Spain – Six years of censorship. One more avenue for justice.

June 23, 2026
Womens Link Worldwide

On June 12th, 2026, six years after Women on Web’s website was blocked by Spanish authorities, the abortion information organization filed a case before the European Court of Human Rights, accompanied by Women’s Link as its legal representative. This petition asked Europe’s highest human rights tribunal to enforce and protect the rights that were violated, something that Spain’s courts have not done to this day.

In September 2020, Spanish health authorities ordered the complete blocking of Women on Web’s (WOW) website. For over two decades, WOW has connected people facing barriers to abortion with evidence-based information and medical support. WOW has no physical headquarters in Spain, so its only means of action is through its online platform, http://www.womenonweb.org. This ban was not authorized by any court, and there was no assessment to determine if this drastic measure was actually justified. This led to one of the most trusted sources of sexual and reproductive health information online simply disappearing for people that needed it most.

Continued: https://womenslinkworldwide.org/en/six-years-of-censorship-one-more-avenue-for-justice/

23.06.2026

Commentary

abortion censorship

Clara Serra Baiget

European Court of Human Rights

Venny Ala-Siurua

Women on Web

Women's Link Worldwide

New OONI Report Documents Global Censorship of Women on Web Across Multiple Countries

June 11, 2026

A new report released today by Women on Web (WoW) and Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) documents evidence of the blocking of Women on Web domains across at least seven countries, which is an increase from three countries where blockages were documented in 2019. The findings of the report show that internet censorship is increasingly being used to restrict access to abortion information and care online.

Abortion Access Denied: Investigating the Global Censorship of Women on Web analyzes OONI network measurement data collected between November 2025 and April 2026. OONI documented evidence of blockages in Iran, Türkiye, the Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Kuwait and Argentina. The report also documents corporate firewall blocking affecting access to Women on Web domains in Poland, Kenya, Pakistan, and Georgia. Researchers observed a range of censorship techniques, including DNS tampering, TLS interference, injected block pages, connection resets, and IP blocking to impede internet users from accessing Women on Web’s sites.

Continued: https://www.womenonweb.org/en/news/new-ooni-report-documents-global-censorship-of-women-on-web-across-multiple-countries/

11.06.2026

Commentary

Research

Abortion Access Denied: Investigating the Global Censorship of Women on Web

censorship of abortion information

European Court of Human Rights

Maria Xynou

OONI

Open Observatory of Network Interference

Council of Europe Committee of Ministers Urges Poland to Guarantee Effective Access to Lawful Abortion Care – Statement

March 12, 2026
Center for Reproductive Rights

GENEVA—This week, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a decision urging Poland to ensure effective access to lawful abortion without further delay. The Committee expressed continued concern that Poland has yet to fully comply with the European Court of Human Rights’ judgments in the cases of Tysiąc v. Poland, R.R. v. Poland, P. and S. v. Poland, and M.L. v. Poland, which require the authorities to ensure that access to lawful abortion is accessible in practice.

More than 18 years after the first of these landmark judgments became final, systemic barriers remain. Poland’s highly restrictive abortion law and the criminalisation of abortion continue to have a chilling effect on the provision of lawful abortion care. Combined with regulatory gaps, ineffective complaint procedures, frequent refusals of care based on the “conscience clause,” and the stigma surrounding abortion, these barriers leave many women who are legally entitled to abortion unable to access these services in practice. The situation deteriorated further following the regressive Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling in 2020, which effectively imposed a near-total ban on abortion.

Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/news/coe-committee-of-ministers-poland-access-abortion-care/

Justice for Women and Girls: Five Global Wins to Celebrate this International Women’s Day

To mark International Women’s Day and the UN’s 70th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the Center is celebrating our biggest wins on securing access to justice for women and girls.

March 6, 2026
Center for Reproductive Rights

Ensuring women’s access to justice is key to the Center’s mission of protecting reproductive rights around the world. It is also a central pillar of International Women’s Day (IWD) and the theme of this year’s session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), taking place March 9-19 at the United Nations.

CSW is an annual opportunity for the global community to take stock of progress on gender equality, to identify challenges and roadblocks, and to set goals for the future. This year Center leaders and partners will join human rights experts on panels across the session, as well as hosting two public side events that examine the intersection of women’s access to justice and their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/news/international-womens-day-five-wins/

06.03.2026

Commentary

A.R. v. Poland

Center for Reproductive Rights

European Court of Human Rights

International Women's Day

Termination of Pregnancy Act

UN Commission on the Status of Women

Europe – The Battle over the Sacred and the Profane

The Increased Contestation of Reproductive Rights in Europe

20 December 2025
Paul Blokker

Sexual and reproductive rights in Europe are increasingly part of an intense struggle. This includes legal contestation through litigation and third-party interventions at, in particular, the European Court of Human Rights. It is however important to recognize that contestation also takes place in other, political and public, arenas. Interconnected actions, forming part of a broader European conservative right mission, includes political and legal action in many other arenas, including in the European as well as national parliaments.

