Australia – How abortion is weaponised in family court

A recent change to the Family Law Act may still fall short of protecting women from being cross-examined about their sexual health history.

By Madison Griffiths
June 14 – 20, 2025

In the mid 1990s, Louisa* – barely an adult – made two decisions to spare herself a lifetime of pain. On two separate occasions, she slipped quietly through the gates of a concealed clinic, careful to avoid the protesters gathered out the front. Louisa had weighed up her options and knew that acquiring abortion care was her best bet. She wasn’t yet financially or emotionally fit to become a mother. Nor could she bear to be tethered to the man who had got her pregnant.

Almost two decades later, in 2021, Louisa arrived at the Family Law Court in Brisbane’s central business district. She was ready, she thought, to fight for the custody of her then seven-year-old daughter. The last thing she expected was for those choices in her early 20s to be raised in the hearings. On the sixth day, the independent children’s lawyer asked Louisa’s ex-husband if he was aware that, in a previous relationship, she had terminated two pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/health/2025/06/14/how-abortion-weaponised-family-court

Poland: Abortion rights, the big absentee in the presidential election

13/06/2025
Piotr Lapinski

Karol Nawrocki, the candidate backed by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, was elected President of Poland on Sunday 1 June 2025. While this country is one of the most restrictive European states with abortion legislation, this election raises concerns about the future of abortion rights.

13 June 2025. Every year, thousands of women leave Poland to terminate their pregnancies. Those who can’t, do so in unsafe conditions, risking their lives. This well-documented reality was formally recognized in an investigative report published in 2024 by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The report concluded that the criminalization of abortion assistance, combined with rare legal exceptions and frequent inaccessibility of services, prevents the majority of Polish women from exercising the right to safe and legal abortion.

Continued: https://www.fidh.org/en/region/europe-central-asia/poland/poland-abortion-rights-the-big-absentee-in-the-presidential-election

USA – Inside the legal fight over the telehealth clinics that help women defy abortion bans

Every month, thousands of women evade abortion bans in their home states by turning to telehealth clinics willing to send them pregnancy-ending drugs through the mail

By MICHAEL HILL and SUSAN HAIGH, Associated Press
June 12, 2025

Every month, thousands of women thwart abortion bans in their home states by turning to telehealth clinics willing to prescribe pregnancy-ending drugs online and ship them anywhere in the country.

Whether this is legal, though, is a matter of debate. Two legal cases involving a New York doctor could wind up testing the shield laws some states have passed to protect telehealth providers who ship abortion pills nationwide.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/inside-legal-fight-telehealth-clinics-women-defy-abortion-122763768

Why are so many European microstates against abortion?

In Andorra and Liechtenstein, abortion is still banned. In Monaco, it is illegal to perform an abortion. San Marino is an exception: in 2022 abortion was finally legalised. From the seaside principality of Monaco to the hilly enclave of San Marino, ENTR set out to meet those who fought sometimes insurmountable battles in the smallest of countries to break one of the biggest taboos.

June 12, 2025
By: Renée BERTINI, Jade BRIEND-GUY

“I didn't actually know I was pregnant, because I was on the pill". Under the already scorching May sun, Juliette Rapaire, 30, begins her story with a scenario common to many who choose to have an abortion. "It was the end of 2022, I went to see a gynaecologist for ovarian cysts, and he told me that I was pregnant. I was almost a month pregnant, so it was still within the legal time frame to get an abortion in France."

The young Monegasque woman then decided to contact a French gynaecologist practicing just across Monaco’s borders. On paper, abortion has been decriminalised in the microstate since 2019. People choosing to terminate their pregnancy no longer risk a fine or imprisonment. But doctors and midwives who conduct abortions still risk sanctions: five to ten years in prison and a blanket ban on practicing medicine. This means people from Monaco trying to get an abortion still do so elsewhere, mainly in France.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250612-why-are-so-many-european-microstates-against-abortion-monaco-san-marino

USA – Is the ‘tech bro-ification’ of abortion here?

Repro workers and tech experts reveal startling gaps between the promises offered by abortion technologies and the realities facing abortion-seekers and support workers

by Nicole Froio and Jade Jasmine Hurley
June 11th, 2025

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion tech has emerged as a potential solution for an increasingly prohibitive reproductive rights landscape…

This exclusive Prism investigation delves into the role of tech in reproductive health care, finding gaps in how abortion workers are served by tech initiatives, a clash between funding abortion tech and industry layoffs, and tension in how best to address the changing legal landscape for abortion. Interviews with a dozen reproductive health workers, tech specialists, abortion fund staff, and reproductive rights advocates further revealed a lack of investment in backend tools for abortion support workers navigating a progressively underfunded field.

