The Trump administration kills children abroad while being ‘pro-life’ at home

In Georgia, a woman was charged with murder after allegedly taking pills to induce a termination. Yet America happily drops bombs on children abroad

Arwa Mahdawi
Sat 21 Mar 2026

How many children has the US helped kill this week in the Middle East? It’s hard to keep track, but Unicef reports that more than 1,800 children in the region have been killed or injured since the US and Israel started a war with Iran on 28 February.

In Lebanon, a US-backed Israel is killing or wounding a classroom’s worth of children every day, Unicef’s deputy executive director told Reuters. That’s just after killing more than 20,000 children in Gaza in two years, all with the help of US taxpayer dollars.

Classrooms full of massacred children sounds pretty shocking to any normal person. But remember, when it comes to the Middle East, the situation is always complicated. Certainly, our lawmakers aren’t losing any sleep over dead brown kids.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/21/trump-administration-pro-life-ice-israel-palestine

UK – Vulnerable women in England still being arrested over suspected illegal abortions

Nottinghamshire and Met police made arrests in past year, despite MPs voting to decriminalise in England and Wales

Hannah Al-Othman, The Guardian
Sun 15 Mar 2026

Vulnerable women in England are still being arrested and facing police investigations over suspected illegal pregnancy terminations, despite parliament backing changes to the law to decriminalise abortion.

Responding to a freedom of information request, Nottinghamshire police and the Metropolitan police confirmed they had arrested women suspected of illegal terminations between June last year and this January.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/15/women-arrested-suspected-illegal-abortion-england-police

15.03.2026

News

arresting women for abortion

Harriet Wistrich

Jonathan Lord

Louise McCudden

MSI Reproductive Choices

National Police Chiefs’ Council

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

UK – Abortion is close to decriminalisation. But how quickly can rights and progress be rolled back?

More than 100 women are believed to have been arrested on suspicion of illegal abortion over the last five years in England and Wales, but a new law will offer greater protections. The Big Issue asks experts if rights could still be under threat

Isabella McRae
13 Oct 2025

Women have been prosecuted for having an abortion for centuries. Even in recent years, in this country, women suspected of an illegal abortion have been arrested straight from the hospital ward, their homes searched and their children taken away. But a new law set to be passed in England and Wales means that abortion is a step closer to decriminalisation.

Abortion was legalised in 1967, meaning women can have an abortion up to 23 weeks and six days of a pregnancy, provided two doctors agree it meets certain criteria. The laws which are currently used to prosecute women in England were created in the Victorian era.

Continued: https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/abortion-decriminalisation-womens-rights-uk/

UK – Police told how to search a woman’s home and her phone for evidence she’s had an abortion

Abortion providers say the new guidance proves how out of touch the police are – feeling women in vulnerable situations deserve compassion over prosecutions

By Jennifer Savin
19 May 2025

As anti-abortion groups in the UK step up their tactics and women's rights are being rolled back globally, the National Police Chiefs' Council has issued guidance in the UK telling officers how to search women's phones, menstrual-tracking apps and homes following a pregnancy loss, if they're suspected of having had an illegal abortion.

Branding the guidance 'harrowing' and flagging concerns that police did not consult with abortion providers before issuing it, Katie Saxon, Chief Strategic Communications Officer at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said, "As an abortion provider, we know how the police treat women suspected of breaking abortion law. But to see it in black and white, after years of criticisms of the way an outdated law is enforced, is harrowing.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a64814425/police-guidance-abortion-drugs/

19.05.2025

News

arresting women for abortion

bodily autonomy

Clue

Louise McCudden

MSI Reproductive Choices

National Police Chiefs’ Council

Offences Against the Person Act

Why abortion rights in the UK are getting more and more perilous

Campaigners say confused health professionals are driving the increasing prosecutions of women. Others blame the police. But ultimately, the Crown Prosecution Service has questions to answer

Zoe Williams
Mon 19 May 2025

Earlier this month, Nicola Packer was found not guilty of illegally terminating a pregnancy, after taking abortion pills beyond the legal limit of 10 weeks. She had spent more than four years living in the shadow of this prosecution, every detail of which – as reported by Phoebe Davis – is completely harrowing. In 2020, Packer was arrested before she left Chelsea and Westminster hospital, still bleeding from major surgery.

