Interview with a Midwife: In Romania, Abortion Care Access is Slipping Away

“Anytime a woman comes for health services there are huge barriers.”

Song Ah Lee, Heather Barr
April 7, 2025

Romania has a deeply disturbing history of interfering with women’s reproductive rights. Behind the Iron Curtain, abortion as well as birth control was deeply restricted from 1966 until the government fell – with the USSR – in 1989. During this time, roughly 10,000 women and girls died after they were forced to resort to unsafe abortion; some experts believe the real figure is much higher.

Today, on paper at least, abortion in Romania is legal until the 14th week of pregnancy and in certain other cases. But in reality, it’s shockingly and increasingly hard for women to access health care services to end unwanted pregnancies. While government officials pay lip service to protecting women’s rights, behind the scenes they are often doing whatever they can to make abortion inaccessible, including partnering with “crisis pregnancy centers” that pressure women and girls to continue pregnancies, often through deceptive and other abusive means. A new Human Rights Watch report, “It’s Happening Even Without You Noticing”, documents this alarming trend. Human Rights Watch’s former researcher Song Ah speaks with Romanian midwife and activist Irina Mateescu about her work to defend the sexual and reproductive health rights of women and girls.

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/04/07/interview-midwife-romania-abortion-care-access-slipping-away

Thailand Legalizes Early-Term Abortions but Keeps Other Restrictions

Women who end a pregnancy after 12 weeks could still face prison or fines. Abortion rights advocates say more change is needed.

By Muktita Suhartono and Mike Ives
Jan. 28, 2021

BANGKOK — Thailand’s Parliament has voted to make abortion legal in the first trimester, while keeping penalties in place for women who undergo it later in their pregnancies.

Lawmakers in the Senate voted 166 to 7 on Monday to amend a law that had imposed prison terms of up to three years for anyone having an abortion, and up to five years for those who perform one. The new version allows any woman to end a pregnancy in the first 12 weeks.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/world/asia/thailand-abortion-rights.html

Thailand Should Fully Decriminalize All Abortion

Draft Law Falls Short of 2020 Constitutional Court ruling

January 25, 2021
Heather Barr, Interim Co-Director, Women's Rights Division

Thailand's parliament is set to pass a law to permit abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The law represents some progress in a country that currently threatens to imprison people who have abortions at any stage of their pregnancy but falls short of ensuring reproductive rights protected by international human rights law.

In February 2020, Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled that the existing criminal code provision, which imprisons for up to three years people who have an abortion and five years for those who perform them, is unconstitutional. It gave the government 360 days to change the law, and with the unconstitutional provisions identified by the court set to be automatically repealed by February 12, 2021, time is running short.

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/01/25/thailand-should-fully-decriminalize-all-abortion#

Push to End South Korea Abortion Ban Gains Strength, and Signatures

Push to End South Korea Abortion Ban Gains Strength, and Signatures
By MOTOKO RICH
JAN. 13, 2018

SEOUL, South Korea — Lee Na-yeon was 18 years old and in her first semester in college when she discovered, to her dismay, that she was pregnant.

Ms. Lee went to a hospital and had an abortion. But as a graduate of a Catholic high school where she had been shown graphic videos portraying abortion as murder, she felt scared and tormented by guilt. She had also broken the law.

Abortion is illegal in South Korea with just a few exceptions, such as when a woman has been raped or her health is at risk. It is one of just a handful of the world’s richest countries to have such restrictive abortion laws. Women can be sentenced to a year in prison or ordered to pay fines of two million won (about $1,840) for having abortions, while doctors who perform them can get up to two years in prison.

Continued at source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/world/asia/south-korea-abortion-ban.html

South Korea: Abortion should not be a crime

Posted : 2016-11-06, Korea Times
by Heather Barr

Punitive abortion laws - like in South Korea - violate human rights. In recent weeks, the government has threatened to toughen penalties on medical providers who perform abortions illegally. Women's groups and experts are fighting to make the government back down on this threat.

Rather than further penalizing providers, the government should fully decriminalize abortion. It should remove penalties for women who seek abortion and for medical providers of abortions.

[continued at link]
Source: Korea Times

06.11.2016

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