USA – I Wanted an Abortion. My Friends Had Other Ideas.

“Progressive” anti-abortion activists claim to be a feminist wing of the movement. But when one of their former compatriots tried to end her pregnancy, they went to extreme lengths to stop her.

By Rebecca Grant
Nov 11, 2025

On the morning of June 26, 2024, Charlotte Isenberg woke up worried.

The 20-year-old was pregnant and had an appointment for an ultrasound at a Planned Parenthood in Charlotte, North Carolina. She didn’t dread the scan itself, a state requirement 72 hours before having a medication abortion. Instead, she was afraid of who might be waiting for her at the clinic.

After a 30-mile drive, Isenberg and her boyfriend pulled through the gate that protected the Planned Parenthood from prying eyes. It was as they backed into a parking space that Isenberg spotted her: a woman who’d traveled 400 miles from Washington, D.C. A once-friend whom Isenberg had not told the exact details of her appointment.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a69167837/charlotte-isenberg-anti-abortion-activist-story/

AUSTRALIA – ‘Why my abortion was the best thing that has ever happened to me’

A Perth woman has candidly opened up about why having an abortion was the “best thing” that has ever happened to her.

Ashlee Bunney
August 24, 2025

In 2020, at 32, I unexpectedly fell pregnant. After a lot of thought - I chose to have an abortion. It wasn’t easy, but it was right for me. I felt calm, certain, that I was handling it like a pro.

But trauma doesn’t always shout - it whispers. A year later, I started to hear it.

Twelve months after the procedure, sleep began to evade me. I felt detached from myself - moving through life in a kind of fog. I wasn’t just tired. I felt hollow. Like something was echoing inside me, but I didn’t know what it was saying.

Continued: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/why-my-abortion-was-the-best-thing-that-has-ever-happened-to-me/news-story/7cac949d9779c452f07878fe17339500

24.08.2025

Opinion

abortion is a blessing

USA – I’ve Kept This Secret For 56 Years. I’m Telling The Truth Now In The Hope That It Will Save Lives.

"I’m telling my story now because maybe it will help wake us up to the nightmare we’ve created."

By Cynthia Ehrenkrantz
Jul 20, 2025

“If your period is late, here’s what you do: Boil up half a bottle of red wine and drink it while it’s hot. Then stand on a chair and jump off several times. That should take care of it.”

It was March 1957, and I’d just finished packing my trunk. I would be leaving the next day to sail from England to the United States, where I would marry Ezra, my soldier-fiancé. Those were my mother’s final words of advice. Not “never go to bed angry,” or “pick your battles,” but how to abort a fetus.

Continued; https://www.huffpost.com/entry/92-year-old-secret-abortion-rights_n_68753d18e4b02462fe7a1980

20.07.2025

UK – I had an abortion as a teen. I hope this historic law change makes that decision feel lighter for women

Women across the UK finally, truly have the right to choose.

By Glamour
23 June 2025

Evelyn* had a medical abortion (also known as the abortion pill) at age 19 after unexpectedly falling pregnant. Had her termination not been deemed necessary by two doctors who “authorised” the procedure, she could have found herself facing prosecution with a maximum penalty of life in prison. Read her story, in her own words, below.

Seven years ago, I was enjoying my final few weeks of the summer before packing up and moving away for my first year of university. In what seemed like a cruel turn of events, it was at one of my university send-off parties that I found out I was pregnant.

My then-boyfriend and I were sexually active at the time, and we were using barrier methods to prevent pregnancy. Suffice it to say, one of the condoms must have failed.

Continued: https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/abortion-law-change-teenage-abortion-experience

23.06.2025

UK – In 1961, my abortion was unmentionable; why next week’s vote is important.

Diane Munday had an abortion in 1961. Here she explains to Sofia Fenton why she dedicated her life to reforming the law.

By Sofia Fenton and Diane Munday
16 June 2025

When the 1967 Abortion Act passed, I sat on the terrace of the House of Commons with my fellow campaigners and marked the moment with half a glass of champagne. Half because it was only a partial victory – I felt it was a necessary compromise but that the job was far from finished.

One in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Yet abortion has not been decriminalised. A woman must get the sign-off of two doctors. Two doctors who have likely never seen her before nor will they see her again but are strangers making one of the most important decisions of someone’s life. It was a requirement I opposed even in the 1960s – but it was the price of getting the bill through Parliament.

