The Anti-Abortion Movement Is Changing the Rules in Plain Sight

16 Jul 2026
Alisa Berry Ryan

The anti-abortion movement does not always start by announcing a ban. Sometimes it starts with a new definition. A benefits rule. A court case. A “religious freedom” argument. A Victorian law dragged back into use because apparently the 1800s did not do enough damage the first time around.

That is the pattern running through this week’s news.

From Spain to the US, conservative politicians, far-right parties and Christian-right legal groups are using different tactics to push the same idea: that embryos should have more legal protection, while women should have less control over their own pregnancies.

Continued: https://abortionrights.org.uk/the-weekly-spotlight-the-anti-abortion-movement-is-changing-the-rules-in-plain-sight/

Global – When equity becomes politically contested

13 July 2026

Some projects confront questions of equity not because they cross borders, but because they cut straight through highly polarised debates. Sociologist Marta Bucholc examines how human rights are invoked and contested in Mozambique, Senegal, Poland, Ireland, Argentina and Honduras, where abortion is illegal, strongly restricted or deeply stigmatised. Even talking about it can be seen as a political act.

From the outset, Bucholc’s concern was not only how to protect participants, but how to prevent the project itself from being misinterpreted or misused. ‘Abortion is a divisive topic almost everywhere in the world,’ she notes, ‘and in countries where it is illegal, strongly restricted or deeply stigmatised, even having a conversation about it is often construed as a political declaration.’ She wanted her project Abortion Figurations, based at the University of Warsaw, to be ‘a study of human rights in abortion debates and not an exercise in clandestine persuasion.’ This was her way of preserving research integrity against anticipated political pressure, while also recognising strong calls for more engaged scholarship in this area.

Continued: https://erc.europa.eu/news-events/magazine-article/when-equity-becomes-politically-contested

13.07.2026

Low-Cost Solutions to Maternal Mortality Already Exist

As foreign aid declines, policymakers in lower-income countries must increasingly focus on making better use of scarce resources. When it comes to maternal mortality, that means investing in simple, proven, and affordable interventions for postpartum hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, and obstructed labor.

Jul 9, 2026
Ifeanyi M. Nsofor

SILVER SPRING—In early June, Melinda French Gates pledged $215 million to improve women’s health globally, with a focus on underfunded areas such as maternal care in Africa. The announcement comes at a critical moment. Every day, more than 700 women die during and following pregnancy and childbirth, despite the fact that many of the leading causes of maternal mortality are preventable with affordable, evidence-based interventions.

These maternal deaths are not evenly distributed. Roughly 87% of them occur in Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, with the latter alone accounting for nearly 70%. By contrast, high-income countries experience far lower rates, although stark inequities remain. In the United States, for example, Black women are more than three times as likely as white women to die from maternity-related causes.

Continued; https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/increase-funding-for-proven-simple-solutions-to-maternal-mortality-by-ifeanyi-m-nsofor-2026-07

09.07.2026

postpartum hemorrhage

U.S. taking ‘obstructionist’ approach to UN’s efforts to foster equality: ambassador

By Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
July 4, 2026

OTTAWA — The Trump administration is hindering work at the United Nations on advancing equality, says Canada’s UN Ambassador David Lametti.

“There has been a general obstructionist policy, (a) cantankerous policy with respect to women’s rights, a woman’s right to choose, with respect to LGBTQ+ rights (and) gender equality,” Lametti told The Canadian Press when asked to describe American actions at the UN.

“There’s a pushback any time you see the word ‘climate change’ anywhere, or you see ‘gender equality’ anywhere,” he added.

Continued: https://winnipeg.citynews.ca/2026/07/04/u-s-taking-obstructionist-approach-to-uns-efforts-to-foster-equality-ambassador/

‘It is comforting to be haunted’: how attitudes to abortion have changed through the ages

The abortion debate – the language of life, choice and rights – severs women, and their pain, from history. I don’t want to forget my abortion and I don’t want to forget theirs

By Erin Maglaque
Thu 2 Jul 2026

The physical fact of my abortion caught me off guard. I had been so accustomed to defending abortion as an abstract right – as a right to privacy, to healthcare, to autonomy – that when it came to having one, I was surprised by the brutality of it. Fasting for hours before. Clammy and light-headed, my hands freezing and damp, in the clinic waiting room. Waves of contracting pain afterwards, the blood and the vomit from the anaesthesia, the days of cramping and bleeding. Soaking through pads. Cold sweat. I thought having an abortion would feel like the exercise of the hard-won autonomy of generations of feminists before me. But mostly it just hurt.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/jul/02/it-is-comforting-to-be-haunted-how-attitudes-to-abortion-have-changed-through-the-ages

10 key recommendations to track and combat the anti-rights youth movement

Ipas
July 2, 2026

Ipas’s 2026 report Future-Proofing: The Professionalization of an Anti-Rights Youth Generation examines the recruitment, funding, coordination, and mobilization of young people within anti-rights movements.

