Guttmacher Releases Most Comprehensive Evidence to Date on Global Family Planning Gaps, Investment and Economic Returns

Two new studies show dual impact of family planning: saving lives and driving women’s economic empowerment

November 3, 2025

Today the Guttmacher Institute unveiled findings from two groundbreaking research initiatives revealing the most comprehensive evidence to date of the transformative impact of family planning on women’s lives—underscoring the urgent need for sustained investment in global sexual and reproductive health. The new evidence has been released at the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP), which kicked off today in Bogotá, Colombia.

The two complementary studies—Adding It Up and FP-Impact—demonstrate that investing in comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care delivers immediate, life-saving benefits while simultaneously functioning as economic “seed funding” that expands national workforces and generates sustained economic returns.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2025/guttmacher-releases-most-comprehensive-evidence-date-global-family-planning-gaps


Trump signs anti-abortion policies after speaking to March for Life

Those impacted include overseas health organizations that distribute contraception and help combat HIV.

By Alice Miranda Ollstein and Carmen Paun
01/24/2025

President Donald Trump’s campaign-trail promise to leave abortion regulation to the states lasted just a few days into his presidency.

He issued executive orders on Friday that revive some anti-abortion policies from his first administration — including restrictions on federal funding for family planning and other health programs abroad that discuss abortion as an option or provide referrals for the procedure.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/24/trump-issues-executive-orders-reviving-anti-abortion-policies-00200212


Why Trump’s next presidency poses a new global threat to women’s health

Rachel Schraer
Dec 3, 2024

Immediately after Donald Trump clinched a second term in the White House, mail orders of abortion pills spiked across the U.S. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood, the country’s biggest provider of reproductive health services, saw an eightfold increase in appointments for long-acting contraceptive devices known as IUDs.

The reality of another Trump presidency appears to have stoked fears among many Americans that their access to abortion and contraception could be further restricted. But the issue stretches beyond U.S. borders. Around the world, hundreds of millions of women who had no say in Trump’s election could lose vital health services because of his decisions.

Continued: https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/why-trump-s-next-presidency-poses-a-new-global-threat-to-women-s-health/ar-AA1vbYiK


The Terrifying Global Reach of the American Anti-Abortion Movement

Conservatives have not limited their attack on reproductive rights to the United States. They’ve been busy imposing their will on other countries, too—with disastrous consequences for millions of poor women.

Jodi Enda
March 18, 2024

Because Editar Ochieng knew the three young men, she didn’t think twice when they beckoned her into a house in an isolated area near the Nairobi River. One was like a brother; the other two were her neighbors in the sprawling Kenyan slum of Kibera.

Ochieng did not know the woman who performed her abortion. She and a friend scoured Nairobi until they found her, an untrained practitioner who worked in the secrecy of her home and charged a fraction of what a medical professional would. Mostly, what Ochieng remembers is the agony when this stranger inserted something into her vagina and “pierced” her womb. “It was really very painful. Really, really, really painful,” she told me. Afterward, Ochieng said, she cut up her mattress to use in place of sanitary pads, which she could not afford. She was 16 years old.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/179485/american-anti-abortion-movement-terrifying-global-reach


Zimbabwe – Inside the illegal abortion market: ‘I nearly touched hell’

Inside the illegal abortion market: 'I nearly touched hell'
Zimbabwe’s tight abortion laws aren’t curbing demand, they’re driving them underground — and it’s about to get worse.

29 Jan 2019
Wendy Muperi

Tapiwa Chiwenga was two months pregnant when she slipped the pink pills inside herself, lay down on her bed, and prayed they would do their job.

They had to.

She was 22. Her boyfriend, a foreign student in Zimbabwe on a scholarship, loved her fiercely. But he was broke. So was she. She lived with her cousin and didn’t have a job. A baby simply was not in the cards.

Continued: https://bhekisisa.org/article/2019-01-29-00-illegal-abortions-zimbabwe-shut-down-what-is-the-gag-rules-impact-contraception


First Study on the Incidence of Abortion Among Ugandan Adolescents Released

First Study on the Incidence of Abortion Among Ugandan Adolescents Released
Research Sheds Light on Abortion and Postabortion Care Experiences

Sept 11, 2018

A new study by researchers at the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute and Uganda’s Makerere University documents, for the first time, abortion rates and the severity of abortion-related complications among Ugandan adolescents aged 15–19. The study, published in Contraception, found that an estimated 57,000 abortions took place among Ugandan adolescents in 2013. The researchers also found that adolescents seeking postabortion care for complications resulting from an unsafe abortion or miscarriage did not face greater disadvantages in their abortion care experiences, compared with women older than 20. However, among those seeking postabortion care, unmarried women, including unmarried adolescents, were more likely than married women to experience severe complications.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2018/first-study-incidence-abortion-among-ugandan-adolescents-released


First Study on the Incidence of Abortion Among Ethiopian Adolescents Released

First Study on the Incidence of Abortion Among Ethiopian Adolescents Released
Improved Access to Safe Abortion Has Benefited Adolescent Women

March 14, 2018
News Release

A new study finds that adolescent women have benefited greatly from the 2005 expansion of Ethiopia’s abortion law that gave them access to safe, legal abortion services. “Playing it Safe: Legal and Clandestine Abortions Among Adolescents in Ethiopia,” conducted by researchers from the Guttmacher Institute and Ipas, documents for the first time legal and clandestine abortion rates among Ethiopian adolescents (aged 15–19), and the severity of abortion-related complications in this age-group. The study found that adolescents are more likely than older women to obtain legal abortion services, and that complications from unsafe abortion are just as severe among adolescents as they are among other age-groups.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2018/first-study-incidence-abortion-among-ethiopian-adolescents-released