Abortion in Afghanistan: ‘My mother crushed my stomach with a stone’

By AFP
December 04, 2025

When Bahara was four months pregnant, she went to a Kabul hospital to beg for an abortion. “We’re not allowed,” a doctor told her. “If someone finds out, we will all end up in prison.”

Abortion in Afghanistan is illegal and you can be locked up for having or assisting one.

But Bahara was desperate. Her jobless husband had ordered her to “find a solution” -- he did not want a fifth daughter. “We can barely afford to feed” the girls as it is, Bahara, 35, told AFP. “If it was a boy, he could go to school and work.”

Continued: https://www.mydailyrecord.com/news/national/abortion-in-afghanistan-my-mother-crushed-my-stomach-with-a-stone/article_98859b6c-5ea4-5b4e-93c2-a1638c62c344.html

Abortion bans in US led to more births and infant deaths, especially among vulnerable groups

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN
February 13, 2025

Abortion bans in the United States are exacerbating existing health disparities as births increase in high-risk populations and infant mortality rises disproportionately, new research suggests.

In 14 states that implemented complete or 6-week abortion bans after the Supreme Court Dobbs decision revoked the federal right to abortion, the fertility rate increased 1.7%, leading to about 1 additional birth for every 1,000 women of reproductive age, according to a study published Thursday in the medical journal JAMA. A corresponding study from the same research team found that the rise in infant mortality was even more significant, spiking nearly 6% in the states that implemented bans.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/13/health/abortion-bans-lead-to-births-infant-deaths/index.html

13.02.2025

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

USAID’s reproductive health funding has saved millions of lives. Now it’s gone.

For decades, USAID’s family planning program was the main source for contraception and HIV treatment in some countries. Experts say without it, women and LGBTQ+ people will die.

Jessica Kutz
February 7, 2025

On Sunday, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, boasted that he was gutting the federal agency tasked with providing foreign aid to its poorest. “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk, the tech billionaire head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, posted on his social media platform, X.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was established in 1961 to provide foreign assistance to impoverished countries around the world through food aid and humanitarian and economic development work. It is also one of the world’s largest providers of contraception through its family planning program. According to the Congressional Research Service, the agency’s funding in 2023 was about $40 billion, which represented less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2025/02/usaid-women-lgbtq-reproductive-health-funding-pause/

If Trump wins the election, this is what’s at stake

Women and doctors describe heart-wrenching decisions under what may be the US’s strictest abortion ban in Idaho

Carter Sherman in Boise, Idaho
Mon 21 Oct 2024

When Jennifer Adkins and her husband were considering having a second child in Idaho, they vaguely thought how the state’s near-total abortion ban could affect them. But Adkins’ first pregnancy had gone so smoothly, she didn’t even use an epidural when she gave birth. Her next pregnancy, she expected, would be similar.

But in April 2023, 12 weeks into her second pregnancy, an ultrasound scan shattered that hope.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/21/idaho-abortion-trump

How USAID is helping Zanzibar accelerate progress towards reducing maternal, newborn mortality

Issa Yussuf in Zanzibar
Aug 20, 2024

ZANZIBAR: SINCE 2016, maternal mortality ratio (MMR) and infant mortality rate has been decreasing globally, particularly in two regions of central and south Asia and Australia and New Zealand.

With only six years to SDG 2030, researchers say that the goal of reaching a global maternal mortality ratio (MMR) of 70 maternal deaths per 100 000 livebirths remains elusive, as in many developing countries more than two hundred maternal deaths per 100 000 livebirths is still reported.

Continued: https://dailynews.co.tz/how-usaid-is-helping-zanzibar-accelerate-progress-towards-reducing-maternal-newborn-mortality/#google_vignette

20.08.2024

USA – Maternal Deaths Were Highest in States That Restrict Abortion

Sophia Vahanvaty, Bloomberg News
Jul 18, 2024

Women were more than twice as likely to die in or around childbirth in some US states with severe abortion restrictions compared to those with greater access, researchers said, and disparities could worsen as access to the procedure narrows.

Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma and other states that enacted abortion bans after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision were among the worst across 32 measures on women’s health that included access to care and mental health services, according to a report Thursday from the Commonwealth Fund, an independent health research foundation. It focused on data collected in 2021 and 2022.

Continued: https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/maternal-deaths-were-highest-in-states-that-restrict-abortion

18.07.2024

maternal care providers

Preventing maternal and child mortality: upcoming WHO Resolution must galvanise action to tackle the unacceptable weight of preventable death

Ali Hajji Adam and Mekdes Daba
May 22 2024

Global progress on improving maternal, newborn, and child survival has stalled. Many regions of the world continue to experience persistently high rates of maternal and child mortality, and despite improvements between 2000 and 2015, progress is now stagnating.1 The combination of ongoing and new conflicts, climate change, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic create a perfect storm to drive back any gains that might have been made during the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) era.

The global community is off track from our targets for reducing maternal mortality (SDG 3.1)2 and ending preventable deaths of newborns and children younger than 5 years (SDG 3.2).3 Globally, 287 000 women died from a maternal cause in 2020, averaging 223 deaths of mothers for each livebirth.1 For children younger than 5 years, 4·9 million died globally in 2022, 2·3 million of these in the first month of life.4 In addition, almost 1·9 million babies were stillborn in 2021.5 .

Continued: https://www.ippmedia.com/the-guardian/news/world/read/preventing-maternal-and-child-mortality-upcoming-who-resolution-must-galvanise-action-to-tackle-the-unacceptable-weight-of-preventable-deaths-2024-05-22-173043

22.05.2024

Sustainable Development Goals

World Health Assembly Resolution

World Health Organization

USA – Abortion influences everything

By inhibiting drug development, economic growth, and military recruitment, as well as driving doctors away from the places they’re needed most, bans almost certainly harm you — yes, you.

By Keren Landman, MD
Mar 20, 2024

Last year in Texas, federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that, based on his read of some very bad science, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needed to withdraw its approval of the safe and widely used abortion drug mifepristone. He claimed that the FDA hadn’t adequately considered its safety (it had) and that the lack of restrictions on the drug (there were plenty) had led to many deaths and severe adverse events (demonstrably false).

… Restricting abortion means removing women’s control over not only their bodies, but also their futures — and giving that control to someone else. In a nation where sex education and contraception access are already spotty and about half of all pregnancies are unplanned, that act is a population-level assault on women’s autonomy. The result is a psychic wound even to those who aren’t seeking abortions.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/even-better/24106111/abortion-mifepristone-kacsmaryk-fda-economic-military-readiness-mortality-mental-health-poverty

The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now.

As conservative states wage total culture war, college-educated workers—physicians, teachers, professors, and more—are packing their bags.

Timothy Noah
November 22, 2023

On Memorial Day weekend in 2022, Kate Arnold and her wife, Caroline Flint, flew from Oklahoma City to Cabo San Lucas for a little R&R. They had five kids, the youngest of them five-year-old twin girls, and demanding jobs as obstetrician-gynecologists. The stresses of all this were mounting. That they were a gay married couple living in a red, socially conservative state was the least of it. Caroline was born in Tulsa, spent much of her childhood in Oklahoma, and was educated at the University of Oklahoma. She cast her first presidential vote for George W. Bush. Kate, the more political of the two, was from Northern California and a lifelong Democrat. But her mother was born in Oklahoma City, and she felt at home here; she’d even given some thought to running for the state legislature.

Continued https://newrepublic.com/article/176854/republican-red-states-brain-drain

Study Finds 16% Increased Infant Mortality in States that Restrict Abortion

The study also found that the mortality rate for Black infants was more than twice that of white infants.

By Zane McNeill , TRUTHOUT
October 18, 2023

States with abortion restrictions suffer a 16 percent increase in infant mortality rate, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“What’s also notable is that the data is pre-Dobbs — it came from 2014–2018. That means these numbers are likely to get much, much worse,” abortion advocate Jessica Valenti said.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/study-finds-16-increased-infant-mortality-in-states-that-restrict-abortion/