KENYA / RWANDA – Rwanda offers good lesson on how to address teenage pregnancy crisis

by Kavutha Mutua
Sep 25, 2025

World Contraception Day will be marked tomorrow. The day highlights one of the most important yet neglected issues in public health: The right of every individual to access safe, affordable, and informed contraception. This year’s theme, ‘A Choice for All-Agency, Intention, Access,’ reminds us that contraception is not just about preventing pregnancy. It is about agency over one’s body, the ability to plan one’s life with intention, and access to choices without discrimination, barriers, or stigma.

Continued: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/opinion/article/2001530288/rwanda-offers-good-lesson-on-how-to-address-teenage-pregnancy-crisis

25.09.2025

comprehensive sex education

Kavutha Mutua

World Contraception Day

World Health Organization

Philippines – WGNRR calls for urgent passage of prevention of adolescent pregnancy bill

January 20, 2025

The Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) and partners stand in strong solidarity with advocates, civil society organizations, stakeholders, and policymakers in the Philippines in supporting the passage of Senate Bill No. 1979, also known as the Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy Bill (PAP Bill).

We are deeply concerned that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has announced his intention to veto Senate Bill 1979 in ‘its current form,’ just days after emphasizing that ‘the teaching of sex education in our schools is very, very, very important.’ This contradiction to his position is disheartening, especially given the severity of the adolescent pregnancy crisis in the Philippines. Moreover, it is alarming that his decision seems to have been influenced by the spread of misinformation and disinformation about the bill.

Continued: https://wgnrr.org/wgnrr-calls-for-urgent-passage-of-prevention-of-adolescent-pregnancy-bill/

European Union funds charity that compares abortion to Holocaust

EU hands €1.2m to charity that spreads disinformation about sexual and reproductive rights to teens and women globally

Sian Norris, Soita Khatondi Wepukhulu
3 October 2024

The European Union has given more than a million euros to a charity that peddles anti-abortion misinformation and whose founder compared reproductive rights to the Holocaust, an investigation by openDemocracy can reveal.

The US-based World Youth Alliance (WYA) – which has a European office in Brussels – is officially a “non-religious” non-governmental organisation, yet its values and teachings often echo religious conservative talking points on gender rights.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/eu-funding-anti-abortion-charity/

If Sex Ed Isn’t Critical, Can We Really Call It Comprehensive?

Young people deserve an education that equips them to critically analyze competing narratives, challenge misinformation and champion their own sexual health rights.

May 6, 2024
by DANIELLE FERNANDES

The Vatican issued a statement month calling gender transition and fluidity a threat to human dignity—which was not on my 2024 Bingo card. But it should have been. From the repeal of abortion rights across the United States to the criminalization of homosexuality in Uganda, it’s clear that sexual health rights are under siege globally. Yet, the fiercest battlefront is in classrooms where sex education unfolds.

In particular, “comprehensive sex education” has become a lightning rod for controversy, igniting moral panic around young people learning about gender theory, sexuality, safe sex, abortion care and more. But my experience designing sex education programs has taught me that “comprehensive” sex education isn’t comprehensive enough. What’s missing is a critical approach to sexual education that examines the political, cultural and economic factors shaping sexual decisions and health.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/05/06/comprehensive-sex-education-trans-black-women-girls/

06.05.2024

Commentary

comprehensive sex education

critical sex education

N. Ireland – Abortion access lessons to be compulsory in post-primary schools in NI

June 6, 2023
By Robbie Meredith, BBC News NI education correspondent

It will be compulsory for all post-primary schools in Northern Ireland to teach pupils about access to abortion and prevention of early pregnancy.

It comes after Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris laid new regulations in Parliament, covering relationships and sex education (RSE). In a written statement, he said he had a legal duty to act on recommendations made in a United Nations (UN) report.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65824502

06.06.2023

CEDAW Report

Chris Heaton-Harris

Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

comprehensive sex education

Dr John Kirkpatrick

Executive Formation Act

Natalie Whelehan

Relationships and Sex Education

More than 25 NGOs intensify their fight to legalize abortion in Venezuela

by Lance Vaughn
September 10, 2022

Some 25 Venezuelan NGOs, grouped in the Ruta Verde platform, intensify their fight to legalize abortion with the collection against the clock of 21,000 signatures that must be attached to the bill on sexual and reproductive rights that they will take to Parliament, which will have to debate if it advances until become normative.

