Global anti-feminist backlash gains ground after decades of equality gains

Spain and France justify enshrining the right to abortion in their Constitutions as a safeguard against a ‘reactionary’ wave that could roll back achievements

Marc Bassets, Berlin
OCT 31, 2025

History never advances in a straight line. Although, as Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Progress always moves in fits and starts: two steps forward, one step back. This is also the case with women’s rights and equality.

For a decade or more — in Western countries and in the Global South — there have been numerous cases of rights being stripped away after a long period of progress. This regression — according to progressive and liberal political leaders — is linked to the global rise of new forms of authoritarianism and nationalism.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-11-01/global-anti-feminist-backlash-gains-ground-after-decades-of-equality-gains.html

‘A direct attack’: US, European anti-rights groups descend on ‘family values’ events in Africa

Ultra-conservative groups from the US and Europe are attending a “family values” conference in Kenya this week – one of several planned in Africa this year – in what activists are describing as a “direct attack” on LGBT and women’s rights.

17/05/2025
By: Joanna YORK

The Pan-African conference on Family Values began in Nairobi on Monday with a call to wage a “biblical” fight for the family unit from Anne Mbugua, chairperson of event organiser the Africa Christian Professionals Forum.

The conference is one of several planned across Africa this year, backed by wealthy US ultra-Christian groups, including Family Watch International, Christian Council International, the Center for Family and Human Rights, and the Family Policy Institute.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20250517-a-direct-attack-us-european-anti-rights-groups-descend-on-family-values-events-in-africa

‘We’re ready to fight’: activists brace as US anti-rights figures descend on Africa

Ultra-conservative campaigners fly in for ‘family values’ conferences to share tactics with African allies who oppose abortion and LGBTQ+ rights

Jessie Williams
Fri 9 May 2025

Advocates for sexual, reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights in Africa are bracing themselves for an influx of some of the most powerful, ultra-conservative campaigners from the US, Poland, Switzerland and the Netherlands over the coming months.

The prominent campaigners, who all oppose abortion, transgender and LGBTQ+ rights, and are against sexuality education, are due to speak at a series of conferences focused on African “family values” and “national sovereignty”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/may/09/africa-family-values-anti-rights-conferences-conservative-christian-abortion-lgbtq-gender-uganda-kenya-rwanda

09.05.2025

Commentary

Africa Christian Professionals Forum

Alliance Defending Freedom

Ann Kioko

Anti-Homosexuality Act

Austin Ruse

Bettina Roska

Center for Family and Human Rights

Christian Council International

CitizenGO

Fatima Maada Bio

Henk Jan van Schothorst

Joy Asasira

Julius Maada Bio

MSI Reproductive Choices

National Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission

Nelly Munyasia

Okwara Masafu

Pan-African Conference on Family Values

Purposeful

Ramatu Bangura

Reproductive Health Network Kenya

Saoyo Tabitha Griffith

Sarah Shaw

Sharon Slater

Southern Poverty Law Center

Women’s Probono Initiative

Trump’s Abortion Policy Could Go Global

In this year’s U.S. election, abortion is also a top foreign-policy issue.

By Jodi Enda, the Washington bureau chief and senior correspondent for The Fuller Project.
November 1, 2024

Less than two weeks before his 2020 election defeat, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration rolled out a document that purported to promote women’s health and rights while declaring that there was “no international right to abortion.”

“It’s the first time that a multilateral coalition has been built around the issue of defending life,” then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a signing ceremony, conducted virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda joined the United States in sponsoring the nonbinding directive, called the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family. Another 28 countries, many with authoritarian governments that repress women’s rights, signed it.

Continued https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/11/01/trumps-abortion-policy-could-go-global/

Project 2025 Is Already Here

Core aspects of the far-right plan to overhaul U.S. government are already being put into place, through an anti-abortion influence campaign overseas.

GILLIAN KANE
APRIL 25, 2024

When pundits, critics and supporters discuss Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s readiness work plan for a second Donald Trump presidency, it’s always in the future tense. At more than 900 pages, Project 2025’s playbook, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, is a door-stopper of policy recommendations that lays out detailed steps for decimating democracy in the first 180 days of the new administration. Some executive orders include eliminating the Department of Education (“a woke education cartel”), renaming the Department of Health and Human Services the “Department of Life,” and anchoring these commitments in the promise to restore “the family as the centerpiece of American life.”

This Christian nationalist plan is no fever dream: even if Trump loses in November, many core aspects of Project 2025 will still be implemented. In fact, some of its recommendations are already underway.

Continued: https://inthesetimes.com/article/project-2025-protego-trump-huber-abortion

The World Is Lifting Abortion Restrictions. Why Is the U.S. Moving Against the Tide?

