‘The stigma has returned’: abortion access in turmoil in Javier Milei’s Argentina

Health workers fear the return of unsafe abortions as recent statements lead to a spike in doctors refusing to provide care

Harriet Barber in Buenos Aires, The Guardian
Mon 18 Mar 2024

Javier Milei’s anti-abortion rhetoric has prompted growing numbers of doctors in Argentina to refuse to carry out terminations, according to medical professionals across the country.

Since taking office in December, the self-described libertarian has used speeches to both global leaders and schoolchildren to condemn abortion as a “tragedy” and “aggravated murder”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/mar/18/argentina-abortion-javier-milei

South Africa: How poor service in the public sector is pushing women to ‘backstreet’ abortion

Posted by Ndivhuwo Mukwevho
Oct 18, 2023

In April 2022, *Grace Langa went to Frontier Hospital in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape for an abortion. “At first I went to the hospital on a Monday. I was told that they only perform abortions on Wednesdays.

“I went there again on Wednesday but they said that I had to come back the following week as they only take 20 abortion patients a day,” she recalls. Finally, Langa went back to the hospital the following week and got an ultrasound to see how far along her pregnancy was.

Continued: https://health-e.org.za/2023/10/18/ec-case-study-how-poor-service-in-the-public-sector-is-pushing-women-to-backstreet-abortion/

‘Too many children’ as women denied abortion in Venezuela

24/07/2023

Caracas (AFP) – Maria drank a concoction of ground avocado seed, "bad mother" and other plants to try and terminate her pregnancy in Venezuela, where abortion is illegal. It did not work.

Only people with money can access illegal, private abortions in the country, and Maria is not one of them. Aged just 26, she lives with two of her five children in extreme poverty in Caracas in a house shared with other people.

The child she tried to abort is now three years old. She had another since then, 10 months ago.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230724-too-many-children-as-women-denied-abortion-in-venezuela

24.07.2023

Spread of Catholic hospitals limits reproductive care across the U.S.

Religious doctrine restricts access to abortion and birth control and limits treatment options for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies

By Frances Stead Sellers and Meena Venkataramanan
October 10, 2022

The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion is revealing the growing influence of Catholic health systems and their restrictions on reproductive services including birth control and abortion — even in the diminishing number of states where the procedure remains legal.

Catholic systems now control about 1 in 7 U.S. hospital beds, requiring religious doctrine to guide treatment, often to the surprise of patients. Their ascendancy has broad implications for the evolving national battle over reproductive rights beyond abortion, as bans against it take hold in more than a dozen Republican-led states.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/10/abortion-catholic-hospitals-birth-control/

Supreme Court Of India Grants Woman Permission To Abort At 24 Weeks

Allowing access to abortion only in certain cases such as rape, incest, divorce, or mental or physical illness implies that a woman's body must be violated by external agents for her to be able to gain full control over her own body.

By Debabratee Dhar
July 29, 2022

A 25-year-old unmarried woman was denied medical termination of pregnancy at 23 weeks by the Delhi High Court.

In India, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971 permits abortion under a very specific set of conditions. Under the guidelines of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, one can avail of abortion within 12 weeks with the approval of one doctor and only if it is carried out by a trained medical practitioner. If one’s pregnancy exceeds 12 weeks but is under 20 weeks, then it can be medically terminated with the approval of two doctors, as long as it is carried out by medical practitioners at a licensed institution.

Continued: https://feminisminindia.com/2022/07/29/supreme-court-of-india-grants-woman-permission-to-abort-at-24-weeks/

29.07.2022

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 2020

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Rules 2003

US woman left traumatised after Malta hospital refuses life-saving abortion

‘Desperate’ tourist who fell foul of country’s total ban fears for her life if complications set in while she waits for transfer to UK

Megan Clement and Weronika Strzyżyńska
Wed 22 Jun 2022

Doctors have denied an American woman on holiday in Malta a potentially life-saving abortion, despite saying her baby had a “zero chance” of survival after she was admitted to hospital with severe bleeding in her 16th week of pregnancy.

Despite an “extreme risk” of haemorrhage and infection, doctors at the Mater Dei hospital in Msida told Andrea Prudente that they would not perform a termination because of the country’s total ban on abortion.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jun/22/us-woman-left-traumatised-after-malta-hospital-refuses-life-saving-abortion

Brazilian Judge Denies Abortion to 11-Year-Old Rape Victim, Previewing Post-Roe America

It's not just Brazil—across the US, lawmakers are already boasting about the bans they'll pass without rape exceptions, which are already mostly symbolic.

By Kylie Cheung
June 21,2022

A judge in Brazil denied an abortion to an 11-year-old who had been impregnated by rape, saying she didn’t want to enable a “homicide,” Newsweek reported on Monday. The young girl had reportedly been raped in her home earlier this year, and when she was taken to the hospital upon learning she was pregnant, a doctor at the University of Santa Catarina denied her an abortion because she was more than 22 weeks pregnant. The university hospital’s rules prohibit doctors from offering abortion care to someone past 20 weeks of pregnancy, without a court order.

Brazil notably criminalizes abortion and threatens abortion patients with one to three years in prison, and providers with one to four years. The country provides exceptions only for threats to the pregnant person’s life, when the fetus is deemed unviable, and, relevant to this case, if the pregnancy is the result of rape.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/brazilian-judge-denies-abortion-to-11-year-old-rape-vic-1849089474

21.06.2022

Activists rally behind Croatian woman denied abortion

A group of civic activists in Croatia have demonstrated in support of a woman who was denied an abortion despite her fetus having serious health problems

By The Associated Press
6 May 2022

ZAGREB, Croatia -- A group of civic activists in Croatia demonstrated Friday in support of a woman who was denied an abortion despite her fetus having serious health problems.

The activists stood outside the parliament building in Croatia's capital, Zagreb, demanding that authorities help Miranda Cavajda and ensure abortion rights are respected in the socially conservative country.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/activists-rally-croatian-woman-denied-abortion-84539912

06.05.2022

Being Denied an Abortion Has Lasting Impacts on Health and Finances

A landmark study of women seeking abortions shows the harms of being unable to end an unwanted pregnancy

By Mariana Lenharo, Scientific American
December 22, 2021

As the Supreme Court decides the future of abortion laws in the U.S., a key question to be considered is whether access to the procedure has positive or negative consequences for the people who get an abortion, and for society in general.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concerns the constitutionality of a new Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The case challenges the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, a precedent that protects abortion access before fetal viability—a point at around 24 weeks of gestation, when a fetus is considered able to survive outside the uterus.

Continued: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/being-denied-an-abortion-has-lasting-impacts-on-health-and-finances/

Abortion: The double torture of a girl in Bolivia

Abortion: The double torture of a girl in Bolivia

Written by George Holan
December 3, 2021

The ordeal of an 11-year-old girl who became pregnant after repeated rapes by a relative has given visibility, albeit fleetingly, to the enormous obstacles that stand in the way of access to legal abortion in Bolivia.

After weeks of disseminating the case in the local media and thanks to the intervention of the Ombudsman’s Office, the girl was finally able to terminate her pregnancy on November 6. Since then, the subject has disappeared from public discussion, as if it had been an exceptional case.

Continued: https://plainsmenpost.com/2021/12/03/abortion-the-double-torture-of-a-girl-in-bolivia-opinion/