Safe abortion pills, close to home: evidence from Nigeria

Ipas
April 30, 2026

In many parts of Nigeria, the nearest clinic is hours away. For women who need abortion care, that distance is not just inconvenient. It can be the difference between accessing safe care and not accessing it at all. A new study finds that women who obtained misoprostol from local medicine vendors had outcomes as safe as those who went to clinics, evidence that abortion pills don’t have to begin or end at a formal health facility. In communities where misoprostol is the only accessible option and formal care is out of reach, that finding is not just encouraging—it is essential.

… She knows the person at the medicine stall by name. She has seen them there for years: a friendly face behind the narrow counter, a part of her community. The nearest clinic is three hours away, and she doesn’t have three hours or the money that the clinic requires. So, she goes where she has always gone.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/safe-abortion-pills-close-to-home-evidence-from-nigeria/

30.04.2026

A Dangerous Shift in Maternal Health Policy

by Stephanie Psaki, Dara Kass and Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler
Apr 30, 2026

More than 85% of maternal deaths in the United States are preventable. Yet last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before the Senate, defending a budget that would eliminate Title X, Healthy Start, and the CDC’s Safe Motherhood and Infant Health Portfolio: the very programs designed to prevent maternal deaths and keep infants healthy. Earlier this year, the House passed legislation to funnel federal dollars toward unregulated pregnancy centers that largely lack medical licensure and rarely provide actual prenatal care. The Supreme Court also recently ruled that anti-abortion centers can proceed with a legal challenge to a state subpoena of fundraising records.

Continued: https://time.com/article/2026/04/29/a-dangerous-shift-in-maternal-health-policy/

Kenya – Politicians and churches mobilise against abortion, but ignore mass death

Kenyan ‘pro-lifers’ celebrate recriminalisation of abortion while staying silent on country’s preventable deaths

By Betty Kabari
April 30, 2026

The right to life in Kenya is often treated as if it begins at conception and ends at birth. As in much of the world, self-described ‘pro-lifers’ claim to defend life at all costs – yet too often stop short of defending the lives already being lived, and those cut short too early.

Last week, a Kenyan Court of Appeal effectively recriminalised abortion by overturning a 2022 High Court ruling that recognised abortion as a constitutional right. The decision comes one month after Kenyan Christian groups held the ‘March for Life 2026’ through the streets of Nairobi.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/politicians-and-churches-mobilise-against-abortion-but-ignore-mass-death/

30.04.2026

Commentary

Betty Kabari

Kenya Court of Appeal

Canada – Why we shouldn’t engage in the later abortion debate

Those who oppose all forms of abortion, use later abortions as a wedge issue to attack all abortion access.

by Dr. Roma Dhamanaskar
April 30, 2026

Creating unnecessary panic around later abortions is a political tool to promote controversy around access to abortion in Canada. Later abortions, which are those occurring after 20 weeks’ gestation, are uncommon and occur for a variety of complicated medical and social reasons.

Anti-choice politicians and activists attempt to rally opposition for abortion rights by presenting later abortion as a key issue when it comes to abortion access in Canada. Using later abortion as a scapegoat to create opposition to abortion access is problematic for many reasons.

Continued: https://rabble.ca/feminism/why-we-shouldnt-engage-in-the-later-abortion-debate/

30.04.2026

Commentary

Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada

Canada Health Act

later abortions

later abortions as political tool

maternal health

reasons for later abortion

The Right Comes for Puerto Rico’s Abortion Clinics

A conservative senator wants them criminally investigated

Susanne Ramírez de Arellano
Apr 29, 2026

SAN JUAN — A few months ago, I wrote that Puerto Rico had become the new battleground for women’s reproductive rights. Over the past year, there have been several attacks to restrict a woman’s right to choose. Just a few months ago, pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista Governor Jenniffer González-Colón signed a law that gives fetuses legal personhood and classifies the death of an unborn child at any stage of pregnancy as murder.

I described these changes as dystopian and warned that, although abortion remains legal in Puerto Rico, women’s lives are at risk as even stricter restrictions loom.

Continued: https://thelatinonewsletter.org/p/right-comes-for-puerto-rico-abortion-clinics

Purple Smoke Fills Streets as Activists Target Mexico’s Abortion Law

Video – 6:48 minutes
Apr 29, 2026

Feminist activists gathered outside the Congress of Mexico City to mark the 19th anniversary of partial abortion decriminalisation, demanding the complete removal of abortion from the penal code. Protesters used purple smoke flares, chants, and symbolic actions, including breaking a piñata representing the penal code, as part of their demonstration.

