Requests for abortions in Israel at record high, report says

Central Bureau of Statistics data show 99.5% of requests to terminate pregnancy approved in 2021; 50.1% of applications made by married women, 6.8% by women under 19

Nina Fox
Jan 17, 2023

Requests for abortions in Israel have reached a record high in 2021, says a new Central Bureau of Statistics report published Tuesday.

According to the report, the Health Ministry's pregnancy termination committee had received 16,591 requests to terminate pregnancies, meaning 7.7 out of every 1,000 Israeli women between the ages 15-49 had sought an abortion throughout the year, same as in 2020.

Continued: https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/r1115teesj

17.01.2023

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Egyptian activists: We need to talk about abortion

Abortions are illegal in Egypt unless they are necessary to save a married woman's life. But that doesn't stop local women from having one. Egyptian society needs to acknowledge this, activists say

Diana Hodali
Jan 17, 2023

The memory of that day is still very painful for Noura. She was in Cairo's City Stars Mall when she suddenly felt cramps, accompanied by heavy bleeding: "I sat down on the toilet. I felt something heavy flowing from my uterus. I put my hand under me to catch the blood."

Noura is not using her real name here. She had an unplanned pregnancy at the age of 23 while in an extramarital relationship with a man called Khaled.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-activists-we-need-to-talk-about-abortion/a-64408518

17.01.2023

Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Ghadeer Ahmed Eldamaty

self-managed abortion

American evangelicals open a new antiabortion front — in Israel

by Shira Rubin
November 18, 2022

JERUSALEM — In a country with one of the world’s most liberal abortion policies, groups funded by conservative American evangelicals are targeting women with a message familiar in the United States but novel to most Israelis: Abortion is “murder.”

The idea resonated with Shir Palla Shitrit, 21, when she first contacted the “pregnancy crisis center” run by Be’ad Chaim — Hebrew for “pro-life.” In an office decorated with fetus diagrams, framed biblical passages and a ceramic sculpture of a breastfeeding mother, counselors offered her a year’s worth of material support and a place in a growing grass-roots community.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/18/israel-abortion-roe-america-evangelicals/

From Iran, Solidarity With American Women

9/26/2022
by NASRIN SOTOUDEH

Editor’s note: For almost two weeks, protests have been raging across Iran, triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was in custody of the morality police at the time of her death. Her alleged crime: not abiding by the country’s hijab rules. Iranian human rights lawyer and long-time friend of Ms. magazine, Nasrin Sotoudeh has spent her career fighting for the rights of women and minorities in the Middle East. In a letter to Ms. (below), Sotoudeh connected what’s happening with Iran to the global fight for women’s rights.

My warmest greetings from Iran. I would like to express my deep and sincere solidarity with the staff and readers of Ms. magazine.

This bond is rooted in my appreciation for your unreserved support for me and my husband during the harsh days of my imprisonment. With pressure that tightened like a noose around our family on a daily basis, your coverage of human rights abuses in and out of Iran’s prisons, along with your clear personal concern, brought us (and others) much-needed hope.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2022/09/26/nasrin-sotoudeh-iran-us-women-abortion-rights/

26.09.2022

Iran Moves To Tighten Abortion Restrictions

July 04, 2022
By Golnaz Esfandiari

Maryam ended her pregnancy two years ago
using abortion pills. Her husband supported her. The couple already have a boy
and a girl, and they decided they did not want a third child.

Abortion pills are not easily accessible in Iran due to government
restrictions. Maryam obtained misoprostol through a pharmacist who was
recommended by a friend.

Continued: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-moves-to-tighten-abortion-restrictions/31928363.html

04.07.2022

Iran Association of Midwives

Israel abortion reforms approved amid Roe v. Wade crisis

Israel's Labor, Welfare and Health Committee approved abortion reforms, which would allow women easier access to treatment.

By TAMAR URIEL-BEERI
JUNE 27, 2022

The Knesset Labor, Welfare and Health Committee on Monday approved abortion reforms in a preliminary reading after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The amendment would allow women to apply online to get an abortion and to receive a pharmacological abortion in more accessible places.

Continued: https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/pregnancy-and-birth/article-710503

27.06.2022

pregnancy termination committee

The battle over Israel’s abortion laws explained

Possible overturning of landmark US case Roe vs Wade shines spotlight on abortion rights across the world

By SHIRA SILKOFF
MAY 28, 2022

The topic of abortion has been much discussed in recent weeks, following the leaking of a US Supreme Court draft indicating the court would vote in favor of overturning Roe vs Wade, the landmark ruling from 1973 that protected a person’s absolute right to an abortion from excessive government restrictions.

The news that the highest court in the US was working to remove these rights that have been enshrined for decades, at a time when other countries such as Northern Ireland and New Zealand have only recently legalized or decriminalized abortion, has sent many reeling and placed a sharp spotlight on abortion rights across the world.

Continued: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-707737

Iran – Tasnim News Agency Raises Alarm Over Abortion Numbers

5/26/2022

In an attack on abortion in Iran, the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, proclaimed Thursday that 1,000 “Shiite children are murdered by their parents every day.”

Tasnim cited data from the health ministry dating back five years. The agency claimed that only ten of 1,000 abortions had been legal, with 93 percent of the women married and 7 percent single. A daily figure of 1,000 is half the 2,000 – or around 700,000 a year – claimed last year by Amirhossein Bankipour, head of the parliament’s population committee.

Continued: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202205265655

26.05.2022

Ali Khamenei

Amirhossein Bankipour

Iran Revolutionary Guard

Israel’s health minister wants to make it easier to get abortions

By SHIRA HANAU/JTA
DECEMBER 3, 2021

As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Washington on the most significant abortion case to reach the court in decades, Israel’s health minister laid out his plans to simplify what he called Israel’s “chauvinistic” abortion process on Wednesday.

“It should be a given — the rights to a woman’s body are the woman’s alone,” Nitzan Horowitz told the Israeli news site Ynet. “Any decision or medical procedure such as the choice of whether to perform an abortion must be in the hands of the woman. We have no moral right to decide for her how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.”

Continued: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israels-health-minister-wants-to-make-it-easier-to-get-abortions-687730

03.12.2021

Iran doubles down on abortion and contraception restrictions

By Miriam Berger
Dec 1, 2021

Iranians long had degrees of access to free contraception at public health facilities, part of family planning policies aimed at limiting population growth.

In recent years, policy shifts have whittled away such programs. The changes have culminated under a new law — meant to address an emergent demographic shift — which critics have decried as a major setback for women’s and reproductive rights.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/01/iran-doubles-down-abortion-contraception-restrictions/