Getting abortion pills into Ukraine during a war meant having to be creative

March 8, 2023
Gregory Warner
6-minute listen with transcript

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the supply of abortion pills dwindled. NPR reporters follow a secret effort to resupply doctors and help women with pregnancies made complicated by war.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This story takes us to the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a covert effort to resupply Ukrainian doctors with abortion pills. The story comes from our podcast, Rough Translation. Because of the secrecy of the doctor's mission and because of medical privacy, most of the people in this story are referred to by just one name or, in one case, no name at all. Here is Rough Translation host Gregory Warner and reporter Katz Laszlo.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/08/1161859625/getting-abortion-pills-into-ukraine-during-a-war-meant-having-to-be-creative


Billboards advise on how to get abortion pills in US states where procedure is banned

Mobile billboards on how to get access to pills by mail are being driven through college campuses in 14 states

Ed Pilkington in New York
Fri 3 Mar 2023

Women living under abortion bans in the US are being offered advice on how to get access to abortion pills by mail, through a system of mobile billboards which are being driven through college campuses in 14 states carrying the prohibition.

The billboards are the creation of Mayday.Health, a non-profit set up in the wake of the US supreme court’s ruling last June that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. The posters carry QR codes that link to online information providing a step-by-step guide on how to obtain the abortion pill even in states which have banned it.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/03/abortion-pill-billboards-us-states-bans


Fears mount around ‘catastrophic’ abortion pills case as decision nears
Conservative judges likely to decide fate of Texas lawsuit seeking to ban mifepristone nationwide

By Caroline Kitchener and  Perry Stein
February 5, 2023

Abortion rights advocates delivered a stark warning to the Biden administration’s top health official in a private meeting last week: It’s time to take seriously “fringe” threats that could wind up blocking abortion access across the country. Driving their anxiety is a Texas lawsuit brought by conservative groups seeking to revoke the decades-old government approval of a key abortion drug.

The suit has been widely ridiculed by legal experts as rooted in baseless and debunked arguments. But in recent weeks, abortion rights advocates and some in the Biden administration have grown increasingly concerned that the case is likely to be decided entirely by conservative judges who might be eager for a chance to restrict abortion access even in Democrat-led states, where the procedure has remained legal since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/05/abortion-pills-texas-lawsuit/


South Africa – Eastern Cape man caught selling abortion pills sentenced

Published Dec 9, 2022

Cape Town – An Eastern Cape man arrested after selling abortion pills to community members has been sentenced in the East London Magistrate’s Court.

Julius Kintu, 36, was convicted on charges of contravening the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act.

Continued: https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/eastern-cape/eastern-cape-man-caught-selling-abortion-pills-sentenced-5856ecab-838d-464d-9e1f-f2b85296f2df


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


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


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/