European Citizens’ Initiative on abortion rights reaches milestone after hearing

Thursday 4 December 2025
By The Brussels Times Newsroom

The European Parliament hosted on Tuesday a hearing on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) “My Voice, My Choice” on safe and accessible abortion for all women in the EU.

At the heart of the initiative is a concrete proposal which respects that health is a national competency: A European financial mechanism that supports EU Member States in providing access to safe abortion care free of charge to women without access in their own country and does not interfere with national legislations.

Continued:; https://www.brusselstimes.com/1867634/pro-choice-european-citizens-initiative-holds-hearing-in-the-european-parliament


USA – Murder, Pardons and Impunity: How Antiabortion Violence Escalated Under Trump

9/16/2025
by Jodi Enda, Ms. Magazine

Her friend lay dead, shot at home by an assassin who had killed two people and wounded two more. The suspect had vanished, leaving behind his fake police car and notebooks listing several dozen potential targets who bore at least one commonality: their support of abortion rights.

One of the names scribbled on the list was her own. Threats weren’t new to Ruth Richardson. She had received them when she introduced her first bill—on gun safety—in the Minnesota House of Representatives. She had received them in her current job as CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States. This threat, though, was different. Her friend Melissa Hortman was dead.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/09/16/anti-abortion-violence-trump-melissa-hortman/


Deadly shootings in Minnesota have shaken abortion providers

The suspected shooter had a list of targets that included abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood affiliates and employees.

By Shefali Luthra, Grace Panetta
June 18, 2025

Abortion providers have long grappled with threats of political violence, but Saturday’s shootings targeting Minnesota lawmakers have put them on high alert, and many say they feel newly vulnerable.

Suspected shooter Vance Boelter had a list of targets that included other elected officials and abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood affiliates and employees, multiple outlets reported. Boelter had also previously spoken out against abortion, per multiple statements surfaced by news outlets.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2025/06/minnesota-shootings-abortion-clinics/


The Legacy of Dr. Warren Hern: Abortion Provider, Women’s Health Advocate and Target of Hate

1/17/2025
by Carole Joffe, Ms. Magazine

After more than 50 years of providing abortions, Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, Colo., will retire on Jan. 22, 2025. For years, he has been one of the most high-profile abortion doctors in the United States—one of only a handful of providers to perform abortions in the late second trimester and third trimester of pregnancy.

…In a letter to Ms. executive editor Kathy Spillar reflecting on his five-plus decades in medicine, Hern described his role and his clinic as “providing the safest, most compassionate and highest quality outpatient abortion services available anywhere.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/01/17/warren-hern-late-abortion-care/


USA – Abortion Bans Are Designed to Kill

'Pro-family’ politicians and lobbyists spent years carefully, strategically, and callously planning for our deaths

Jessica Valenti
Oct 15, 2024

I watched a movie recently about men who got away with horribly abusing women by erasing their memories. These men told themselves and their victims that it was better to forget—why relive the trauma? As if erasing the abuse was some favor they were doing for the women, rather than a transparent move to avoid responsibility.

I couldn’t help but think about what’s happening right now, in these critical weeks before the election, as Republican legislators work so hard to make women forget the horrors we’ve endured over the last two plus years. Anything to avoid responsibility for the nightmare they spent five decades creating.

Continued: https://jessica.substack.com/p/abortion-bans-are-designed-to-kill


THE FBI IS HUNTING A NEW DOMESTIC TERROR THREAT: ABORTION RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

After GOP pressure, FBI abortion “terrorism” investigations increased tenfold, government data shows.

Ken Klippenstein
June 15 2023

FOLLOWING A CONCERTED effort by Republicans to pressure law enforcement agencies to target activists supporting the right to abortion, the FBI dramatically increased its caseload on abortion-related “domestic terrorism.”

Last year, as the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sparked major protests nationwide, the FBI opened nearly 10 times as many investigations into cases of abortion-related domestic terrorism as it had in 2021, a new internal report reveals. While the report doesn’t say how many of these incidents were motivated by support for reproductive rights and how many were anti-abortion, the uptick follows calls by top Republicans in Congress for the bureau to pursue “pro-abortion terrorism.”

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2023/06/15/fbi-abortion-domestic-terrorism/


Abortion clinics regroup, rebuild after violent attacks: ‘There’s more work to be done’

Christine Fernando, USA TODAY
March 25, 2023

As a detective led her through the charred remains of the clinic, Julie Burkhart was heartbroken. Everything was black and melted. The smell was overwhelming. Fire and smoke damage had engulfed the building from the basement to the attic.

“I knew then that we were going to have a long road ahead,” said Burkhart, president of Wellspring Health Access in Casper, Wyoming.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/03/25/abortion-clinics-violence-attacks-rebound-rebuilding/11484439002/


“Women Are Going to Die”: A Late Abortion Doctor on the Dangers of Post-Roe America

Abigail Weinberg
July 19, 2022

Abortions that occur after 21 weeks gestation are vanishingly rare, accounting for about 1 percent of all abortions nationwide. The doctors who perform abortions later in pregnancy are even rarer: The 2013 documentary After Tiller cited just four doctors in the United States who performed abortions in the third trimester.

One of them is Dr. Warren Hern. He has operated in Boulder, Colorado, for decades, despite a constant onslaught of violence and harassment.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/warren-hern-boulder-late-abortion-doctor-interview-post-roe/


‘People want me dead’: abortion providers fear violence after Roe overturned

Danger is a daily reality for the health workers, and moments of upheaval raise the risk, expert says
Chris Stein
Sun 3 Jul 2022

Boulder, Colorado, has for decades made its abortion providers feel welcome. The city council passed one of the country’s first laws regulating how close demonstrators could get to patients seeking reproductive care, and residents took to the streets in protest when it became clear that the supreme court was ready to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, as it did last month.

“Boulder is probably the most pro-choice community in the country,” said Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic. “But there are people in the community who want me dead.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/03/abortion-providers-violence-danger-roe-wade


The Anti-Abortion Movement Killed People. Now Victims’ Families Face A Post-Roe World.

Bombings, assassinations and kidnappings: The anti-abortion movement has always had a violent wing that left families shattered.

By Christopher Mathias
Jun 13, 2022

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks, it will mark the culmination of a decades-long, multimillion-dollar legal effort by the American conservative movement to end abortion rights and force many pregnant people to give birth.

It will also be the culmination of a
multi-decade terror campaign.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anti-abortion-violence-murdered-families-roe-v-wade_n_62a37f2ae4b0cdccbe4fa969