How a network of women in Latin America transformed safe, self-managed abortions

June 8, 2025
By Marta Martínez, Liana Simstrom
Podcast: 41-Minute Listen

In November 1990, more than 3,000 women descended on the sleepy beach town of San Bernardo del Tuyú, Argentina, for what was becoming a legendary event.

Activists, doctors, academics, social workers and lawyers from across the Americas traveled all the way to attend a feminist gathering known as an Encuentro.

While they publicly debated their political demands, the piece of information that made the biggest impact on the future of abortion was exchanged in private, in whispers.

Continued; https://www.npr.org/2025/06/08/g-s1-68729/latin-america-abortion-activism


USA – Abortions Are Rising—Even After Dobbs. A New Book Explains Why.

“It’s a story of resistance and resilience and hope.”

Julianne McShane, Mother Jones
April 17, 2025

New data released this week reaffirmed a seemingly paradoxical reality of the post-Roe v. Wade era: Abortion rates have continued to rise despite the increasing restrictions nationwide.

The latest data, compiled by the abortion rights research and policy organization the Guttmacher Institute, shows that throughout 2024, clinicians provided more than one million abortions in states without total abortion bans, a slight increase compared to 2023. A closer look at the data reflects how healthcare providers and patients have adapted to changing circumstances—which have made access both more difficult and, in some ways, easier—since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization revoking the constitutional right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/abortions-are-rising-even-after-dobbs-a-new-book-explains-why/


Ethiopia pilot program shows private pharmacies can safely provide abortion with pills

April 10, 2025
Ipas - Published in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health

A pilot program by Ipas, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, and the Oromia Health Bureau proved that private pharmacies can safely expand access to abortion with pills—making essential care more available and closer to home for women in Ethiopia.

Between December 2021 and March 2023, the program trained and supported 41 private pharmacies to offer abortion with pills and related counseling—to users both with and without prescriptions. To understand how well the model worked, implementers tracked client experiences through pharmacy records and follow-up phone calls 21 days after care.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/ethiopia-pilot-program-shows-private-pharmacies-can-safely-provide-abortion-with-pills/


Why overturning Roe v. Wade only made America’s abortion rate rise

"They will never stop abortion": "After Dobbs" chronicles "the extraordinary efforts" to help women get healthcare

By Amanda Marcotte, Salon
March 25, 2025

Republican politicians owe the pro-choice community a thank you card for saving the right from the worst impacts of their policies. After the Supreme Court overturned nearly five decades of abortion rights in the infamous Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case, the fallout has been terrible: women nearly bleeding to death in hospital parking lots, women having to be airlifted to safer states for abortions, and, unfortunately, a few highly publicized deaths because abortion bans prevented timely care. Still, the impacts have fallen far short of what anti-choice activists hoped and what pro-choice activists feared. There haven't been hospitals filling up, as they did in the days before Roe v. Wade, with patients mutilated from botched abortions. It's not because women have, en masse, given up and submitted to forced childbirth. On the contrary, the birth rate continues to decline while the abortion rate went up after the Dobbs decision.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2025/03/25/why-overturning-roe-v-wade-only-made-americas-abortion-rate-rise/


Poland’s chief of police fined for disclosing private data of woman who had abortion

Mar 25, 2025
Notes From Poland

Poland’s data protection agency has fined the Polish police chief’s office 75,000 zloty (€18,000) for publicly disclosing the personal and health data of a woman who had taken abortion pills and was admitted to hospital due to having suicidal thoughts.

The Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) argued that the former chief of police, Jarosław Szymczyk, violated the EU’s data protection regulation (GDPR) by sharing private information, including details regarding her psychiatric treatment.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/03/25/polands-chief-of-police-fined-for-disclosing-private-data-of-woman-who-had-abortion/


A new Texas bill is coming after online abortion pills

The 43-page measure, introduced Friday, may be the most meaningful attempt this year to block the ordering and mailing of medication abortion.

March 14, 2025

Republican state legislators unveiled a new effort on Friday to derail the health care network that has helped people in Texas continue accessing abortion years after the Lone Star State banned the procedure.

The 43-page bill targets tech companies that allow patients to order abortion pills online and nonprofit funds that help them travel out of state for care and gives new power to the state’s attorney general to prosecute abortion providers. Introduced by influential state legislators in the state’s House and Senate and backed by Texas Right to Life, a leading anti-abortion group, this is the most sweeping abortion bill introduced in the state since the fall of Roe v. Wade almost three years ago.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2025/03/texas-bill-abortion-pills/


USA – Where the Conservative War on Abortion Pills Is Headed

By Andrea González-Ramírez, the Cut
March 12, 2025

In his nearly two months in office, President Donald Trump has only made small moves to advance his anti-abortion agenda. But his Justice Department’s decisions to enforce a law that protects abortion clinics from violence only in “extraordinary” cases and to stop defending a Biden-era lawsuit against Idaho that sought to protect access to emergency abortion care in hospitals send a clear signal: The federal government will not defend what curtailed abortion rights remain post-Dobbs. Now, Republican lawmakers emboldened by that message are going after their most urgent target: abortion pills.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/republicans-unleash-new-attacks-on-abortion-pills.html


Activists Open Abortion Clinic Opposite Polish Parliament

Claudia Ciobanu, Warsaw, BIRN
March 10, 2025

In a challenge to Poland’s government, which has failed to legalise abortion despite its election promises, activists have opened a clinic in the centre of Warsaw where women can receive support when taking abortion pills.

“We want every person coming here to have the feeling they are surrounded by trust and care, that this is a safe place. We have the knowledge, we have the experience, we really can help with abortions,” said Justyna Wydrzynska, one of the founders of a Warsaw clinic that opened on Friday as a place where women can come to perform a medical abortion or consult on other termination options.

Continued: https://balkaninsight.com/2025/03/10/activists-open-abortion-clinic-opposite-polish-parliament/


Abortion access under threat in Milei’s Argentina

Buenos Aires (AFP) – Four years after Argentina became the first big Latin American country to legalize abortion, women are finding it hard to access terminations due to President Javier Milei's "chainsaw" economics and anti-feminist diatribes, critics say.

March 6, 2025

At a women's sexual health NGO in the town of Chivilcoy, 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) west of Buenos Aires, abortion pills are handed out sparingly because of reduced state-sponsored supplies.

Each week, about 15 women in Chivilcoy request misoprostol and mifepristone -- two medications used to end pregnancy -- but some now leave empty-handed, Cecilia Robledo, a local councilor who runs the organization, told AFP by telephone.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250306-abortion-access-under-threat-in-milei-s-argentina


Why foreigners in Czechia face hidden barriers to abortion

Despite legal abortion access, foreign women—especially non-EU nationals—face bureaucratic, financial, and legal hurdles that can delay or deny care.

Elizabeth Zahradnicek-Haas
March 7, 2025

Abortion is legal in Czechia, but foreign women, particularly those from outside the EU, face numerous obstacles when seeking safe and timely abortion care.

The latest report from The Abortion Support Alliance Prague (ASAP), found that nearly half of the 70-plus state hospitals surveyed were uncertain about providing abortions to non-citizens, while 43 percent of hospitals refused to provide abortion services to EU citizens, either due to legal uncertainty or restrictive internal policies.

Continued: https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/legal-but-inaccessible-the-hidden-barriers-to-abortion-for-foreigners-in-czechia