Not just liberty, Roe v. Wade legitimised extinguishing the American woman’s right to life

In a country where 20 percent pregnant women face violence, and several are prone to life-altering injuries and health conditions, pregnancy must be examined as an inherently violent circumstance, posing fatal consequences to women, globally, everyday. In the post-Roe U.S., we must collectively acknowledge that this is not a simple contest between the foetus’s right to life and women’s right to liberty and privacy. It is the woman’s survival that is on the line.

Hannah Zobair
28 Feb 2025

WOMEN often describe giving birth as “a scene from a horror movie.” Accounts of mistreatment during childbirth in the United States recall harrowing stories of doctors shoving their hands up the uterus of the mother, leaving her bruised, bloodied, and with severe post-traumatic stress disorder that follows her long after the birth. The choice to have a baby can often be a fatal one, always necessitating exposure to a certain amount of danger.

In the United States, a conservative movement to recognise the fundamental right to life of foetuses, and their corresponding right to not be aborted, has evolved over decades. Conservative proponents have put forth an assertive, moral view - the State cannot perpetuate the killing of babies.

Continued: https://theleaflet.in/women-and-children/not-just-liberty-roe-v-wade-legitimised-extinguishing-the-american-womans-right-to-life


Scotland – ‘We faced torrent of abuse after JD Vance’s abortion falsehoods’

Feb 23, 2025
By Lucy Grieve, co-founder of Back of Scotland

I co-founded the Back Off Scotland campaign as an undergraduate student in 2020 following a concerning surge in anti-abortion protests taking place outside medical facilities providing abortion care.

In the five years that have elapsed since, members of the campaign have, intermittently, been subjected to a handful of threatening communications.

These have involved threats of litigation, accusations of murder, and we have even received menacing phone calls from anti-abortion activists in the middle of the night.

Continued: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24956613.we-faced-torrent-abuse-jd-vances-abortion-falsehoods/


Scotland is failing these women and girls when it comes to abortion

16th February, 2025
By Gemma Clark

I HAVE been campaigning for better abortion rights in Scotland for several years.

In 2022, I petitioned Parliament for decriminalisation and the government responded by affirming that abortion is, first and foremost, a healthcare matter.

It has since established an expert working group, which felt like a significant victory for our small country against the backdrop of a global attack on women’s rights.

Continued: https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24939621.scotland-failing-women-girls-comes-abortion/


Why we should feel hopeful about our reproductive rights

December 22, 2024
Dr Romy Listo

"We can focus on recent election losses and the way they stigmatise our reproductive bodies and rights. Or we can focus on where the progress is happening, and choose ourselves to be part of the change," writes Dr Romy Listo.

It’s been a difficult few months to be a woman or gender diverse person watching elections being fought and lost on abortion rights.

Continued: https://missingperspectives.com/posts/why-we-should-feel-hopeful-about-our-reproductive-rights/


Jezebel’s Person of the Year Is Anyone Who Donated to an Abortion Fund

Jezebel hasn’t been around for 101 years, nor do we have a tradition of selecting one human to represent everything that's happened in 365 days. But the century-old publication that does have this tradition got lazy with it, so we decided to anoint our own.

By Lauren Tousignant 
December 13, 2024

There are over 8 billion people in the world and yet, on Thursday, Time announced fuckass Donald Trump as its Person of the Year. For the second time.

He was last named as Person of the Year in 2016, which I get. He was a wildcard candidate running for president out of spite who shocked the establishment and lost the popular vote. He hasn’t done anything particularly different since then, especially not this year, when all he did was barely dodge a bullet. Sure he won the election, but let’s be real, it was not because he ran an impressive or strategic campaign. He picked the ickiest senator as vice president then held incoherent rallies where, if he wasn’t yelling lies about Ohioans eating cats and dogs, he was playing the “YMCA” and doing his stupid little dance.

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/jezebels-person-of-the-year-is-anyone-who-donated-to-an-abortion-fund


UK – Nigel Farage’s frightening comments on abortion prove he is a second-rate Trump

I had an abortion the better part of a decade ago - it was a turning point in my life

November 29, 2024
By Rebecca Reid

Years ago a man told me that I was being paranoid about abortion rights. We’d been drinking wine all afternoon and for some reason I threw in to the conversation that my biggest fear about Donald Trump’s 2016 presidency was the roll back of reproductive freedom. I remember vividly him taking a drag on his cigarette and saying “not going to happen” before moving on to talk to someone else more fun. And I’ve thought about him, and his certainty, every time there has been a significant step towards the erasure of a woman’s right to choose.

