The 12-week abortion myth blocking reproductive care across Latin America

There is no scientific reason for time limits on abortion – so why are they used to deny vulnerable people healthcare?

By Angelina de los Santos, Open Democracy
August 05, 2026

Four years ago, a 17-year-old arrived at a hospital in Mexico seeking an abortion. She had been raped and forced to flee to the mountains by an organised crime gang, and was the sole carer for her sister, who lived with mental health conditions.

Under Mexican legislation, the teenager was allowed an abortion, which has been legal in cases of sexual or domestic violence since 2009. But the primary healthcare centres that had previously treated her did not offer a termination, and by the time she reached the hospital, she was at an advanced stage of pregnancy and doctors refused to provide one.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/abortion-mexico-latin-america-12-week-time-limit-myth-science-law-autonomy/

DOMINICA – Abortion, the high court, and health service

Dominica News Online
Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Dear Editor:
The High Court heard the constitutional challenge to the abortion law on Tuesday, October 21, 2025. The court normally aims to make decisions within six months.

We have now had a gestation period of a full nine months. So, delivery is due. And the court’s term ends in a few days on July 31.

But there should be no rush for the court to make its decision, since the Ministry of Health and Wellness, the Dominica-China Friendship Hospital, most professional health bodies have done nothing to prepare for what could be a disruptive outcome.

Continued: https://dominicanewsonline.com/news/homepage/news/letter-to-the-editor-abortion-the-high-court-and-health-service/

22.07.2026

Opinion

abortion law reform

Aspire

ASPIRE Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health

Dominica Nurses’ Association

Mother of pregnant teen with cancer who died challenges Dominican Republic’s strict abortion ban

By DÁNICA COTO
June 18, 2026

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The mother of a teenage girl who died after doctors in the Dominican Republic delayed treating her for cancer because she was pregnant is challenging the country’s strict abortion ban.

Civil society groups including a Christian organization joined the challenge, arguing that the ban violates the rights to life, health, dignity and equality, and that such protections should be extended to pregnant girls and women.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-law-dominican-republic-mother-teen-34d403d7bd42ca510796c0253b6b7d3a

18.06.2026

Commentary

Patricia Santana Nina

Rosa Herminia Hernández

Latin American Feminists Train U.S.-Based Doulas on New Mifepristone Protocol for Second-Trimester Abortions

U.S. abortion doulas are turning to decades of Latin American feminist expertise to make second-trimester medication abortions safer, less painful and more accessible

June 5, 2026
by Carrie N. Baker

Across the world, women living in countries that ban licensed clinicians from performing abortions have always found ways to access abortion outside of the medical system. Today, abortion pills have made it much safer.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and many states banned abortion, U.S.-based activists turned to Latin American feminists who have run collectives supporting women seeking abortions outside of the medical system for decades.

With their guidance, U.S.-based activists have created their own feminist collectives that now serve thousands of women and girls each month in 38 states that ban and restrict abortion access, including the entire Southeast and much of the Midwest of the country. These collectives provide free abortion pills and the doula support to see them through.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/06/05/two-mifepristone-home-self-managed-abortion-pills-later-late-term-second-trimester-pregnancy/

Too many global funders are overlooking women in Latin America

Alyse Lopez-Salm and Daniela Perdomo

1 June 2026

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the most dangerous regions in the world to be a woman—yet it remains one of the most underfunded.

Despite systemic denial of reproductive rights, high levels of gender-based violence, accelerating climate risk, and worsening restrictions on civil society’s freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, global investments in women in LAC fall short—with drastic consequences in a region rife with extreme inequality.

Continued: https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/too-many-global-funders-are-overlooking-women-in-latin-america/

01.06.2026

gender-based violence

global funders of abortion

The Right Comes for Puerto Rico’s Abortion Clinics

A conservative senator wants them criminally investigated

Susanne Ramírez de Arellano
Apr 29, 2026

SAN JUAN — A few months ago, I wrote that Puerto Rico had become the new battleground for women’s reproductive rights. Over the past year, there have been several attacks to restrict a woman’s right to choose. Just a few months ago, pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista Governor Jenniffer González-Colón signed a law that gives fetuses legal personhood and classifies the death of an unborn child at any stage of pregnancy as murder.

