In a bid to reduce maternal deaths caused by unsafe abortions, experts and stakeholders in Ogun State have warned residents to seek medical care from qualified and well-trained doctors rather than quacks.

The warning was given at a one-day training for civil society organisations on basic reproductive health issues and the reduction of unsafe abortions, held on Friday in Abeokuta.

The President of the Medical Women’s Association of Nigeria (MWAN), Ogun State branch, Dr Deborah Osisanwo, explained that every life is important, especially that of mothers, and urged quacks to desist from terminating pregnancies but instead refer such cases to professional health practitioners.

Continued: https://dailypost.ng/2026/01/31/maternal-mortality-experts-warn-ogun-residents-against-patronising-quacks/

31.01.2026

News

Dapo Wahaab

Dr Deborah Osisanwo

Medical Women’s Association of Nigeria

STOP guidelines for abortion

Rhetoric and abortion histories

Mary E Fissell, The Lancet, Volume 407, Issue 10527
January 31, 2026

In June, 2022, the US Supreme Court decision Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization ended five decades of legal abortion access in the country. Now about half of the 50 US states severely limit or ban abortion. Tragically, those states have seen a spate of preventable deaths from pregnancy complications for which abortion is usually the standard of care. Scholars in a range of disciplines are looking again at the history of abortion, trying to understand past events and their legacies.

In Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History, Emily Winderman examines the phrase back-alley abortion to denote the bad old days when almost all abortions in the USA were performed illegally. A researcher of the rhetoric of medicine and health, her book combines technical analyses of language and historical research, including a prehistory of purity dialogues; media treatments of specific abortion scandals; and legal cases. Analysis of this rhetoric is valuable as abortion debates continue to be sites of contest over language. Winderman argues that rhetoric about back-alley abortion connects “individual embodied experiences, history, and public memory”.

Continued: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00155-8/fulltext?rss=yes

31.01.2026

abortion book

Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History

Emily Winderman

Rhetoric and abortion histories

America’s culture wars are killing people overseas

When “pro-life” foreign aid hurts women and children the most.

by Sara Herschander
Jan 30, 2026

“The mark of barbarism is that we treat babies like inconveniences to be discarded,” Vice President JD Vance bellowed to a crowd of zoomer nuns, bagpipers, and white nationalists at the annual March for Life in Washington, DC, last Friday.

The vice president then proceeded to announce a threefold expansion of the Mexico City policy, a decades-old, controversial foreign policy that prohibits organizations from receiving foreign aid if they mention abortion as a family planning option. It was reinstated last year when President Donald Trump resumed office.

Continued: https://archive.is/vdb65

(https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/477125/foreign-aid-dei-gender-global-gag-mexico-city)

Supreme Court rules 13-year-old can have abortion in her ‘best interests’

A 13-year-old Qld girl has been granted a medical abortion after a judge found she could not understand the consequences of giving birth or raising a child.

Vanda Carson
January 30, 2026

An 13-year-old from the West Moreton Bay region who was pregnant to her teen boyfriend has been given the green light to take an abortion pill, after a Supreme Court judge ruled she was not competent to make the decision.

In a ruling published on Friday January 30, Supreme Court Justice Michael Copley ruled on November 11 that the West Moreton Hospital and Health Service could give the girl – given the pseudonym B – medications that would cause cramps and bleeding and end the pregnancy.

Continued: https://archive.is/liag8
(https://www.couriermail.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-qld/supreme-court-rules-13yearold-can-have-abortion-in-her-best-interests/news-story/7d8f5203d31681c1a4acc77f16259059)

30.01.2026

News

Michael Copley

West Moreton Hospital and Health Service

Why sexual and reproductive health and rights belong in climate action

A conversation with Ipas research expert Sally Dijkerman on why climate action must include sexual and reproductive health and rights, and what it will take to move from evidence to real-world solutions.