Continued: https://prismreports.org/2025/06/11/abortion-tech-repro-workers/

11.06.2025

Commentary

abortion and tech

abortion and technology

abortion apps

abortion chatbot

Abortion Freedom Fund

Abortion Policy API

Aid Access

Amy Merrill

automated abortion finder

Carolina Abortion Fund

Cathy Torres

Cecile Richards

Charley app

crisis pregnancy centers

If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice

National Network of Abortion Funds

self-managed abortion

Center to Defend Landmark Decision in Kenya Guaranteeing Abortion Access for Survivors of Sexual Violence

Anti-rights groups seek to overturn a 2019 judgment in the case of a 14-year-old girl who died as a result of an unsafe abortion in Kenya.

Center for Reproductive Rights
June 10, 2025

In 2019, the High Court of Kenya affirmed that the Kenyan Constitution guarantees survivors of sexual violence access to safe and legal abortion care. The historic decision came in a case brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights and its partners on behalf of the family of JMM, a 14-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted, became pregnant, and died from complications of an unsafe abortion.

The Center is expected to be at the Kenya Court of Appeal in the coming weeks to defend that judgment from anti-rights groups that are asking the Court to overturn it. In appealing the High Court’s decision in the case, FIDA-Kenya and others v. Attorney General and others, the Kenyan Christian Professional Forum and the Kenya Attorney General argue that abortion is not a constitutional right.

Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/jmm-fida-appeal-abortion-kenya/

10.06.2025

Commentary

Center for Reproductive Rights

High Court of Kenya

JMM

Kenya Court of Appeal

Kenyan Christian Professional Forum

Martin Onyango

Salima Namusobya

Standards and Guidelines for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality from Unsafe Abortion in Kenya

Canada – Kelowna Companies Won’t Run Pro-Choice Billboards

The crowdfunded campaign aims to counter anti-abortion billboards in the region.

Michelle Gamage, The Tyee
June 6, 2025

A University of British Columbia Okanagan campus student who raised more than $3,000 for a pro-choice billboard is stumped on where to post her message.

Sophie Harms says she wants to create a billboard that says “Abortion is safe, normal and common” to counter the anti-abortion billboard messaging that peppers the Okanagan region.

Recent billboards in the region have shown a pregnant belly next to a person holding a baby, with the text “Our right to life does not depend on our location.” Another sign said, “Abortion is not ‘healthcare.’ Pregnancy is not a disease.”

Continued: https://thetyee.ca/News/2025/06/06/Kelowna-Companies-Pro-Choice-Billboards/

Canada – She Wanted to End Her Pregnancy. Her Abusive Partner Took Her to Court

The legal case that won Canadian women the right to abortion

by Karin Wells
Jun. 4, 2025

They met at a RadioShack in Montreal in November 1988. She was barely twenty, a waitress new to the city. He was five years older, a big man, six foot three, with a moustache. He seemed nice enough.

Chantale Daigle might have been a young, small-town girl—she was from Chibougamau, eight hours north of Montreal—but she knew her own mind. She lived with Jean-Guy Tremblay for five months, and it turned out he was not so nice. She got pregnant. One night, he knocked her to the ground and said that he would “bring her into line once and for all.”

Continued: https://thewalrus.ca/she-wanted-to-end-her-pregnancy-her-abusive-partner-took-her-to-court/

Taiwan’s Enduring Controversies Over Abortion Laws

June 4, 2025
Hope Ngo

We have quantum theory to thank for “Schröedinger’s Cat,” a thought experiment involving a box that is said to contain a radioactive atom, a container of poison, and a cat. In the experiment, the animal is said to be both alive and dead until the box is opened and the cat’s condition is confirmed one way or the other. Unfortunately, the same can be said of the status of abortion rights in Taiwan—that it is both legal and illegal because the procedure is governed by two very different, contradicting laws. So, while Taiwan has staked out a progressive position regarding LGBTQ+ rights, it cannot say the same about its more complex social attitudes and laws regarding women’s reproductive rights.

In Taiwan, abortion is allowed under specific conditions specified by the Genetic Health Act (優生保健法), but it is penalized under Articles 288, 290, and 292 of the Criminal Code (中華民國刑法). Under the Genetic Health Act, legal abortions can be performed under six conditions. These conditions include:

Continued: https://globaltaiwan.org/2025/06/taiwans-enduring-controversies-over-abortion-laws/

Nawrocki win is ‘devastating blow’ for abortion rights activists in Poland

Any hopes to liberalize the country’s strict abortion rules are lost as the nationalist candidate secured a narrow win.

June 3, 2025
By Claudia Chiappa

Lawmakers and activists are warning that nationalist candidate Karol Nawrocki’s win in the Polish presidential election represents a “defeat” for women’s rights and further threatens abortion access in Poland.

Nawrocki, a self-described football hooligan backed by the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party — and by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration — won Poland’s presidential election last weekend, narrowly beating centrist Rafał Trzaskowski.

Continued: https://www.politico.eu/article/nawrocki-win-is-devastating-blow-for-abortion-rights-activists-in-poland/