I described these changes as dystopian and warned that, although abortion remains legal in Puerto Rico, women’s lives are at risk as even stricter restrictions loom.

Continued: https://thelatinonewsletter.org/p/right-comes-for-puerto-rico-abortion-clinics

Purple Smoke Fills Streets as Activists Target Mexico’s Abortion Law

Video – 6:48 minutes
Apr 29, 2026

Feminist activists gathered outside the Congress of Mexico City to mark the 19th anniversary of partial abortion decriminalisation, demanding the complete removal of abortion from the penal code. Protesters used purple smoke flares, chants, and symbolic actions, including breaking a piñata representing the penal code, as part of their demonstration.

Speaking during the rally, activists from the Information Group on Chosen Reproduction (GIRE) argued that abortion should be treated as a healthcare service rather than a criminal offence. They warned that restrictive laws continue to undermine reproductive rights and bodily autonomy across the region, calling on Latin America to defend the right to choose amid concerns of a broader rollback of abortion access.

Abortion is currently legal in Mexico City within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, but remains restricted beyond that period except under specific circumstances such as rape or health risks.

Continued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBc8b-dB2i0

29.04.2026

Videos/Images

abortion decriminalization

GIRE

Information Group on Reproductive Choice

Two Neighbours, Two Courts, One Paradox: Abortion Rights in the US and Mexico

By Devashri Awasthi, McGill International Review
Mar 21, 2026

In September 2021, Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) unanimously declared criminalizing abortion unconstitutional. Nine months later, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (1973). The irony is striking: Mexico—commonly perceived as conservative and overwhelmingly Catholic—expanded abortion rights through judicial reasoning, while the United States—long self-identified as a global rights leader—restricted access through partisan judicial maneuvering. Two neighbouring Christian-majority countries with politically compromised judiciaries reached diametrically opposite conclusions on closely related constitutional questions.

Taken together, these rulings pose a clear comparative puzzle. Holding religion constant and treating politics as the product rather than the cause, analyzing this outcome centres on judicial interpretation, social movements, and international human rights uptake as the channels through which the bounds of the decision were set.

Continued: https://www.mironline.ca/two-neighbours-two-courts-one-paradox-abortion-rights-in-the-us-and-mexico/

In ‘Scarlet Girls,’ a Debut Feature Director Tackles the Fact That Abortion Is Still “Completely Criminalized” in the Dominican Republic

Paula Cury discusses taking “the hard route” for her first feature film, premiering at Copenhagen doc fest CPH:DOX, finding “very brave” women to speak up, and the global backlash against women’s rights.

By Georg Szalai
March 11, 2026

Five women reflect on their experiences with forced motherhood and clandestine abortions in the Dominican Republic in Paula Cury’s debut feature, Scarlet Girls. After all, the Dominican Republic (DR) is still one of the few countries where abortion is criminalized without exception.

The film, exploring what it means to be a woman in the DR and the quiet violence of stigma, among other things, world premieres at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX on Thursday, March 12. It is featured in the Human:Rights competition section of the Danish festival’s 23rd edition, which runs March 11-22, and will then screen at SXSW.

Continued: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/scarlet-girls-film-interview-abortion-dominican-republic-1236524313/

11.03.2026

Film, Art, Books

Adrift documentary

Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX

“We will continue to move forward. There is no turning back”

By Guillermina Edith Juárez Leyva, human rights defender from Oaxaca, Mexico
6 March 2026
(for Amnesty International)

My name is Guillermina Edith Juárez Leyva and I am a Zapotec woman from Oaxaca, Mexico. I am the founder and legal representative of Mano Vuelta AC, an organization of indigenous and Afro-Mexican women who work for human rights from an anti-racist and intercultural perspective.

The name of our organization, Mano Vuelta, is inspired by an ancestral form of community organization that promotes work and sharing for the common good. If I plant corn and need help, I can ask for it and then in return I help others with my work. These practices have sustained the lives of our communities since ancient times. This is also how we see the work of providing access to abortion.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/03/we-will-continue-to-move-forward-there-is-no-turning-back