Pro-choice crowdfunding has surged in the U.S. — but donating that way has risks

December 4, 2022
Jeremy Snyder

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision by the United States Supreme Court earlier this year overturned constitutional protections of reproductive choice for Americans. The ruling sparked protests, political action and outreach to women affected by the decision, including a flood of financial contributions to pro-choice organizations and causes.

Crowdfunding campaigns have been part of the story of financial support for reproductive justice in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision. But while these campaigns have been massively successful by the standards of crowdfunding, they also raise significant concerns.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/pro-choice-crowdfunding-has-surged-in-the-u-s-but-donating-that-way-has-risks-195279

04.12.2022

Commentary

Featured

crowdfunding for abortion rights

Gen-Z for Choice Abortion Fund

National Network of Abortion Funds

Olivia Julianna

United States

Activism

As France Moves To Make Abortion A Constitutional Right, Here’s Looking Back At Global Laws Governing Pregnancy Termination

In many countries, women continue to have limited autonomy on decisions relating to their reproductive health. Here are some of the countries that evolved into legalising abortions and some others that continue to ban and restrict abortions.

Laxmi Mohan Kumar
3 Dec 2022

Abortion continues to be a highly debated topic within legislative and public circles worldwide. The process is either banned entirely or permitted with certain restrictions in a few places. On the larger space, it continues to be isolated from being identified as a constitutional right for women.

Even within the largest democracies of the world, women's rights are being discussed around a table dominated by male representatives who have often strongly voiced against legalising abortions.

Continued: https://thelogicalindian.com/gender/abortion-laws-around-the-world-39025

03.12.2022

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act

Pressure and Stress Intensify for Abortion Providers Post-Roe

NOVEMBER 29, 2022
Susan Buttenwieser

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in late June, providers of abortion care have been dealing with emotional devastation, managing severe staff burnout, the possibility of facing criminal charges, and increased harassment from protestors.

Some providers also contended with the prospect of losing their jobs when abortion became illegal in their state, at times within hours of the decision, forcing their clinics to close down. By October, 66 clinics across 15 states had been forced to stop offering abortion care or had closed down entirely. Before the June 24 Dobbs decision, those 15 states had 79 clinics that provided abortion care; by October 2, that number had dropped to 13, all located in one state, Georgia.

Continued: https://womensmediacenter.com/news-features/pressure-and-stress-intensify-for-abortion-providers-post-roe

USA – Googling abortion? Your details aren’t as private as you think

Johana Bhuiyan in New York
Tue 29 Nov 2022

In the wake of the US supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, Google pledged fresh policies to protect people’s abortion-related data. But new research has shown the way our location and other personal data is stored remains largely unchanged, raising fears that intimate details of a person’s abortion search could be used to penalize them.

Google responds to tens of thousands of requests each year from law enforcement agencies seeking access to the vast troves of data collected on its users. In one six-month period in 2021, the most recent data publicly available, Google received nearly 47,000 law enforcement requests, affecting more than 100,000 accounts, and responded with some amount of data to 80% of them. The Dobbs decision sparked concerns that such data could be used to prosecute people seeking abortions in states where it is banned – for instance, if they searched for or traveled to an abortion clinic.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/29/abortion-rights-us-google-roe-dobbs

29.11.2022

Commentary

Featured

abortion surveillance

Accountable Tech

Aditi Ramesh

digital surveillance and abortion

Giliann Karon

Google Maps and abortion

Google searches for abortion

Jackie Singh

Surveillance Technology Oversight Project

Tom Kemp

Winnie King

United States

Abortion in Uzbekistan: Legal, Accessible, Declining

Abortion in Uzbekistan has never been politicized as it has been in the West, but terminating a pregnancy is still becoming less common.

By Niginakhon Saida
November 29, 2022

In Uzbekistan, women have always had access to safe abortion. Current legislation allows the termination of a pregnancy within the first 12 weeks and at any stage if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s health or life. The law lists 86 types of various life and health threatening medical indications, including severe types of diabetes, hereditary and degenerative mental disorders, mood disorders, epilepsy, and more. Age is also viewed as a risk factor and girls under 14 are allowed to access abortion.

At the same time, abortion and the delivering of babies have long been among nine types of medical practices that cannot be performed by private medical entities, along with organ transplants, blood donation, providing medical-forensic examinations and other similar medical services. Such services are restricted to the government in part as an effort to prevent the sale of children and the illegal documentation of births and deaths.