Speaking during the rally, activists from the Information Group on Chosen Reproduction (GIRE) argued that abortion should be treated as a healthcare service rather than a criminal offence. They warned that restrictive laws continue to undermine reproductive rights and bodily autonomy across the region, calling on Latin America to defend the right to choose amid concerns of a broader rollback of abortion access.

Abortion is currently legal in Mexico City within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, but remains restricted beyond that period except under specific circumstances such as rape or health risks.

Continued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBc8b-dB2i0

29.04.2026

Videos/Images

abortion decriminalization

GIRE

Information Group on Reproductive Choice

An International Human Rights Approach to Unregulated Pregnancy Centers

April 29, 2026
Sarah Wetter, Rebecca Reingold, Sophie Samson - O'Neill Institute

Imagine arriving at a clinic for a common medical procedure listed on the clinic’s website, only to learn that the clinic neither provides it nor refers to providers who do. Instead, the staff attempts to dissuade you from obtaining the procedure using moral arguments and scientifically inaccurate information. While disconcerting, this scenario plays out regularly in the thousands of unregulated pregnancy clinics (UPCs) (often referred to as crisis pregnancy centers) across the United States, as well as in other countries.

UPCs are nonprofit clinics, often religiously affiliated, that offer services like free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds with the intent of diverting and dissuading individuals from seeking abortion. UPCs have been criticized for falsely advertising themselves as full-service reproductive health clinics (e.g., depicting staff wearing stethoscopes or scrubs on their websites, or by claiming to provide “Options Counseling”), despite not providing services like abortion or abortion referrals, contraception, miscarriage management, or treatment for ectopic pregnancy. As UPCs are not staffed by medical providers and do not offer medical services (despite what their advertising may suggest), UPCs and their staff are not subject to regulatory oversight or federal privacy protections. Medical experts have warned that UPCs endanger health by delaying or preventing abortion care and promoting unproven and potentially dangerous treatments, such as abortion “reversal.”

Continued: https://oneill.law.georgetown.edu/an-international-human-rights-approach-to-unregulated-pregnancy-centers/

It’s official: No woman in England or Wales can be prosecuted for an abortion any more

Decriminalisation explained (and no, this does *not* mean 'abortion is now legal up until birth')

By Jennifer Savin
29 April 2026

After years of campaigning, England and Wales have officially decriminalised abortion for women in a “landmark moment” as part of proposed changes to the Crime and Policing Bill.

The government has now formally done away with the ancient Offences Against the Person Act from 1861 and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act of 1929, both of which saw women and girls open to arrest, investigation or prosecution in relation to procuring an abortion for themselves. Recent years have seen a worrying increase in criminal cases, after minimal incidences for decades, as more anti-abortion groups receive funding in the UK.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a71163004/england-wales-decriminalise-abortion/

Supreme Court sides with anti-abortion center raising First Amendment fears about state probe

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST
April 29, 2026

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a faith-based pregnancy center that raised First Amendment concerns about an investigation into whether it misled people to discourage abortions.

The high court’s unanimous ruling is a procedural victory for First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, which is challenging a New Jersey investigation of its practices.
The conservative-majority court has given abortion opponents high-profile wins in recent years, most notably the watershed case that overturned the nationwide right to abortion in 2022. First Choice, though, had also drawn support from the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports abortion rights but backed the group’s First Amendment concerns.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-abortion-opponents-appeal-new-jersey-57709656fc444ed125165227d985705f

USA — The war against women’s rights

Documentary film: 1 hour 16 minutes
Deutsche Welle
April 28, 2026

The situation of women’s rights in the USA is increasingly dramatic. Radical abortion bans and unequal treatment in the justice system are leading to significant restrictions on fundamental rights.

The documentary reports from the USA, a country where women go to prison for the crimes of their husbands, and a man is allowed to marry a ten-year-old girl. Abortions are illegal even in cases of rape and incest. The documentary sheds light on the mechanisms behind Trump's freedom-restricting policies. The rise of the conservative-puritanical ideology of Christian nationalism has led to a massive restriction of the fundamental rights of US citizens in the USA. In many places, women are dying because of a lack of gynecological care. In states with radical abortion bans, more than 100,000 women have already been forced to give birth to a child after being raped. Since Donald Trump's return as US president, the future for women in the US looks bleak. The documentary looks at the machinations of anti-abortion centers. Through interviews, it reveals how these freedom-restricting and backward-looking policies work. But the film also shows resistance, led by those who refuse to accept these developments.

Continued: https://amp.dw.com/en/usa-the-war-against-womens-rights/video-76966507