The report includes 10 key recommendations for countering the rising anti-rights youth movement—created in collaboration with a human rights-focused youth advisory panel.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/our-work/global-gender-and-rights-monitoring/10-key-recommendations-to-track-and-combat-the-anti-rights-youth-movement/

02.07.2026

Commentary

anti-rights youth movement

Future-Proofing: The Professionalization of an Anti-Rights Youth Generation

AI & Abortion Care: How people are using AI to find abortion care, and how this might be dangerous

22 June 2026
Chloe Hanse, Amnesty Feminist Network Committee Member

Abortion is a common healthcare procedure in the UK: 1 in 3 women will have one in their lifetime.[1] Despite this prevalence, it remains a heavily stigmatised and taboo topic. That gap, between how routine it is and how shameful it's made to feel, might explain why so many people now turn to Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots when they need information.

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Meta AI, and Grok have become a new way that people find information about abortion care.[2] These tools are fast, available at any hour, and they feel private [3]. You don't have to sift through pages of search results. For many people, asking a chatbot about abortion probably feels emotionally easier than calling a clinic. There is no receptionist, no unknown of how whoever picks up a helpline will react, no worry about ‘burdening’ a healthcare provider with questions. You just ask a question, and something answers, and it does so in a confident, authoritative tone that can make it easy to take the information at face value.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/get-involved/join-the-movement/join-a-group-or-network/amnesty-feminists/blog/ai-abortion-care-how-people-are-using-ai-to-find-abortion-care-and-how-this-might-be-dangerous/

Locked Away and Left to Expire: The Trump Administration’s Destructive Denial of Contraceptive Care

Samira Damavandi, Jessica D. Rosenberg, Guttmacher Institute
June 22, 2026

The Trump administration has wasted $434,317 in taxpayer dollars since January 2025 to store contraceptives that it refuses to distribute to women and girls in low-income countries. A report from the Office of Inspector General of US Agency for International Development (USAID) reveals that the administration has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in storage and transportation costs for the $9.7 million worth of family planning supplies that it abandoned in Belgium rather than allowing them to be used. (The supplies were originally purchased by USAID.) With every additional month that passes after June 2026, the administration will spend over $24,000 to store these products, which include birth control pills, implants, injectable contraceptives and IUDs.

This wasteful misuse of US government resources is part of the fallout from the administration’s disastrous and chaotic dismantling of USAID last year, which has already denied tens of millions of people in low-income countries access to the family planning services on which they relied to improve their health and futures.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/2026/06/locked-away-and-left-expire-trump-administrations-destructive-denial-contraceptive-care

22.06.2026

Commentary

Guttmacher Institute

Saving Lives and Taxpayer Dollars Act

UNFPA

United Nations Population Fund

US Agency for International Development

New OONI Report Documents Global Censorship of Women on Web Across Multiple Countries

June 11, 2026

A new report released today by Women on Web (WoW) and Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) documents evidence of the blocking of Women on Web domains across at least seven countries, which is an increase from three countries where blockages were documented in 2019. The findings of the report show that internet censorship is increasingly being used to restrict access to abortion information and care online.

Abortion Access Denied: Investigating the Global Censorship of Women on Web analyzes OONI network measurement data collected between November 2025 and April 2026. OONI documented evidence of blockages in Iran, Türkiye, the Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Kuwait and Argentina. The report also documents corporate firewall blocking affecting access to Women on Web domains in Poland, Kenya, Pakistan, and Georgia. Researchers observed a range of censorship techniques, including DNS tampering, TLS interference, injected block pages, connection resets, and IP blocking to impede internet users from accessing Women on Web’s sites.

Continued: https://www.womenonweb.org/en/news/new-ooni-report-documents-global-censorship-of-women-on-web-across-multiple-countries/

11.06.2026

Commentary

Research

Abortion Access Denied: Investigating the Global Censorship of Women on Web

censorship of abortion information

European Court of Human Rights

Maria Xynou

OONI

Open Observatory of Network Interference

Geneva Consensus Declaration: Institutionalizing Attacks on Women and LGBTQ+ Rights

May 28, 2026

Trump’s former Special Representative for Global Women’s Health and a long-time anti-abortion activist, Valerie Huber, argued recently in an opinion piece in The Hill that an international anti-abortion agreement she spearheaded is one of the “most underused diplomatic assets in America’s current foreign policy toolkit.”

Huber, now CEO of The Institute for Women’s Health, served during the first Trump administration, where she was instrumental in the creation of the October 2022 Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD). Signed by 41 countries, the GCD is a nonbinding international agreement with the stated goal of promoting better “health for women, the preservation of human life, strengthening of the family as the foundational unit of society, and protecting every nation’s national sovereignty in global politics.”

Continued: https://globalextremism.org/post/geneva-consensus-declaration/