Uganda – Stop fearing “abortion merchants” and start empowering women

Unsafe abortion is not merely a legal issue; it's tied to gender-based violence, lack of access to healthcare, and gendered power imbalances. A holistic feminist model requires addressing these systemic factors.

Saturday, July 12, 2025
By Penelope Sanyu, Chief Steward FemmeForte

This is an analysis of the “Crack the whip on abortion merchants” editorial from the Daily Monitor of July 8, through the lens of FemmeForte Uganda’s feminist vision. The editorial strongly criticizes so-called “abortion merchants,” calling for enforcement of Uganda’s abortion laws. It frames abortion as criminal and morally reprehensible, pressing police to “crack the whip” on providers. It makes little allowance for nuance, even in cases vulnerable to unsafe abortion such as rape, extreme poverty, or health risks.

Continued: https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/oped/letters/stop-fearing-abortion-merchants-and-start-empowering-women-5114836

12.07.2025

USA – A baby born to a brain dead mother: this is the horror of abortion bans

Adriana Smith was legally dead for months, but kept on life support in Atlanta because she was pregnant

Moira Donegan
Tue 8 Jul 2025

On Friday 13 June, a baby was born in an Atlanta hospital to a woman who had been dead for four months. Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black nurse and mother, was declared brain dead in February after blood clots formed in her brain. Legally, and by all meaningful measures, she was dead then: the woman who loved her family, laughed with her friends, comforted her son, helped her colleagues and cared for her patients was gone then, and was never coming back.

But the state of Georgia, and the administrators of the hospital where she was declared dead, kept her corpse in a state of artificial animation for months. That’s because when Smith went to the hospital in February complaining of a headache, and later became unresponsive, she was about eight weeks pregnant. According to her family, doctors at Emory hospital, in Georgia, told the family that the state’s abortion ban required them to maintain the regimen that falsely animated their daughter’s corpse so that the fetus inside her could continue to grow.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/08/adriana-smith-atlanta-brain-dead-birth

08.07.2025

Opinion

Adriana Smith

Emory University hospital

Pro-LGBTQ+ yet anti-abortion: What’s behind Malta’s differing stances?

The tiny Mediterranean island is one of Europe's most progressive on LGBTQ+ rights, but at the same time, it has a near-total ban on abortion. What is the reason for this dissonance?

By Clea Skopeliti
28/06/2025

When Belle de Jong shared her experience of having an abortion on national TV in Malta in 2021, she became the first woman in the tiny Mediterranean island nation to do so publicly.

The reaction to her interview reflected how this aspect of healthcare remains deeply divisive on the staunchly Catholic island, which has the EU's most restrictive abortion law.

Continued: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/06/28/pro-lgbtq-yet-anti-abortion-whats-behind-maltas-differing-stances

UK / Northern Ireland – We deserve five-star reproductive rights

MPs missed a chance to remove the threat of prosecution from anyone helping families make decisions about their own lives. With the far right on the march, it’s time to defend our rights.

By Emma Campbell
June 28, 2025

Campaigners were celebrating last week as the UK parliament took the first step to defend reproductive rights. But, as an abortion activist working here in Belfast, I was frustrated at a lack of willingness to fix the problems with the amendment. Even if it becomes law, the work that I do every day helping people here in Northern Ireland would still see me facing criminal charges if I did it in England and Wales.

I’ve been fighting for reproductive rights for 15 years and helping people access abortions much longer. When we started talking about removing the threat of prosecution from people making decisions about their lives and their families, non-governmental organisations around us were convinced we would never change the law in our lifetime. But when we’re striving for change we need hopeful imagination.

Continued: https://goodlawproject.org/emma-campbell-we-deserve-five-star-reproductive-rights/

Opinion: The deadly reality of abortion bans is unfolding in the US—like it once did in Ethiopia

US decision makers must lean on evidence to support better maternal outcomes for women—and that means reversing abortion bans, writes Abebe Shibru

BMJ 2025; 389 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r1318 (Published 24 June 2025)
Abebe Shibru,, country director

I read with dismay and devastation a recent report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The report revealed that pregnant women living in US states with abortion bans are 2 times as likely to die than those in states where abortion care is legal and accessible.1 This grim reality was further compounded this month by the Trump administration’s withdrawal of emergency abortion guidance, stripping away critical federal protections that had ensured access to lifesaving care in urgent medical situations.

The US Supreme Court decided in 2022 to overturn the right to abortion and leave its legality up to individual states in the Dobbs v Jackson case. Three years on, this report is connecting the dots between the states that banned abortion and the knock on effect on maternal mortality. It’s yet another piece of global evidence pointing to the profound harm of abortion bans.

