Kenya – Health experts warn restrictive policy will drive more women toward unsafe abortions

Unsafe abortions, driven by restrictive laws and pervasive stigma, continue to claim lives and destroy futures.

Monday, February 10, 2025
By Angeline Ochieng

A few hours after leaving a herbalist's house, Mercy* started experiencing strong abdominal pains. A sudden, hot rush of a warm liquid running down Mercy's inner thighs startled her. To her shock, she noticed blood flow.

The 16-year-old felt a little relieved. Hours earlier, she had been a guest of the herbalist, and she knew for certain these were after-effects of the unsafe abortion procedure she had undergone in the company of a friend at her rural home in Bungoma.

Continued: https://nation.africa/kenya/health/health-experts-warn-restrictive-policy-will-drive-more-women-toward-unsafe-abortions--4921212

‘You feel like a criminal’: How trans people are pushed further to the margins in anti-abortion Brazil

Dec 8, 2024

São Paulo, Brazil — In the summer of 2023, Matheus terminated his pregnancy at a friend’s house. 26-year-old Matheus, who identifies as nonbinary and uses he/she pronouns, said he, made the decision because he felt unsafe with the person he had sex with, and the pregnancy triggered his gender dysphoria.

“I thought about how my body would be with the pregnancy, and it shakes me,” he told CNN, sitting at a park in the Brazilian city of São José dos Campos. “My breasts would have milk, and my breasts are a part of my body, that really bothers me”. Despite the toll the pregnancy would have taken on Matheus’ mental health – whose real name has been changed to protect his identity – what he did is illegal.

Continued: https://www.bundle.app/en/breakingNews/'you-feel-like-a-criminal':-how-trans-people-are-pushed-further-to-the-margins-in-anti-abortion-braz-da92d3b1-953c-4e45-bc98-a3ebee9f794f

The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban

The state’s Supreme Court ruled that the 1864 law is enforceable today. Here is what led to its enactment.

By Pam Belluck
April 10, 2024

The 160-year-old Arizona abortion ban that was upheld on Tuesday by the state’s highest court was among a wave of anti-abortion laws propelled by some historical twists and turns that might seem surprising.

For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.

Unlocked: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/health/arizona-abortion-ban-history.html

Library archives uncover long-lost history of Colorado women dying trying to get an abortion before it was legal

By John Daley
Mar. 7, 2024

Abortion access — some states have outlawed it, others have seen scores of patients from out of state — has been in the news since the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the Constitutional right to an abortion two years ago. But looking back through history shows that unplanned pregnancies and access to abortions have been in the news for a long, long time.

More than a century ago, readers of the Rocky Mountain News learned about the death of a young woman who worked in a shop named Maude, who was trying to terminate a pregnancy. A woman named Mrs. Proctor, the wife of the manager of a “remedy company,” was charged with manslaughter in Maude’s death.

Continued: https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/07/denver-public-library-history-of-abortion-access-in-colorado/

Liberia’s New Health Law Among Most Liberal in Africa for Abortion

--- But faces hurdle in Senate

Sep 1, 2023
TINA S. MEHNPAINE

When Teta graduated from high school in 2015, she had big plans: attend college and become a medical doctor. But when the then-17-year-old discovered she was pregnant, that bright future was cast into doubt.

The father of the unborn child, her boyfriend of four years, denied the baby was his. Afraid of the shame and disgrace that would come with being an unwed teenage mother, Teta sought an abortion.

“I was scared and confused,” said Teta. “I had no plans of becoming a mother at age seventeen, my family and everybody looked up to me.”

Continued: https://www.liberianobserver.com/liberia-liberias-new-health-law-among-most-liberal-africa-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

Mozambique: 20 Years After Maputo, It’s a Long Road Ahead to Gender Equality

Two decades on from a landmark treaty advancing the rights of African women, gender equality remains alive on paper, elusive in practice.

12 JULY 2023
By Madalitso Kateta

Magret Kawala of Mponela in Dowa district, central Malawi had always experienced the joys of motherhood and married life. But when she became pregnant while nursing a nine-month-old child Kawala's fortunes changed.

When it was confirmed that she was three months pregnant, her instinct told her she had to go for an abortion. She discussed the issue with her husband, but since surgical abortion in Malawi is illegal and only permissible when a pregnancy pauses a threat to a woman, the couple opted for a backstreet abortion.

Continued: https://allafrica.com/stories/202307130009.html

Abortion is ancient history: Long before Roe, women terminated pregnancies

By Katie Hunt, CNN
Fri June 23, 2023

Abortion today, at least in the United States, is a political, legal and moral powder keg. But for long stretches of history, terminating an unwanted pregnancy, especially in the early stages, was a relatively uncontroversial fact of life, historians say.

Egyptian papyrus, Greek plays, Roman coins, the medieval biographies of saints, medical and midwifery manuals, and Victorian newspaper and pamphlets reveal that abortion was more common in premodern times than people might think.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/23/health/abortion-is-ancient-history-and-that-matters-today-scn/index.html

Professional Herbalists Explain Why Social Media Isn’t the Place to Discuss Herbal Abortions

Sam Manzella
March 18, 2023

When Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that safeguarded abortion access in the United States for nearly 50 years, was overturned last June, herbalist Sarah Corbett of Rowan + Sage wasn’t surprised. “The writing was on the wall for years, if not decades,” she says, citing Black and indigenous activists and healers who sounded alarms while Roe was still the law of the land.

What did shock Corbett was that, in the wake of Roe’s reversal, she and virtually every herbalist she knows received a deluge of direct messages asking them to share information about herbal abortions on social media. It’s a “big ethical battleground” in the herbalism community, she explains. “I can't speak for everyone, but most herbalists hold an ideal of trying not to harm people. And [talking about herbal abortion online] could legitimately cause harm.”

Continued: https://www.wellandgood.com/herbal-abortion/

18.03.2023

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Abortion in Colonial America: A Time of Herbal Remedies and Accepted Actions

UConn historians discuss abortion in Colonial America

August 22, 2022
Kimberly Phillips

Two hundred eighty years ago, nine generations in the past, more than four decades before the signing of the U.S. Constitution – and Sarah Grosvenor had the ability to choose.

In towns like Pomfret, that eventually would comprise the new country, women had a name for what the teen did. Sometime in May 1742 she started “taking the trade,” or an abortifacient to induce a miscarriage. The herbs, berries, and plants in the recipe were plentiful in New England, oftentimes cultivated by women for women.

Continued: https://today.uconn.edu/2022/08/abortion-in-colonial-america-a-time-of-herbal-remedies-and-accepted-actions/