This struggle is about a political and religious backlash to a largely secular, progressive cultural and human rights revolution. It confronts opposing sides of (transnational) civil society, who both make moral, “sacred” claims, while profaning the opponent. Here, I will first discuss the European conservative right’s mission, the sacred dimensions to this mission, and its increasingly dense transnational network. I will then exemplify cases of struggle by turning to initiatives both on the European level (the promotion of a right to abortion as part of the European Charter and the ECI campaign My Voice, My Choice) and domestic parliamentary debates (the Netherlands).

Continued; https://verfassungsblog.de/the-battle-over-the-sacred-and-the-profane/

20.12.2025

Commentary

European Charter of Fundamental Rights

European Court of Human Rights

My Voice My Choice campaign

When Legal Uncertainty Violates Reproductive Rights

A.R. v. Poland and the Dynamics of Transnational Legal Mobilization

27 November 2025
Karolina Kocemba

In 2020, the Polish Constitutional Court prohibited abortion sought on the grounds of fetal defects. While the ruling was announced, it was not published for three months, creating a period during which neither pregnant people nor medical providers could be certain of the current legal situation, which could change at any time. Accordingly, on 13 November 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in A.R. v. Poland, ruled that this instability failed to meet the legal certainty required under Article 8 of the ECHR. The situation arose from the delayed and, at that time, unpredictably timed publication, and was intensified by the ongoing constitutional crisis.

Crucially, the case reveals a deeper dimension of legal uncertainty, as both pro-choice and anti-choice actors were actively involved in the A.R. case, seeking to shape the law in opposite directions. The resulting uncertainty is thus not only a product of institutional dysfunction but increasingly a terrain of transnational contestation shaped by competing forms of legal mobilization. This dynamic, in turn, is reflected in the European-level initiative My Voice, My Choice, which explicitly aims to stabilise standards where national systems have become fragmented and uncertain.

Continued: https://verfassungsblog.de/legal-uncertainty-reproductive-rights/

European court rules Poland violated rights of woman who traveled abroad for abortion

Nov 13, 2025
Notes on Poland

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Poland violated the rights of a pregnant woman who had to travel abroad to obtain an abortion after her foetus was diagnosed with a birth defect. It is the second time that the court has issued a judgment against Poland relating to its near-total abortion ban.

The ECHR found that the woman’s right to private and family life was violated by the legal uncertainty created by the delay between the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (TK) ruling of October 2020, which banned abortion in cases of birth defects, and its implementation by the government over three months later.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/11/13/european-court-rules-poland-violated-rights-of-woman-who-traveled-abroad-for-abortion/

LATVIA – Ombudswoman warns that mandatory consultations before abortion would restrict women’s rights

October 20, 2025

The proposal to introduce mandatory consultations for women who wish to terminate a pregnancy raises serious human rights concerns, according to Ombudswoman Karina Palkova.

Through the Office of the Ombudsman, Palkova told LETA that although the initiative is presented as a measure of “support” and “protection of unborn life,” in reality, it affects women’s rights to autonomy, self-determination, and private and family life, and may amount to an indirect coercive mechanism that disproportionately restricts women’s freedom of choice.

Continued: https://bnn-news.com/ombudswoman-warns-that-mandatory-consultations-before-abortion-would-restrict-womens-rights-273276

20.10.2025

News

abortion law reform

Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

European Court of Human Rights

Karina Palkova

Latvia Office of the Ombudsman

European Commission to consider fund for EU-wide access to abortion

The European Commission will study a proposal to create a fund to help women access safe abortions when they cannot do so in their own countries due to restrictive laws, following a citizens’ campaign that gathered one million signatures across the EU.

By Paula Soler & Marta Iraola Iribarren
Oct 3, 2025

At 26 weeks pregnant, Mirela Čavajda found out her baby had a grave medical condition and would either be born with life-threatening conditions or most likely die before birth.

When Čavajda sought medical support in Zagreb, doctors at four different hospitals refused her request, some without explanation, while others said they could not confirm the diagnosis or did not have the necessary conditions to perform the procedure.

Continued: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/10/03/european-commission-to-consider-fund-for-eu-wide-access-to-abortion

03.10.2025

News

Andrea Prudente

conscientious objectors

European Commission

European Court of Human Rights

Hadja Lahbib

Izabela death

Mirela Čavajda

My Voice My Choice campaign

A Deafening Silence: The Inter-American Court’s Failure to Address Abortion in in Beatriz v El Salvador

24.07.25
Alicia Ely Yamin, Sabrina Ochoa

As clashes over sexual and reproductive rights are presently used in culture wars and lawfare, the recent decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Beatriz v. El Salvador is a missed opportunity to consolidate the Court’s jurisprudence on sexual and reproductive health and rights and defend the legitimacy of international human rights law. Beatriz was a young woman from the impoverished state of Usulután, El Salvador, who, after experiencing a high-risk pregnancy due to Lupus, found herself pregnant a second time. Despite medical consensus among fifteen doctors of the lack of fetal viability and the immediate harm to Beatriz, she was forced to wait in physical and mental anguish for months as various institutional and judicial entities deliberated on whether to allow her doctors to perform a therapeutic abortion.

Continued: https://opiniojuris.org/2025/07/24/a-deafening-silence-the-inter-american-courts-failure-to-address-abortion-in-in-beatriz-v-el-salvador/