Activists Organise Against Erosion of Sexual and Reproductive Health

26/01/2026
Kerry Cullinan, Health Policy Watch

Grassroots organising, using the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and creating new multilateral coordination are some of the ways to counter the current attack on sexual and reproductive health (SRH), according to activists.

There is a “rise of unapologetic, unabashed, hegemonic masculinity and really harmful gender stereotypes,” Paola Salwan Daher, Women Deliver’s senior director for collective action, told a webinar on the anti-rights pushback.

Continued: https://healthpolicy-watch.news/activists-organise-against-erosion-of-sexual-and-reproductive-health/

Nigeria -ÀJOSE: Stakeholders demand open dialogue on women’s health, bodily autonomy

January 22, 2026

Professionals in filmmaking, healthcare and the creative industries have demanded that more attention be paid to maternal mortality, medical ethics, safe and unsafe abortion, consent and the social pressures that often limit women’s agency in healthcare settings.

The experts spoke at a film and dialogue event held in Lagos to foster more informed and nuanced conversations around women’s health and bodily autonomy in Nigeria.

Continued: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2026/01/ajose-stakeholders-demand-open-dialogue-on-womens-health-bodily-autonomy/

22.01.2026

ÀJOSE: The Stories That Bind Us

Care or Control?

Chika Okoli

Dr Majek and the Ghost

Speech by Commissioner Lahbib at the Hearing on “My Voice, My Choice” Citizens Initiative at the European Parliament

Dec 1, 2025
European Commission

I would like to start by congratulating the organisers and supporters of this initiative. You have collected over one million valid statements of support across the EU and reached the minimum thresholds in 19 Member States. Well done.

You made ‘My Voice, My Choice: For Safe and Accessible Abortion' the twelfth citizens' initiative submitted to the Commission for examination. While promoting your initiative, you also helped raise awareness of the European citizens' initiative itself, something we are also working to do.

Continued: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_25_2873

01.12.2025

Events/Campaigns

funding of abortion

Hadja Lahbib

My Voice My Choice campaign

Ursula von der Leyen

Europe

Human Rights

Global: Amnesty delegation meets abortion defenders as backlash against human rights intensifies

29 October 2025

An Amnesty International delegation will join abortion providers and defenders from across the globe at two gatherings in Bogotá, Colombia, to review progress on expanding access to safe abortions and to discuss new strategies to counter rising threats to human rights.

The delegation will take part in a number of panels at the Latin American Consortium Against Unsafe Abortion (CLACAI) (30 Oct – 1 Nov), and the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) (4-6 Nov). 

“While many advances have been made towards ensuring life-saving abortion services are available and accessible, anti-abortion narratives and legislation are gaining ground around the world, posing new threats,” said Fernanda Doz Costa, Director of the Gender Justice, Racial Justice, Migrants and Refugees Programme at Amnesty International, who will take part in a number of panels.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2025/10/global-amnesty-delegation-meets-abortion-defenders-as-backlash-against-human-rights-intensifies/

29.10.2025

Events/Campaigns

Amnesty International

CLACAI

ernanda Doz Costa

International Conference on Family Planning

Latin American Consortium against Unsafe Abortion

EUROPE – Geneva Shines Green for International Safe Abortion Day

Center for Reproductive Rights
Sep 26, 2025

This year, Geneva—the global centre of human rights diplomacy and home to the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Europe office—is shining green in recognition of International Safe Abortion Day (28 September).

From 26–28 September, flags carrying the message “Reproductive rights are human rights” and “Les droits reproductifs sont des droits humains” will line the Mont-Blanc Bridge. On 28 September, the city’s emblematic Jet d’Eau will be illuminated in green, the colour of the global abortion rights movement. These powerful public displays, made possible with the support of the City of Geneva, send a clear message of solidarity in support of reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy.

Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/geneva-shines-green-international-safe-abortion-day/

26.09.2025

Events/Campaigns

Center for Reproductive Rights

Europe Abortion Laws 2025: Policies

International Safe Abortion Day

Progress and Challenges

Europe – Reproductive Rights: “Law Can Be an Instrument for Transformative Change”

Nov 28, 2024

On 6 December 2024, Sciences Po’s Gender Studies Programme and Law School will hold a Symposium on Reproductive Rights. In order to better understand the goals of the symposium and what it will entail, its two organisers, Helena Alviar García, full professor at the Sciences Po Law School, and Marie Mercat-Bruns, Full University Professor at the Cnam and affiliated to Sciences Po Law School, have answered some questions.