January 29, 2026
Ipas

Climate justice and sexual and reproductive health and rights work are too often kept separate, even though communities experience them together. That’s why Ipas and partners in the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Climate Justice Coalition co-authored this perspective, produced in partnership by Ipas’s Sally Dijkerman with Heather McMullen (Queen Mary University of London) and Natalie Hammond (Manchester Metropolitan University), and written on behalf of the coalition:

Frontiers | No climate justice without sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice (SRHRJ): past, present, and future challenges faced by the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Climate Justice Coalition

Sally Dijkerman shares insights from her work below…

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/why-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights-belong-in-climate-action/

29.01.2026

Commentary

climate change and reproductive justice

Ipas

Sally Dijkerman

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Climate Justice Coalition

Global

Activism

Human Rights

Ireland – ‘You can buy Viagra over the counter’: Bill to abolish three-day abortion wait introduced

Ruth Coppinger says 72-hour delay ‘does not apply to any other medical procedure that we have in law’

Marie O’Halloran
Thu Jan 29 2026

Legislation to abolish the three-day waiting period for abortion on request has been introduced in the Dáil.

Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger said “termination of pregnancy is a health procedure that is extremely time sensitive” and the 2018 Act introduced a mandatory 72-hour cooling off period before a second appointment to access abortion.

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said the Government was not opposing the legislation “at first stage”.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/oireachtas/2026/01/29/you-can-buy-viagra-over-the-counter-bill-to-abolish-three-day-abortion-wait-introduced/

Why Are So Many British Women Getting Abortions?

New government figures suggest that, amid a fertility slump, there has been a sharp rise in abortions in the UK. Our reporter speaks to the women who can explain why.

By Kara Kennedy
01.29.26

Gemma is 28, British, and recovering from an abortion she had just over a month ago. She was far enough along—a few days shy of five months—that she had to be admitted to the hospital. She would have preferred to end the pregnancy earlier—but she didn’t know about it, even after getting checked out by a doctor after suffering from fatigue.

“I was still having periods. I wasn’t gaining weight. I was going to the doctor and getting blood tests, and nobody ever told me I was pregnant,” she told me.

Continued: https://www.thefp.com/p/why-are-so-many-british-women-getting

29.01.2026

Commentary

Abortion Act 1967

Ann Furedi

British Pregnancy Advisory Service

hormonal contraceptive

Expanded Global Gag Rule is a major blow to global health and human rights

The newly expanded rule further advances an extreme anti-rights agenda

Ipas
January 29, 2026

The Jan. 27 expansion of the Global Gag Rule is just the latest action by the current U.S. administration to decimate global health and human rights.

“This policy weaponizes U.S. foreign aid to force the administration’s harmful agenda on people around the world,” says Anu Kumar, Ipas President and CEO. The newly expanded Global Gag Rule will use the power of all non-military U.S. foreign funds to restrict work by a wide array of actors on gender equity, LGBTQI+ rights, and diversity, equity and inclusion—as well as abortion.

“Bullying countries into complying with anti-rights and extremist ideology is despicable and unacceptable,” Kumar says. “The imperialist goals of this administration are on full display in this policy’s conditions to receive U.S. foreign assistance.”

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/expanded-global-gag-rule-blow-to-global-health/

29.01.2026

Commentary

Anu Kumar

Dr. Jean-Claude Mulunda

Final push on abortion rights initiative ahead of Commission decision

Proposed EU fund would help women travel for abortion care

Thomas Mangin, Euractiv
January 29, 2026

With the clock ticking on a crucial Commission decision, the abortion rights initiative My Voice My Choice is mounting a final push to force EU action, as political battle lines harden in the European Parliament.

On 2 March, the European Commission must decide whether to give legal follow-up to the My Voice My Choice initiative, which seeks to improve and secure access to abortion across the EU.

“If the European Commission refuses, 20 million women will be left without access to safe abortion – left to die in hospital beds instead of receiving life-saving care. If they say yes, we will have won. Safe abortion will become a reality for everyone in the EU,” My Voice My Choice said in a statement.

Continued: https://www.euractiv.com/news/final-push-on-abortion-rights-initiative-ahead-of-commission-decision/

29.01.2026

News

Christine Anderson

European Citizens’ Initiative

Jersey – Proposed abortion law reform would ‘remove stigma’

January 29, 2026
Matthew Gray

Women in Jersey will no longer need to justify their reasons for seeking an abortion if a proposed new law is approved.

The minister for health and social services wants to introduce legislation that would allow abortions before 22 weeks and remove current barriers.

The current law in Jersey requires two doctors to agree a woman is in distress before she can have a termination up to 12 weeks. Deputy Andy Howell, assistant health minister, said the proposed changes would help to "take away stigma".

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjdjpd49mrmo

29.01.2026