Continued: https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r1318

24.06.2025

Opinion

Abebe Shibru

Gender Equity Policy Institute

maternal mortality

MSI Reproductive Choices Ethiopia

UK – I had an abortion as a teen. I hope this historic law change makes that decision feel lighter for women

Women across the UK finally, truly have the right to choose.

By Glamour
23 June 2025

Evelyn* had a medical abortion (also known as the abortion pill) at age 19 after unexpectedly falling pregnant. Had her termination not been deemed necessary by two doctors who “authorised” the procedure, she could have found herself facing prosecution with a maximum penalty of life in prison. Read her story, in her own words, below.

Seven years ago, I was enjoying my final few weeks of the summer before packing up and moving away for my first year of university. In what seemed like a cruel turn of events, it was at one of my university send-off parties that I found out I was pregnant.

My then-boyfriend and I were sexually active at the time, and we were using barrier methods to prevent pregnancy. Suffice it to say, one of the condoms must have failed.

Continued: https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/abortion-law-change-teenage-abortion-experience

23.06.2025

Abortion remains a criminal offence in the UK because of the left’s timidity. We must learn from that – and fast

Tuesday’s vote in parliament was a missed opportunity – and proof that progressives are allowing the right to shape the key debates

Stella Creasy
Wed 18 Jun 2025

Around the world, the antis are joining forces. Whether anti-abortion, anti-transgender, anti-immigrant, anti-human rights or just anti anyone who doesn’t look like them, they are collaborating; amplifying one another and sharing their political and cultural successes. Their rhetoric now dominates our discussions, and increasingly our ballot boxes. In response, some argue caution or even capitulation – as if we can stop the public being dragged to the extremes if we speak in hushed tones or water down our ambitions for social justice. As we witness the consequences of this, it is time to speak up for those values that drive us to show that another future is possible.

On Tuesday, parliament had the opportunity to set abortion in England and Wales on the same modern, regulated footing as it is in Northern Ireland: as a human right. Instead, a vote on this was explicitly blocked by the providers of this service and their supporters, telling MPs to back another amendment, to get a single exemption from prosecution for women “over the line” instead. That is what happened. In contrast, my proposed amendment would have gone further, offering “protection to all those involved in ensuring that women can access safe and legal abortions”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/18/abortion-criminal-offence-uk-parliament-progressives

18.06.2025

Opinion

abortion law reform

anti-choice campaigns

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice oppression

UK – In 1961, my abortion was unmentionable; why next week’s vote is important.

Diane Munday had an abortion in 1961. Here she explains to Sofia Fenton why she dedicated her life to reforming the law.

By Sofia Fenton and Diane Munday
16 June 2025

When the 1967 Abortion Act passed, I sat on the terrace of the House of Commons with my fellow campaigners and marked the moment with half a glass of champagne. Half because it was only a partial victory – I felt it was a necessary compromise but that the job was far from finished.

One in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Yet abortion has not been decriminalised. A woman must get the sign-off of two doctors. Two doctors who have likely never seen her before nor will they see her again but are strangers making one of the most important decisions of someone’s life. It was a requirement I opposed even in the 1960s – but it was the price of getting the bill through Parliament.

Continued: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle/a65075635/diane-munday-abortion-bill/

16.06.2025

Opinion

1861 Offences against the Person Act

What Arizonans can learn from Brazil’s near-total abortion ban

By Rep. Analise Ortiz
June 13, 2025

This is the powerful translation of Nem Presa, Nem Morta, the name of an advocacy organization that is leading the resistance against anti-abortion laws in Brazil. In a country with a near-total ban, this is more than a name, it is a rallying cry against restrictions that can lead to jail time and death.

I met them, and other activists, on a legislative delegation to Brazil made possible by the State Innovation Exchange and the Women’s Equality Center. Why should a State Senator from Arizona care about abortion policy in Latin America when our state just passed Prop. 139 to enshrine a right to abortion in the state constitution? Because by strengthening connections between the U.S. and Brazil, we can exchange strategies and deepen our understanding of how to stand in resistance to protect each other across the globe.

Here are four ways:.

Continued: https://coppercourier.com/opinion/opinion-what-arizonans-can-learn-from-brazils-near-total-abortion-ban/

Nigeria – Why are women still whispering about their bodies?

Women Empowering Women Initiative (WEWIN)
June 11, 2025

In Nigeria today, conversations about women’s bodies are still conducted in hushed tones. From menstruation to contraception, and especially when it comes to pregnancy decisions, silence and shame often shape the narrative. Behind closed doors, women talk. However, their needs are buried under stigma in public, policy, and healthcare settings.

This silence is not just cultural; it is deeply political. It affects how women access care, how they are treated when they seek help, and whether they live or die when faced with reproductive health crises. For many, the stakes of whispering are not just personal; they’re fatal.

Continued: https://businessday.ng/opinion/article/why-are-women-still-whispering-about-their-bodies/

11.06.2025