Polish activist on trial for aiding abortion

A Polish human rights activist has been accused of illegally giving abortion pills to a woman seeking to end a pregnancy. She's now on trial in a Warsaw court, facing up to three years in prison.

Monika Sieradzka
Oct 18, 2022

It's a gray morning in Warsaw, where a couple dozen police officers have encircled the courthouse with 10 large vehicles. They are here to protect two large demonstrations at what is expected to be a spectacular trial.

Some 50 people have gathered in front of the building in the Polish capital to show their solidarity with Justyna Wydrzynska, a 48-year-old activist from the Abortion Dream Team network who stands accused of aiding and abetting a pregnancy termination. That's against the law in Poland, and carries a sentence of up three years in prison.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/poland-activist-on-trial-in-warsaw-for-aiding-abortion/a-63483151

USA – The New Abortion Underground

Stephania Taladrid reports on a network of volunteers distributing abortion medication to women in states that ban the procedure. Plus, Andrew Sean Greer on his new novel, “Less Is Lost.”

With David Remnick
October 14, 2022
25-minute podcast

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the contributor Stephania Taladrid has been following a network of women who are secretly distributing abortion pills across the United States. The network has its roots in Mexico, where some medications used for at-home abortion are available at a lower cost over the counter. Volunteers—they call themselves “pill fairies”—are sourcing the pills at Mexican pharmacies and bringing them over the border. The work is increasingly perilous: in states like Texas, abetting an abortion is considered a felony, carrying long prison sentences. But, to Taladrid’s sources, it’s imperative. “I mean, there’s nothing else to do, right?” one woman in Texas, who had an abortion using the medication she received from a pill fairy, said. “You can’t just lie down and accept it. You can’t.”

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/the-new-abortion-underground

14.10.2022

self-induced abortion

The Post-Roe Abortion Underground

A multigenerational network of activists is getting abortion pills across the Mexican border to Americans.

By Stephania Taladrid
October 10, 2022

The handoff was planned for late afternoon on a weekday, at an underused trailhead in a Texas park. The young woman carrying the pills, whom I’ll call Anna, arrived in advance of the designated time, as was her habit, to throw off anyone who might try to use her license plates to trace her identity. She felt slightly absurd in her disguise—sun hat, oversized sunglasses, plain black mask. But the pills in her pocket were used to induce abortions, and in Texas, her home state, their distribution now required such subterfuge, along with burner phones and the encrypted messaging app Signal. Since late June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas and thirteen other states had effectively banned abortion, and more were sure to follow. In some of the states, laws that originated as far back as the nineteenth century had been restored. Providing the tools for an abortion in Texas had become a felony that could lead to years in prison, and a fellow-citizen could sue Anna and collect upward of ten thousand dollars for every abortion she was found to abet.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/17/the-post-roe-abortion-underground

Abortion pills are being widely used in Nigeria: Women and suppliers talk about their experiences

September 29, 2022
by Akanni Ibukun Akinyemi, Akinrinola Bankole, Melissa Stillman, Onikepe Owolabi and Temitope Erinfolami, The Conversation

Unintended pregnancy is common among women of reproductive age in Nigeria and a substantial number end in abortion. Annually between 2015 and 2019, almost three million pregnancies were unintended. Forty eight percent ended in abortion.

Many of these abortions are unsafe and some result in serious maternal morbidity or death. The main reason for this is that termination is only allowed legally in Nigeria if a woman's life is in danger. This drives women to obtain abortions clandestinely through unqualified providers using inappropriate methods.

Continued: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09-abortion-pills-widely-nigeria-women.html

29.09.2022

USA – The Other Abortion Pill

In the U.S., medication abortion usually consists of two drugs. One of them has always mattered more.|

By Patrick Adams
SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

In the months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, demand for medication abortion has soared. The method already accounted for more than half of all abortions in the United States before the Court’s decision; now reproductive-rights activists and sites such as Plan C, which shares information about medication abortion by mail, are fielding an explosion in interest in abortion pills. As authorized by the FDA, medication abortion consists of two drugs. The first one, mifepristone, blocks the hormone progesterone, which is necessary for a pregnancy to continue. The second, misoprostol, brings on contractions of the uterus that expel its contents. The combination is, according to studies conducted in the U.S., somewhere between 95 percent and 99 percent effective in ending a pregnancy and is extremely safe.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/abortion-pill-misoprostol-effectiveness/671465/

Zimbabwe – Cooperation needed in dealing with illegal abortions

9 Sep 2022

The illegal abortion services through online platforms should be put to a stop immediately and individuals behind the practice arrested and prosecuted.

this paper reported on Tuesday that while abortion is illegal in the country, the dodgy individuals demand up to US$100 for pills to induce termination of pregnancies with promises of further treatment to clean the womb.

Continued: https://www.chronicle.co.zw/comment-co-operation-needed-in-dealing-with-illegal-abortions/

09.09.2022

Mpilo Central Hospital

Hundreds of Americans a week are seeking abortion help from Mexico – and most of them want a safe hand-off of abortion drugs at the border

Isabella Zavarise and Azmi Haroun
Aug 21, 2022

Over the last decade, Mexico's movement to access abortion has notched several victories in the halls of justice. But north of the border, the landscape of abortion availability continues to move in the opposite direction.

Fifteen years ago, abortion was a crime in Mexico. In 2021, the Mexican Supreme Court challenged the ruling, stating that abortion would no longer be criminalized. In states like Mexico City and Oaxaca, abortion is legal. Now, Mexican advocates told Insider that Americans are crossing the border for support that is difficult to find – or illegal – in some US states.

Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-americans-a-week-are-seeking-abortion-help-from-mexico-2022-8

The web is home to an illegal bazaar for abortion pills. The FDA is ill-equipped to stop it.

Experts say the sites pose a public health threat that is likely to grow.

By RUTH READER
Aug 1, 2022

Enter “buy cytotec online cheap” into Google’s search engine and the first four results are sites that illegally offer to ship the abortion pills without a prescription.

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that gave states the right to ban the procedure, it’s still possible to get abortion medication, even in states where it’s restricted, through telemedicine or by traveling across state lines. But the patchwork of state rules is nonetheless fertile ground for scammers looking to make money off desperate abortion patients who don’t know how to navigate them.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/01/the-web-is-home-to-an-illegal-bazaar-for-abortion-pills-the-fda-is-ill-equipped-to-stop-it-00048802

USA – Abortion pills are becoming more commonly used but won’t be a post-Roe ‘panacea’

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN
Tue July 19, 2022

In light of last month's Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and revoked the constitutional right to abortion, much of the Biden administration's response has been focused on protecting access to medication abortion.

Mifepristone -- a pill used to medically induce abortion in combination with another drug, misoprostol -- is approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration, and some have argued that its federal approval could take precedence over state laws attempting to ban it.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/health/medication-abortion-not-for-everyone/index.html

A Mexican network is smuggling abortion drugs to American women

By David Shortell, CNN
Wed July 13, 2022

Mexico City (CNN) One day late last month, as new abortion restrictions began taking shape in US states, three Mexican women quietly crossed into the country at different points along the border, dozens of abortion-inducing pills hidden in their belongings.

The medication, an FDA-approved two-drug combination, had traveled across the interior of Mexico in the previous days, handled by an underground network of some 30 organizations in the country.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/americas/mexican-network-abortion-drugs-usa-intl/index.html