Texas Medical Board Sanctions Three Doctors for Delayed Care That Led to the Deaths of Two Pregnant Women

Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain died during miscarriages in Texas. The state’s medical board ruled that the doctors’ substandard care led to the deaths and ordered them to complete extra training.

by Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser
April 17, 2026

The Texas Medical Board has disciplined three doctors ProPublica previously investigated whose patients died after receiving delayed or inappropriate pregnancy care under the state’s strict abortion ban.

Two of the doctors failed to properly intervene as a pregnant teenager repeatedly sought care for life-threatening complications, the board found. The third did not provide a dilation and curettage procedure to empty a miscarrying patient’s uterus, and she ultimately bled to death.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/tmb-disciplines-doctors-ngumezi-crain-cases

Nigeria: Beyond the Numbers – What Data and Community Voices Reveal About Maternal Deaths in Nigeria

20 March 2026
Oladimeji Solomon Yemi and Safiya Shuaibu Isa

Nigeria remains one of the countries with the highest number of maternal deaths globally, with a maternal mortality rate of 993 deaths per 100,000 live births. While maternal mortality has declined globally over the past two decades, Nigeria has lagged behind both regional and global trends. In contrast, countries such as Ghana, Ethiopia, and Rwanda, which once faced similar challenges, have made significant gains by investing in skilled birth attendance, strengthening primary health care, and improving referral systems.

In Nigeria, community-informed maternal death reviews carried out between May 2019 and May 2020 show that many maternal deaths occurred outside formal health facilities, including at home, in traditional birth attendant (TBA) settings, or in faith-based centres. Even when facility-based deaths occur, they are often the result of delayed referrals rather than isolated failures of clinical care. Communities point to poor access to quality services, shortages of skilled health workers, weak referral systems, long distances to care, and persistent cultural beliefs as key drivers of maternal mortality.

Continued: https://allafrica.com/stories/202603200231.html

21.03.2026

Commentary

maternal deaths

maternal mortality

Oladimeji Solomon Yemi

I want everyone to be free’: A midwife’s fight for women’s bodily autonomy in Chad

Martine Ngaina was arrested for helping a woman access contraception without a husband’s approval—and she kept fighting

March 17, 2026
Ipas

Martine Naigna has spent the last 15 years working as a midwife in Chad’s toughest humanitarian settings—alongside refugee and nomadic communities, including in remote desert areas—to help meet the sexual and reproductive health needs of women and girls who are often the most marginalized and least served by the health system in times of crises.

Now a health systems advisor with Ipas in Chad, she has built her career in a landscape where abortion is legally restricted and where patriarchal norms and systemic barriers have historically cost women their lives. Her advocacy was born of a singular, mounting frustration: witnessing preventable and needless maternal and child deaths because women lacked the autonomy to make decisions about their own bodies.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/midwife-fight-bodily-autonomy-chad/

How this abortion champion is expanding access in Mozambique

‘I will not stop fighting for safe abortion until no woman or girl is left behind’

March 16, 2026
Ipas

A tragic encounter early in her nursing career set Estrela Góia on the path to becoming a dedicated abortion champion who partners with Ipas Mozambique to train providers and expand access.

“I witnessed a lot of maternal deaths as a young nurse, and many were due to unsafe abortions,” says the maternal and child health-care manager with the Provincial Directorate of Health in Mozambique. “I remember once when a young woman came to our clinic with an incomplete abortion. She was desperate and afraid, but unfortunately, it was too late to reverse the damage caused by a back-alley procedure. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t save her. She died a painful, needless and preventable death, which deeply saddened me.”

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/how-this-abortion-champion-is-expanding-access-in-mozambique/

Nigeria – IWD: NRHJN seeks increased investment in family planning to reduce maternal deaths

By Idowu Abdullahi
March 11, 2026

The Network of Reproductive Health Journalists of Nigeria has called for increased investment in reproductive health services, particularly family planning, to reduce maternal deaths as Nigeria joined the rest of the world to mark the 2026 International Women’s Day.

The reproductive health journalists noted that many Nigerian women still face barriers in accessing family planning services, maternal healthcare, and other reproductive healthcare due to poor funding.