Continued: https://thediplomat.com/2022/11/abortion-in-uzbekistan-legal-accessible-declining/

29.11.2022

U.S. Overturn of Roe Will Embolden Anti-Abortion Movements Abroad

11/29/2022
by MICHELLE ONELLO

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ruled that there is no U.S. constitutional right to abortion, will have ripple effects around the world, according to the International Center for Research on Women’s (ICRW) policy brief, “U.S. Foreign Policy Implications of Overturning Roe v. Wade.” While Dobbs did not change existing U.S. foreign policy regarding abortion, the brief argues that it will embolden anti-abortion movements abroad, contribute to global stigmatization of abortion, cause confusion for policy implementation and open the door for new restrictions—all of which will negatively impact the health, economic resources and well-being of women throughout the world.

Dobbs is a reminder that current U.S. foreign aid restrictions “are not aligned with best health care practices nor consistent with human rights and bodily autonomy principles.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2022/11/29/us-overturn-roe-v-wade-abortion-abroad-foreign-policy-helms-amendment-global-gag-rule/

A Woman Wanted an Abortion to Save One of Her Twins. She Had to Travel 1,000 Miles.

“There was no decision, really, because the baby wasn't going to survive... I’m not going to leave my son without a mom.”

By Carter Sherman
November 28, 2022

Early one Friday morning, about six weeks into her pregnancy, a woman started throwing up and didn’t stop for more than 36 hours. She tried drink after drink—ginger ale, tea, Pedialyte—to rehydrate, but the woman kept vomiting. Once chills started to wrack her body, she decided enough was enough. The woman, who VICE News is calling A. for privacy reasons, needed to go to the emergency room.

A., who already has a toddler son, had already been nervous about being pregnant in her home state of Texas. Although A. and her husband had planned for this pregnancy, A. worried that if anything went wrong, Texas’ ban on abortion would prevent her from getting help.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/epz7ap/texas-abortion-ban-woman-travels-to-save-twin

28.11.2022

Commentary

Featured

abortion story

fatal fetal abnormality

Texas abortion ban

traveling for abortion

USA – The case against medical abortion rejects science and embraces falsehoods

BY GREER DONLEY AND PATRICIA ZETTLER, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS
11/27/22

On Nov. 18, a group of antiabortion activists sued the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to try to remove mifepristone from the market. Mifepristone is the only drug that is FDA-approved to terminate a pregnancy. The lawsuit is based on several fundamental mischaracterizations of the FDA’s decision-making and the scientific evidence surrounding medication abortion.  

If this lawsuit is nevertheless successful, it would apply nationally and remove the drug from the market throughout the United States. It is therefore another reminder that the antiabortion movement will not stop with overturning Roe v Wade and banning abortion in half the country— its goal is to stop abortion everywhere. 

Continued: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3751672-the-case-against-medical-abortion-rejects-science-and-embraces-falsehoods/

27.11.2022

Commentary

Featured

Food and Drug Administration

Post “Roe,” Advocates Fear for the Future of Contraceptive Self-Determination

A climate of misinformation and fear has people feeling they are making their contraceptive choices under duress.

By Garnet Henderson , TRUTHOUT
November 27, 2022

Jacora Johnson, a 22-year-old Texas resident, is facing a difficult and potentially painful decision. They currently use the Depo-Provera shot, a type of birth control that’s administered by a medical provider every three months. In addition to being a highly effective form of contraception, it’s also gender-affirming for Johnson, who is nonbinary.

“I don’t get my menstrual cycle, which is great because that can be dysphoric for me,” they said. Johnson also enjoys having regular check-ins with a doctor. But in Texas, most abortions have been banned since September 2021, when SB 8, the law that encouraged private citizens to enforce it by suing those who “aid or abet” abortions, went into effect.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/post-roe-advocates-fear-for-the-future-of-contraceptive-self-determination/

27.11.2022

USA – For-Profit Abortion Telemedicine Start-Ups Are Proliferating in Wake of “Roe”

Garnet Henderson, Truthout
November 26, 2022

In 2020, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must suspend its requirement that patients pick up mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortion, in person. After some back-and-forth under the Trump administration, the FDA permanently repealed the rule, which had long been decried by medical experts as unnecessary, in 2021.

This opened the door for providers to send abortion pills by mail in all but the 19 states that outlaw provision of abortion via telemedicine. (Many of those same states now ban abortion entirely.) This regulation change, along with increased popular interest in abortion access following Roe’s overturn, has led to a proliferation of telemedicine companies offering abortion pills. Some of these companies are run by people with prior experience in abortion care and connections in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements; others are not. Regardless, some abortion access advocates are raising concerns about whether the rise of for-profit telemedicine companies is the best way to serve abortion seekers.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/for-profit-abortion-telemedicine-start-ups-are-proliferating-in-the-wake-of-roe/