Banning abortion is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes

October 16, 2025
Seda Saluk, Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Michigan

Pregnant women crossing borders to get an abortion. People who miscarry facing jail time or dying from infection. Doctors who won’t perform lifesaving procedures on a pregnant patient for fear of prosecution.
For years, this was the kind of thing that happened in Poland, Nicaragua or El Salvador. Now, it’s headline news in the United States.

As a scholar who studies the relationship between reproductive rights and political regimes, I see the U.S. mirroring a pattern that has happened in authoritarian regimes around the world. When a government erects barriers to comprehensive reproductive care, it doesn’t just cause more death and suffering for women and their families. Such policies are often a first step in the gradual decline of democracies.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/banning-abortion-is-a-hallmark-of-authoritarian-regimes-265459

Reproductive Rights, Abortion Access Under Threat in Argentina

Rollback of Abortion and Reproductive Health Programs Undermines Women’s and Girls’ Rights

September 26, 2025
Stephanie Lustig, Research Assistant, Women’s Rights Division – Human Rights Watch

Since taking office in December 2023, Argentina’s President Javier Milei and his government have dismantled key sexual and reproductive health protections.

A report published this week by the Center for State and Society Studies (CEDES) shows that harmful rhetoric from Milei on abortion creates “a climate of risk and uncertainty,” causing misinformation and confusion for pregnant people on whether they can access abortion services, disrupting care, and affecting health professionals’ safety.

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/26/reproductive-rights-abortion-access-under-threat-in-argentina

Protecting the right to abortion: An interview with Fernanda Doz Costa

Fernanda Doz Costa trained as a human rights lawyer in Argentina before becoming Amnesty International’s Director of Gender, Racial Justice and Refugee Rights.

26 September 2025
Amnesty International

To mark International Safe Abortion Day, Fernanda talks about the dangers of unsafe abortions, some of the people she’s supported along the way and the small and easy actions you can take to ensure people around the world can access safe abortions.

Can you tell me about your role at Amnesty and what led you to it?
I lead Amnesty International’s work on gender, racial justice and refugee rights. My journey into this role was shaped by my experience growing up in Argentina during the dictatorship and being an activist during my law school years, advocating for social justice and human rights.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2025/09/protecting-the-right-to-abortion-an-interview-with-fernanda-doz-costa/

26.09.2025

Commentary

Amnesty International

International Safe Abortion Day

How a network of women in Latin America transformed safe, self-managed abortions

June 8, 2025
By Marta Martínez, Liana Simstrom
Podcast: 41-Minute Listen

In November 1990, more than 3,000 women descended on the sleepy beach town of San Bernardo del Tuyú, Argentina, for what was becoming a legendary event.

Activists, doctors, academics, social workers and lawyers from across the Americas traveled all the way to attend a feminist gathering known as an Encuentro.

While they publicly debated their political demands, the piece of information that made the biggest impact on the future of abortion was exchanged in private, in whispers.

Continued; https://www.npr.org/2025/06/08/g-s1-68729/latin-america-abortion-activism

08.06.2025

Interviews/Podcasts

'La Escuela Socorrista

abortion accompaniment workshop

abortion manual

abortion pills

abortion support networks

Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe

First Responders Network

Gabriela Luchetti

green bandana

green wave

Ibis Reproductive Health

Kelly Blanchard

Las Libres

Lesbianas y Feministas por la Descriminalización del Aborto

Lesbians and Feminists for Abortion Decriminalization

self-managed abortion

self-managed abortion manual

Socorristas En Red

Veronica Cruz

Women on Waves

World Health Organization

Argentina used as a ‘testing ground’ for eroding abortion rights, warns Amnesty

Alarm as Javier Milei’s government curbs state supply of abortion pills and seeks to reverse landmark legalization

Harriet Barber in Tucumán
Wed 28 May 2025

Argentina is being used as a “testing ground” for stripping back abortion rights internationally as it cuts funding for contraceptives and ends the distribution of abortion pills, Amnesty International warned on Wednesday.

Before the inauguration of President Javier Milei in December 2023, the state bought abortion pills, which were then distributed for free through the public health system.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/may/28/argentina-womens-rights-javier-milei-testing-ground-eroding-abortion-rights-seek-reverse-landmark-legalisation-warning-amnesty

What the UN’s ruling on abortion in Ecuador and Nicaragua means for the rest of the world

Although implementation will depend on each country, these sorts of rulings have a potential for global influence

By Elizabeth Hlavinka
February 19, 2025

The United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a ruling last month with the potential to expand reproductive rights in Ecuador and Nicaragua. Although it’s unclear how each country will implement the UN mandates handed down, the ruling is a step forward for a growing reproductive rights movement working to decriminalize abortion in Latin America.