The platform intends for there to be a sexual and reproductive education that provides knowledge about contraceptive methods, abortion in different cases and the options that women have to face unwanted pregnancies.

Continued; https://www.ruetir.com/2022/09/10/more-than-25-ngos-intensify-their-fight-to-legalize-abortion-in-venezuela/

US Donors Are Helping Push Anti-Abortion Agendas in British Schools

A British anti-abortion group that gives talks in schools has received over £72,000 from the US over the last 2 years, VICE World News can reveal.

By Sophia Smith Galer
May 30, 2022

An anti-abortion group in the UK that gives talks to schoolchildren and medical professionals about what it terms “coerced abortion” is receiving tens of thousands of dollars from anonymous US-based backers, VICE World News can reveal.

Nearly £73,000 ($91,885, €85,330) has been donated anonymously via a donor agency called NPT Transatlantic in the past two years to the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child’s (SPUC) registered charity, one of the UK’s most active anti-abortion groups. The agency allows US and UK taxpayers to donate to organisations across the Atlantic without revealing their name and without qualifying for any tax deduction.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93be83/anti-abortion-schools-uk

The struggle to secure access to abortion in Argentina goes on

The Argentinian government must continue to dismantle barriers women face in accessing safe abortion.

Mariela Belski, Executive director of Amnesty International Argentina
9 Aug 2021

In recent months, Argentinians have had access to legal abortion for the first time. In December, Argentina became the fourth in Latin America to legalise abortion after the National Congress passed the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy Law.

Securing this right for women and pregnant persons was a milestone achievement and the culmination of decades of struggle, setbacks and progress. Now, new challenges emerge: the effective implementation of the law across a vast and unequal territory and the legal battles filed by conservative groups in the nation’s courts.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/9/the-struggle-to-secure-access-to-abortion-in-argentina-goes-on

There Are No Abortion Providers in Guam. We Must Change That

BY MARIA DOLOJAN, Teen Vogue
MARCH 17, 2021

In 2019, when news broke that a 12 year-old girl in my island community on Guam was raped and impregnated, reality set in for me and many women and girls. It was the first time some of us realized that we did not have any abortion providers in Guam, and it would take extraordinary measures for someone from our island to get an abortion. She would have to fly thousands of miles to Hawai‘i — and because she likely comes from a poor family who does not have the financial means to pursue abortion services elsewhere, she would not able to end the pregnancy.

It was a wakeup call.

Continued: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/there-are-no-abortion-providers-in-guam

India – A pregnant silence on reproductive rights of women

A pregnant silence on reproductive rights of women
The country needs to recognise the wrongs and affirm the rights for advancing women’s sexual and reproductive health

Monday, 25 November 2019
Prabhleen Tuteja

Young women (15-24 years) constitute 11 per cent of India’s population, out of whom 41 per cent have faced sexual violence, 27 per cent are married before the legal age and 7.8 per cent (15-19 years) become mothers or are pregnant. The data on access to information on contraceptives reveals that only 17.7 per cent were informed about family planning by health workers and just 6.9 per cent women in Bihar and 11.6 per cent in Uttar Pradesh (UP) reported using contraceptives within marriage.

The policy level commitments on health, education and gender parity often look in absolute terms of changing certain societal norms through cash transfer based schemes, number of girls reported to be married before the legal age of marriage, status of body mass index and nutrition and sometimes enrollment in school and skill development among women. While evidence in these parameters are significant, this skewed approach to gender equality leaves out a range of issues, including prevalence of sexual violence and status of accessible sexual and reproductive health services. Stigma and fear attached to young women’s sexuality act as a major barrier in achieving gender equality.

Continued: https://www.dailypioneer.com/2019/columnists/a-pregnant-silence-on-reproductive-rights-of-women.html