Dec. 2, 2021
By Mary Fitzgerald

Ms. Fitzgerald is the director of expression at the Open Society Foundations and former editor in chief of the global news site openDemocracy.

The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case currently before the Supreme Court which focuses on the question of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, is unlikely to hinge on global data or the finer points of international law. And yet a growing cadre of briefing papers, political accords and court filings are co-opting the language of international human rights groups to argue against the basic rights and freedoms that most Americans have enjoyed for decades.

These arguments are worth addressing. They tell us worrisome things both about the health of American democracy and about what could happen if the court reverses Roe v. Wade next year.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/opinion/abortion-restrictions-roe-wade-usa.html

In Kenya, abortion focus obscures legislation towards safe reproductive healthcare services

Tagged “the abortion bill”, the Reproductive Healthcare bill of 2019 is, in fact a comprehensive document

Written by Laila Le Guen
Posted 30 March 2021

Reproductive rights in Kenya is an intimate and emotive topic where hard lines have been drawn on both sides. Pro- and anti-abortion campaigners keep cycling through episodes of heightened attention when high-profile cases arise and passions continue to run high. Meanwhile, the country registers numbers of unsafe abortions that are among the highest in Africa. Maternal mortality is high at about 6,000 deaths per year, 17 per cent of them from complications of unsafe abortion.

Limited legal recourse to access termination of pregnancy is a potential compromise that remains contested, leaving the two camps with a status quo that seems hard to shake off. What's at stake on both ends of this fiercely debated issue?

Continued: https://globalvoices.org/2021/03/30/in-kenya-abortion-campaigners-obscure-legislation-towards-safe-reproductive-healthcare-services/

Women in Kenya Are Using Knitting Needles to End Their Pregnancies. Blame Donald Trump.

The president has given fringe anti-abortion groups unprecedented influence.

OCTOBER 8, 2020
By NEHA WADEKAR

On a rainy morning in May 2019, Dr. John Nyamu was attending to patients on the cluttered first floor of an office building in downtown Nairobi when he heard raucous shouts from down the street. A caravan of protesters was winding toward him, a few hundred people teeming in the streets, bellowing through loudspeakers, and stopping traffic.

As the crowd reached his building, Nyamu, a well-known gynecologist who performs abortions in a private clinic, peered through his window at the protesters below to make out what they were saying. It turns out they were targeting him. “Abortion is murder! Abortion must go! Nyamu must go!” Some held signs with photos of mutilated fetuses. Others clutched baby-size cardboard coffins with crosses on them.

Continued: https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2020/10/08/abortion-kenya-knitting-needles-donald-trump/

08.10.2020

anti-choice protesters

Austin Ruse

Bethany Kozma

C-Fam

Center for Family and Human Rights

CitizenGO

Dr John Nyamu

Esther Passaris

Family Health Options Kenya

Global Gag Rule

Human Life international

International Conference on Population and development

John Nyamu

Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops

Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board

Kisumu Medical and Education Trust

sexual and reproductive health

Sophie Hodder

Uhuru Kenyatta

UNFPA

United Nations Population Fund

US Agency for International Development

At U.N., Trump Administration Professes ‘No International Right To An Abortion’

At U.N., Trump Administration Professes 'No International Right To An Abortion'

September 23, 2019
Sarah McCammon

The Trump administration is calling on U.N. member nations to oppose efforts to promote access to abortion internationally, a move immediately criticized by reproductive rights groups seeking greater access to the services globally.

At a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Monday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spoke on behalf of the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries stating that abortion is not an international human right.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763496171/at-u-n-trump-administration-professes-no-international-right-to-an-abortion

An Update on Abortion Pills From the World Health Organization Undermines How the U.S. Regulates Them

An Update on Abortion Pills From the World Health Organization Undermines How the U.S. Regulates Them
The update may make mifepristone and misoprostol more readily available worldwide. But in the U.S., not much is expected to change.

Francie Diep
Jul 15, 2019

Abortion pills should be widely available and affordable, and don't need to be dispensed by highly trained specialists or in specialty facilities, according to a World Health Organization update published last week.

Abortions induced by taking pills are the safest type available. The recommended regimen is two pills, containing the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. The pills work best on early stage pregnancies, around 10 weeks' gestation or less. The WHO has considered mifepristone and misoprostol "essential medicines" since 2005, but in the recent update, WHO experts decided that they had enough scientific evidence to strike the caveat saying the medications require "close medical supervision."

Continued: https://psmag.com/social-justice/an-update-on-abortion-pills-from-the-who-undermines-how-the-us-regulates-them