Continued: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle/a65075635/diane-munday-abortion-bill/

16.06.2025

Opinion

1861 Offences against the Person Act

Canada – Review: Personal and political collide in ‘Hypothetical Baby’ at Factory Theatre

Performer-writer shares her abortion experience

By: Andrea Perez
March 6, 2025

DO YOU HAVE a uterus? What kind of birth control do you use? Have you ever had an abortion? And … did these questions make you uncomfortable? Performer and writer Rachel Cairns has decided to answer these publicly for her audiences and turn her abortion, a typically intensely private affair, into art.

Hypothetical Baby, a Nightwood Theatre production in association with The Howland Company, cracks open a world of socio-economic, personal and grander political questions about abortion in Canada and beyond. After its successful indie run in 2023, in this tight 90-minute show, Cairns tells the real-life story of her own unexpected IUD pregnancy in 2019 while working as an artist (and shoe shiner) in Downtown Toronto. This solo show is charming, honest and nimbly high-energy.

Continued: https://nextmag.ca/review-personal-and-political-collide-in-hypothetical-baby-at-factory-theatre/

06.03.2025

Film, Art, Books

abortion story

Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster

Hypothetical Baby

one-woman play about abortion

Rachel Cairns

Canada

Activism

Jordan’s Abortion Conundrum

The country’s strict laws leave women with impossible choices and facing financial struggles, stigma and dangerous procedures

Meghan Davidson Ladly
November 29, 2024

Amal watches her children play on the living room floor of her house on a quiet street in a suburb of Jordan’s capital. As dusk settles over the sloping hills of Amman, she sinks into a sofa and lights a cigarette, adjusting her hijab.

“It is illegal, but you can’t know how I feel,” she says. “I couldn’t think of anything except getting rid of this pregnancy. Even my kids — I couldn’t think of them. And I knew I had to make a decision.”

Continued: https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/jordan-abortion-conundrum/

Why the American abortion debate is affecting access in Kenya

Oct 31, 2024
By Neha Wadekar, Joe Mwihia, Job Wander, Associated Press
Video: 8:42 minutes (with transcript)

Abortion is a closely watched issue in this year's election, and not just in the U.S. As president, Trump cut funding for international groups that offer and counsel on abortion services. With support from The Pulitzer Center, special correspondent Neha Wadekar reports from Kenya where advocates are watching for who wins. A warning, this story contains accounts of sexual and gender-based violence.

Continued: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-american-abortion-debate-is-affecting-access-in-kenya

South Australia’s upper house narrowly rejects ‘Trumpian’ bill to wind back abortion care

Legislation to force women seeking a later termination to be induced, deliver the baby alive, and keep it or adopt it out, defeated by 10 votes to nine

Tory Shepherd
Wed 16 Oct 2024

A child that faces a bedridden life. A girl with intellectual disabilities raped by a family member. Victims of domestic violence or reproductive coercion. There are a variety of distressing reasons women have later stage terminations.

There is no easy definition of when an abortion is considered “late” or “late-term”. It is generally considered anything after 20 weeks’ gestation, but the states and territories have a patchwork of legislation with various milestones.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/16/south-australias-upper-house-narrowly-rejects-trumpian-bill-to-wind-back-abortion-care

The Journey of an Abortion in South Carolina

When, at five months pregnant, Emma Giglio discovered her baby had multiple anomalies in utero, she and her husband made the heartrending decision to terminate their pregnancy. But that was just the beginning of her agony.

By Stephanie McNeal
Photography by Lindsey Shorter
September 5, 2024

It shouldn’t be this hard to find a birthday cake in a college town in suburban Maryland, even on short notice.

That’s what Emma Giglio thought as she walked up and down the busy streets, a bleak January air whipping her face. There were fast food joints, sports bars, casual restaurants offering every cuisine you could imagine. Just nowhere, seemingly, to buy a birthday cake.

Emma and her husband, Zach, kept going. Because they had to, even though at 24 weeks of pregnancy, Emma’s gait had changed. She was so much bigger with this baby than she’d been with her older sons, but that’s how it goes when it’s your third.

Continued: https://www.glamour.com/story/election-2024-the-journey-of-my-abortion-in-south-carolina

05.09.2024