Packer is one of six women to be prosecuted for this crime in England since the end of 2022, under the Offences Against the Person Act, which had previously only been used in such cases three times since its introduction in 1861. Even that striking, inexplicable figure doesn’t begin to describe how many people have fallen victim to these prosecutions. There have been cases of women denied contact with their children while police investigated a charge that came to nothing. A teenager who had a late miscarriage was arrested in front of her entire street – her privacy, her education, her peace of mind completely destroyed.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2025/may/19/why-abortion-rights-in-the-uk-are-getting-more-and-more-perilous

UK – Police could search homes and phones after pregnancy loss

New national guidance suggests officers look for menstrual tracking apps or abortion drugs

Saturday 17 May 2025
Phoebe Davis

Police have been issued guidance on how to search women’s homes for abortion drugs and check their phones for menstrual cycle tracking apps after unexpected pregnancy loss.

New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on “child death investigation” advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy” in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC, which sets strategic direction for policing across the country UK, also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy”. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, “such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers”, it states.

Continued: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/police-could-search-homes-and-seize-phones-after-sudden-pregnancy-loss

UK – Prosecuted, shamed and traumatised for mistake of taking abortion pills too late

In 2020, Nicola Packer had an abortion - then was arrested and put on trial. Now, found not guilty, she hopes she will be the last woman in history prosecuted under England’s archaic law

Friday 16 May 2025
Phoebe Davis

Nicola Packer was still bleeding from major surgery when she was arrested, escorted by two police officers out of hospital, put in the back of a van and taken to Charing Cross police station.

She saw strangers’ faces, patients and staff staring at her. “You look around to see if people are looking at you, thinking, ‘Oh my God, what has she done?”

Packer is sitting on her sofa at home in a small seaside town. The living room leads out on to a patio covered in flower pots, where she likes to spend her evenings after work.

Continued: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/prosecuted-shamed-and-traumatised-for-mistake-of-taking-abortion-pills-too-late

USA – What Would It Mean to Defend All Abortions?

Democrats love to avoid it, and Republicans love to lie about it. But later-abortion care has never been more important.

Amy Littlefield
May 13, 2025

Ayana, 28 years old and 28 weeks pregnant, eases herself onto the procedure table at Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland. She is a Black woman with the tiny bearing and erect posture of a bird. Above her head, a flock of pink and blue butterflies decorates the ceiling. In a few minutes, a doctor will perform an injection to the fetal heart to end her pregnancy.

Ayana had spent months in turmoil over this abortion. As she chased after her two older kids while lugging her 1-year-old on family outings to the arcade and the movies, she tried to imagine hauling two car seats instead of one. While she changed her baby’s diapers, she thought about what a newborn would subtract from him. The family was already stretched thin.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/defending-all-abortions/

UK woman accused of using pills for illegal abortion during Covid lockdown

Nicola Packer, 44, was arrested at a London hospital after reporting a miscarriage in 2020, court told

Hannah Al-Othman
Thu 24 Apr 2025

A woman has gone on trial in London accused of illegally taking pills in order to induce an abortion during the second coronavirus lockdown.

Nicola Packer, 44, was arrested in November 2020 after she went to hospital having miscarried a foetus, and later reported to staff that she had taken abortion medication.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/24/uk-woman-accused-using-pills-abortion-covid-lockdown

24.04.2025

News

Abortion Act 1967

arresting women for abortion

Marie Stopes

MSI International

Nicola Packer

prosecuting women for abortion

South Korea Police Investigate YouTuber For Late-term Abortion Video

by AFP - Agence France Presse
August 12, 2024

South Korean police said Monday they were investigating a YouTuber who vlogged about undergoing a late-term abortion, sparking online outrage and calls from the country's health ministry for a murder probe.

The woman, whose identity police withheld, claimed in a video posted on Google-owned YouTube in June to have undergone an abortion in her thirty-sixth week of pregnancy, saying she had only discovered she was pregnant very late in the process.

Continued: https://www.barrons.com/news/south-korea-police-investigate-youtuber-for-late-term-abortion-video-6276ea27

12.08.2024