Why are reproductive rights important?
Marie Mercat-Bruns: Reproductive rights are essential to understand the current trends we face with regard to issues of gender equality, privacy and freedom to control one’s body. But beyond, the individual choice of women to procreate or not lies the question of structural inequalities to access contraception, health care, work-life balance and equal opportunity all over the globe. Beyond the intimate question of self-determination and risks of physical harm linked to the criminalisation of abortion, lies the question of access to justice, judicial power and the limits of the democratic process in preserving rights of women or transgender persons, acquired in some countries, more than forty years ago.

Continued: https://www.sciencespo.fr/ecole-droit/en/news/reproductive-rights-law-can-be-an-instrument-for-transformative-change/

28.11.2024

Events/Campaigns

EU Fundamental Rights Charter

Symposium on Reproductive Rights

‘Beyond Borders’ gives U.S. state lawmakers a global human rights perspective on abortion

Ipas
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2024

In the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, the abortion landscape has become fragmented and increasingly polarized. In more than half of the 50 U.S. states, abortion is now completely banned, heavily restricted or under legal threat.

With that divided landscape as a backdrop, dozens of U.S. state-level lawmakers gathered recently with abortion rights advocates and human rights experts from the United States and ten other countries to share ideas and strategies for expanding abortion access in legally restrictive settings.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/beyond-borders-gives-u-s-state-lawmakers-a-global-human-rights-perspective-on-abortion/

POLAND: URGENT SOLIDARITY REQUESTED

Bill banning all abortions falls by large majority, but a second one passed the first round

DECEMBER 3, 2021

International Campaign for Safe Abortion

Polish Women’s Strike activists spilled red paint and left slogans saying
“Don’t ask for my blood Poland” on cardboard outside Polish ruling party (PiS)
offices in different cities in Poland over last weekend in anticipation of the
upcoming week in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, where two
anti-abortion bills are tabled for this week. It’s a Ministry of Health decree
, they have put it on their website until 6 December for comments. The 16-page
text of the government’s abortion bill can be found here in
Polish.

A bill tabled
for 30 November aims to create a Polish Institute of Family and
Demography, led by right-wing fundamentalist parliamentarian Bartłomiej
Wróblewski, the same person who tabled the motion to the Constitutional Court
that resulted in the October 2020 ban on abortion.
Their goal is an increase in Poland’s birth rate, which they hope to achieve by
limiting the number of divorces and creating what they call the “proper social
context”. It allows women to be investigated if they were known to be pregnant
and are no longer pregnant. This bill was passed by only one vote of 205 to
204, with 24 abstentions. It will now go to a committee.

Continued: https://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/news/poland-urgent-solidarity-requested/

Philippines – Women’s rights orgs urge authorities to decriminalize abortion

By KAELA MALIG, GMA News
Published May 25, 2021

Women's rights organizations urged legislators to decriminalize abortion as women continue to die from unsafe abortion complications.

In a media workshop on Tuesday, EnGendeRights executive director Atty. Claire Padilla said that the restrictive 1930 Revised Penal Code abortion law has not stopped the number of women from inducing abortion but has only endangered lives of hundreds of women who undergo unsafe abortions due to several personal reasons.

Continued: https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/788842/women-s-rights-orgs-urge-authorities-to-decriminalize-abortion/story/

Women's rights orgs urge authorities to decriminalize abortion

By KAELA MALIG, GMA News
Published May 25, 2021

Women's rights organizations urged legislators to decriminalize abortion as women continue to die from unsafe abortion complications.

Continued: https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/788842/women-s-rights-orgs-urge-authorities-to-decriminalize-abortion/story/

25.05.2021

Events/Campaigns

News

1930 Revised Penal Code

Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights

FDA Allows Telemedicine Abortion During Pandemic

4/19/2021
by CARRIE N. BAKER

Last Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued long-awaited guidance lifting a restriction on the abortion pill mifepristone for the duration of the COVID-19 public health emergency. The move permits telemedicine abortion, a combination of medication abortion—using pills to end a pregnancy—and telemedicine, which allows health providers to supervise the use of abortion pills via videoconferencing or telephone consultations.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting FDA commissioner, wrote in a letter to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine that the FDA will waive a requirement that clinicians dispense the abortion pill mifepristone to their patients in a clinic or hospital setting. The letter said research studies on telemedicine abortion “do not appear to show increases in serious safety concerns occurring with medical abortion as a result of modifying the in-person dispensing requirement during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2021/04/19/fda-telemedicine-abortion-pill-mifepristone/