So I thought of him again today when I read that Nigel Farage had weighed in on the regulations about abortion. Speaking to reporters at a Reform UK press conference, Farage was asked whether he thinks that the term limits on abortions are too late. He said: “You know, is 24 weeks right for abortion, given that we now save babies at 22? That, to me, would be worthy of a debate in Parliament.”

Continued: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/nigel-farage-abortion-second-rate-trump-3406686


I thought Britain was worlds away from Trump’s America – until I needed to get an abortion

I quickly learned that the decision to terminate a pregnancy wasn’t purely a matter of 'my body, my choice’

Anonymous
Thu 28 Nov 2024

Roughly 36 hours after I first heard about the horrifying Maga taunt “your body, my choice”, I learned that I was pregnant, despite having a contraceptive coil. My relief that I lived in the UK, not the US – where abortion is rapidly becoming illegal or inaccessible at best – was profound. Yet I realised that I had no idea how to access abortion, having complacently assumed that it would always be available if I needed it. Some fraught Googling led me to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. A couple of days later, I had my first appointment and very quickly learned that it wasn’t purely “my choice”, even in Britain.

Of all the words you don’t want to hear by surprise, “transvaginal” is up there. I thought the scan to determine how pregnant I was would be the kind where a technician slathers goop on your stomach. I wasn’t told until I arrived that it would be internal, because of the assumed early gestation. A second surprise: the coil was gone, most likely sucked out by my period cup. Later that day, I had a phone consultation. The nurse told me two doctors would have to sign off on the termination and asked me to justify why my life would be negatively affected if I were forced to continue with the pregnancy. Horrified, I said I should just be able to say: I don’t want to. She was extremely kind and agreed, but said this was a legal requirement under the Abortion Act.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/28/abortion-rights-women-donald-trump-us-britain


The fight to secure abortion rights in Portugal

Opinion Piece By Ana Patricia Cardoso
25/11/2024

We want this generation and the next ones to understand that the situation is very bad at the moment, and that we need everyone to put an end to this violation of our fundamental rights

A law passed in a referendum 17 years ago is flouted shamelessly on a daily basis. The result? What could be an agile medical procedure without any problems – especially psychological terms – becomes a race against time and the patriarchy. Before the scenario becomes more serious, we need to inform, warn, open up a conversation, speak in first person and exclude the word ‘guilt’ from our vocabulary.

Continued: https://diem25.org/vtp-and-the-fight-to-guarantee-a-fundamental-right/


Make no mistake: this Trump presidency will continue to attack abortion rights

Just because Trump is publicly distancing himself from abortion does not mean Republicans won’t enact a national ban

Moira Donegan
Tue 12 Nov 2024

Abortion rights initiatives were on the ballot in 10 states on Tuesday, and won in seven of them. One of the losers was prop 4, Florida’s abortion rights measure, which received a whopping 57% of the vote but failed to meet the state’s unusually high 60% threshold, meaning that the state’s six-week ban will remain in place. Asked about the Florida abortion rights proposition ahead of the election, Trump said that when he went to cast his ballot near Palm Beach, he would vote against it.

It has always been a little hard to believe that Donald Trump personally hates abortion, even if it is abundantly clear how little he thinks of women. Trump, after all, has claimed to have numerous conflicting positions on abortion rights throughout his life. And his brand of masculinity is boorish, vulgar, and above all, sexually entitled – far from the priggish, repressed moralism of more classical anti-abortion figures like Mike Pence.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/trump-presidency-abortion-restrictions


UK – As protest ban starts, I spent day at abortion clinic

Oct 30, 2024
Emma Barnett, BBC Radio 4

When I arrive at an abortion clinic in south London, four protesters - three women and one man - are gathered on the opposite side of the road alongside a picture of the Virgin Mary, which is draped in rosary beads. They are silently mouthing prayers, and ask not to be interrupted.

Protesters outside abortion clinics, standing with signs - sometimes featuring graphic images of foetuses - have become a norm. This can be worrying and upsetting for some of the women going in for their procedure, who are sometimes approached by these individuals. The same is true for the healthcare staff working at the clinics.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7v3dlld58qo