Continued: https://healthwise.punchng.com/iwd-nrhjn-seeks-increased-investment-in-family-planning-to-reduce-maternal-deaths/

11.03.2026

News

Elizabeth Kah

Hajia Sekinah Lawal

International Women's Day

maternal deaths

National Guidelines on Safe Termination of Pregnancy for Legal Indications

Network of Reproducwive Health Journalists of Nigeria

Nigeria cannot criminalise abortion while cutting contraceptive access

February 23, 2026
Ogechukwu Williams

Nigeria’s reproductive health landscape is facing a dangerous policy contradiction with serious consequences for women’s lives. The country’s 2025 national budget slashed family planning funding by 97 per cent, reducing it from N2.2bn in 2024 to N66.39m, which amounts to 0.0028 per cent of the health budget. Towards the end of 2025, proceedings in the House of Representatives descended into heated debate over a proposed amendment to the Criminal Code on abortion that sought to impose harsher penalties for pregnancy termination.

Taken together, these developments reveal a troubling governance paradox: while the state is dramatically reducing women’s access to contraceptive services that help prevent unintended pregnancies, it is simultaneously seeking to intensify criminal penalties for abortion – often the consequence of those same unintended pregnancies. This policy trajectory undermines women’s health and risks increasing unsafe abortions, maternal health complications, and preventable deaths. It also exposes a broader failure to align Nigeria’s reproductive health policies with its public health realities.

Continued: https://punchng.com/nigeria-cannot-criminalise-abortion-while-cutting-contraceptive-access/?amp

23.02.2026

Commentary

Family Planning Council of Nigeria

maternal deaths

National Council of Women’s Societies

Nigerian Medical Association

Ogechukwu Williams

Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria

Rollback and Resistance: The Erosion of Abortion Access in Argentina

Dec 10, 2025
Mercedes Sayagues

The movie “Belén”, Argentina’s submission for the 2026 Oscars, tells the story of a 26-year-old woman who suffered a miscarriage in a hospital in Tucuman province in 2014 and was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2016 after being convicted of procuring an illegal abortion.

Her case sparked a nationwide campaign to decriminalize abortion, known as the Green Tide after the green scarves protestors wore.

In December 2020, the Green Tide won: abortion was legalized on request up to 14 weeks, and later in cases of rape or risk to the woman’s physical or mental health.

Continued: https://healthpolicy-watch.news/rollback-and-resistance-the-erosion-of-abortion-access-in-argentina/

Building climate-resilient reproductive health care in Zambia: Ipas’s on-the-job training innovation

Ipas
December 8, 2025

For nearly two decades, Ipas Zambia has worked closely with the Ministry of Health to reduce maternal deaths caused by unsafe abortion and to expand access to safe abortion services nationwide. However, despite the progress made, persistent and emerging challenges, including the growing impact of climate change, continue to affect sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

As climate-related disasters intensify globally, Zambia has been severely affected. The country has been experiencing adverse impacts for several years, including an increase in the frequency and severity of seasonal droughts, occasional dry spells, increased temperatures in valleys, flash floods, and changes in the growing season, according to the United Nations Development Programme. These extreme weather events often cut off communities from central health facilities, limiting women’s access to timely and essential reproductive health services.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/building-climate-resilient-reproductive-health-care-in-zambia-ipass-on-the-job-training-innovation/

The crisis of unsafe abortion in Malawi: When human rights are denied, women and girls die

By Mandipa Machacha and Tsidi Leatswe
8 December 2025

When Tadala Zindawa**, (21) from Tata village in Lilongwe’s Chitukula area, fell pregnant while in secondary school, she was overcome by fear and panic. Scared of her parents’ disapproval and with abortion criminalized in Malawi, Tadala resorted to unsafe methods using Aloe Vera or Surf Soap to induce abortion. The procedure not only failed, but it led to severe pain and heavy bleeding. She survived after post-abortion care, but the psychological and physical scars are lifelong.

Nevertheless, Tadala is one of the lucky ones.

Every year, hundreds of women and girls in Malawi die or are injured from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications. According to the Malawi Ministry of Health and the Guttmacher Institute, about 141,000 abortions occur annually in Malawi, the vast majority unsafe and accounting for 6–18% of maternal deaths.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2025/12/the-crisis-of-unsafe-abortion-in-malawi-when-human-rights-are-denied-women-and-girls-die/

European Citizens’ Initiative on abortion rights reaches milestone after hearing

Thursday 4 December 2025
By The Brussels Times Newsroom

The European Parliament hosted on Tuesday a hearing on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) “My Voice, My Choice” on safe and accessible abortion for all women in the EU.

At the heart of the initiative is a concrete proposal which respects that health is a national competency: A European financial mechanism that supports EU Member States in providing access to safe abortion care free of charge to women without access in their own country and does not interfere with national legislations.

Continued:; https://www.brusselstimes.com/1867634/pro-choice-european-citizens-initiative-holds-hearing-in-the-european-parliament