In 2016, Planned Parenthood Global, Amnesty International, and other Latin American activism groups came together to form the “Son Niñas, No Madres” (Girls, Not Mothers) movement. They have filed legal cases before the UN Human Rights Committee against Ecuador and Nicaragua, representative of a regional pattern of girls forced to become mothers due to sexual violence and a lack of access to reproductive health services like abortion in 2019.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2025/02/19/what-the-uns-ruling-on-abortion-in-ecuador-and-nicaragua-means-for-the-rest-of-the-world/

Argentina’s Abortion Law Three Years Later

The country's abortion law has reduced fertility rates and preventable deaths among girls ages 10 to 14

By Maria Emilia Pianesi
December 4, 2024

Each year, comprehensive abortion care could save the lives of up to nearly 39,000 women and prevent related health complications for 5 million women worldwide. A multicountry survey on the implementation of comprehensive abortion policies in Latin America and the Caribbean found that safe abortions and quality post-abortion care in the region is limited by some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. As a result, the issue remains a major health and policy challenge in the region.

In this context, Argentina has taken a historic step for sexual and reproductive health and rights by legalizing abortion. Law 27.610, Access to Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy and Post-Abortion Care, has been enforced since January 2021. It allows anyone to request an abortion before 14 weeks of pregnancy and entails no time limit in cases of sexual assault or when the life of the applicant is in danger.

Continued: https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/argentinas-abortion-law-three-years-later

State of Mexico Congress Votes to Decriminalize Abortion

Authorities Should Ensure Access to Care, Wide Dissemination of Legal Protections

Nov 28, 2024
Human Rights Watch

(Toluca) – The vote by the Congress of the State of Mexico on November 25, 2024, to decriminalize abortion in all cases during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is a significant step forward for reproductive rights in the country’s most populous state, Human Rights Watch said today.

Once enacted, the reform will remove all criminal penalties for abortion within the first trimester. It will align the State of Mexico with 18 other states in the country that have already decriminalized abortion following the landmark 2021 ruling by Mexico’s Supreme Court, which found the absolute criminalization of abortion unconstitutional.

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/28/state-mexico-congress-votes-decriminalize-abortion

28.11.2024

News

Congress of the State of Mexico

Cristina Quijano Carrasco

decriminalization of abortion

Latin American activists talk religion, reproductive rights at UM

By Melody Royaee
September 18, 2024

Leaders in Latin America’s reproductive rights movement, visited the University of Miami on Friday, Sept. 13 to partake in a Reproductive Justice Symposium.

Panelists Marta Alanis and Pascale Solages reflected on their activism in their home countries of Argentina and Haiti, respectively, and spoke to the urgency of the current political situation in Florida and elsewhere in post-Roe America.

“People who have money will always have access to abortion and so this is an attack [on] folks who cannot travel to get care outside of the state. This is an attack on working-class Floridians,” panel moderator Ysabella Osses said.

Continued: https://themiamihurricane.com/2024/09/18/latin-american-activists-talk-religion-reproductive-rights-at-um/

Latin America’s Progress on Abortion Rights Is Under Attack

Constance Malleret
Aug 14, 2024

In July, demonstrators sporting the green bandannas of Latin America’s pro-choice movement filled the streets of Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, to protest against a new penal code under consideration by Congress. If passed, the code would keep in place the Dominican Republic’s total ban on abortion, despite decades of campaigning by women’s rights activists to include “las tres causales”—or three exceptions—to allow women to terminate their pregnancies in cases of rape or incest, if the mother’s life is at risk or if the pregnancy is nonviable.

They came close to succeeding in 2014, when then-President Danilo Medina approved a new penal code that would have decriminalized abortion in those three situations. But just before the changes came into force, they were blocked on constitutional grounds by the Supreme Court, leaving the current code, which dates from 1884, in place. The country’s incumbent president, Luis Abinader—who starts serving his second consecutive term this month—made the approval of “las tres causales” a pillar of his 2020 election campaign, only to disappoint the abortion rights movement by letting the issue fall by the wayside after taking office.

Continued: https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/latin-america-abortion-rights/