Scotland – Paramedic secretly injected pregnant woman with abortion drug to kill unborn child

Stephen Doohan, 33, concocted the plan after the woman he met while married told him she was having his baby.

STV News
May 17, 2025

A paramedic secretly gave a pregnant woman an abortion drug killing her unborn child. Stephen Doohan concocted the plan after she told him she was having his baby.

The 33-year-old – who was a clinical team leader with the Scottish Ambulance Service – was married at the time. He crushed pills into a syringe before administering the medication as she lay in bed at his home in Edinburgh in 2023.

Continued: https://news.stv.tv/east-central/paramedic-secretly-injected-pregnant-woman-with-abortion-drug-to-kill-unborn-child

17.05.2025

reproductive coercion

Scottish Ambulance Service

Stephen Doohan

Europe

Scotland

USA – RFK Jr. Is Coming for Abortion Pills

And he’s relying on bogus science to make his case.

Julianne McShane, Mother Jones
May 15, 2025

Earlier this month, the Trump administration scored seemingly positive headlines when it asked a federal court to dismiss a case brought by three Republican states seeking to restrict telehealth access to mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a medication abortion.

Several news outlets claimed in headlines that the administration would “defend” access to the pills, despite the fact that Project 2025 and several of Trump’s top appointees have made it clear that they believe access to mifepristone—which, along with the second drug, misoprostol, now account for more than 60 percent of all abortions that occur nationwide—should be drastically rolled back, as I have previously reported. In reality, the administration merely argued the states do not have standing to sue and did not weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the pills.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/rfk-jr-is-coming-for-abortion-pills/

USA – The Bad Data Backing Josh Hawley’s Attack on Abortion Pills

A new study being used to call for mifepristone restrictions relies on vague and dubious definitions of drug-related complications.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown
May 5, 2025

The abortion pill mifepristone "is not safe and effective," argue the authors of a new study that uses insurance claim data to examine adverse reactions to the pill. They claim to have found a "serious adverse event" rate of 10.93 percent, and they say this finding justifies renewed restrictions on mifepristone.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) seems to agree. The day the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) released its new mifepristone study, Hawley wrote to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief Marty Makary, urging the commissioner to "follow this new data and take all appropriate action to restore critical safeguards on the use of mifepristone."

Continued: https://reason.com/2025/05/05/the-bad-data-backing-josh-hawleys-attack-on-abortion-pills/

05.05.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

anti-choice deception

anti-choice hypocrisy

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misogyny

Food and Drug Administration

Josh Hawley

Marty Makary

misoprostol

safety of abortion pills

United States

Anti-choice

Health

Bolivian teens seeking abortions meet misinformation online

Bolivian teens with unwanted pregnancies can be stymied by anti-abortion groups using online sites to spread misinformation.

Nathalie Iriarte
April 23, 2025

SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA, Bolivia - When Kasandra, a teenager in Bolivia, discovered she was pregnant at 15 as a result of rape, her already troubled life fell apart.

The unwanted pregnancy was a horrible milestone in the years of sexual abuse and beatings she had endured at the hands of her stepfather that began when she was 11.

"To have a child was the worst. My stepfather was going to kick me out of the house or kill me," Kasandra, who did not want her real name used, told Context.

Continued: https://www.context.news/big-tech/bolivian-teens-seeking-abortions-meet-misinformation-online

The fight for abortion rights in Sri Lanka

A proposed amendment to the British colonial-era abortion laws is far too narrow

by Mia Abeyawardene, GroundViews
Posted 14 April 2025

In a country where abortion remains criminalised under colonial-era laws dating back to 1883, Sri Lanka has long denied women the fundamental right to make decisions about their own bodies. The recent proposal to amend these laws, allowing for pregnancy termination in cases of unviable fetal abnormalities, has been welcomed by many, including the Sri Lanka Safe Abortion Coalition (SLSAC). However, this limited reform is far from sufficient, and it exposes deeper systemic issues: the exclusion of women from decision making, the medicalisation of a fundamentally human rights issue and the persistent stigma and patriarchal control over women’s reproductive choices.

The SLSAC has cautiously welcomed the proposal, recognising it as a potential first step toward a more just and compassionate legal framework. Yet the coalition is clear in its stance: the proposed amendment is far too narrow. Limiting access to abortion solely on the grounds of fatal fetal abnormalities does not address the broader reality of why women seek abortions, including cases of rape, incest, lack of access to contraception, economic hardship or simply the choice not to continue a pregnancy.

Continued: https://groundviews.org/2025/04/14/the-fight-for-abortion-rights-in-sri-lanka/

Why overturning Roe v. Wade only made America’s abortion rate rise

"They will never stop abortion": "After Dobbs" chronicles "the extraordinary efforts" to help women get healthcare

By Amanda Marcotte, Salon
March 25, 2025

Republican politicians owe the pro-choice community a thank you card for saving the right from the worst impacts of their policies. After the Supreme Court overturned nearly five decades of abortion rights in the infamous Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case, the fallout has been terrible: women nearly bleeding to death in hospital parking lots, women having to be airlifted to safer states for abortions, and, unfortunately, a few highly publicized deaths because abortion bans prevented timely care. Still, the impacts have fallen far short of what anti-choice activists hoped and what pro-choice activists feared. There haven't been hospitals filling up, as they did in the days before Roe v. Wade, with patients mutilated from botched abortions. It's not because women have, en masse, given up and submitted to forced childbirth. On the contrary, the birth rate continues to decline while the abortion rate went up after the Dobbs decision.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2025/03/25/why-overturning-roe-v-wade-only-made-americas-abortion-rate-rise/

A new Texas bill is coming after online abortion pills

The 43-page measure, introduced Friday, may be the most meaningful attempt this year to block the ordering and mailing of medication abortion.

March 14, 2025

Republican state legislators unveiled a new effort on Friday to derail the health care network that has helped people in Texas continue accessing abortion years after the Lone Star State banned the procedure.

The 43-page bill targets tech companies that allow patients to order abortion pills online and nonprofit funds that help them travel out of state for care and gives new power to the state’s attorney general to prosecute abortion providers. Introduced by influential state legislators in the state’s House and Senate and backed by Texas Right to Life, a leading anti-abortion group, this is the most sweeping abortion bill introduced in the state since the fall of Roe v. Wade almost three years ago.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2025/03/texas-bill-abortion-pills/

Abortion access under threat in Milei’s Argentina

Buenos Aires (AFP) – Four years after Argentina became the first big Latin American country to legalize abortion, women are finding it hard to access terminations due to President Javier Milei's "chainsaw" economics and anti-feminist diatribes, critics say.

March 6, 2025

At a women's sexual health NGO in the town of Chivilcoy, 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) west of Buenos Aires, abortion pills are handed out sparingly because of reduced state-sponsored supplies.

Each week, about 15 women in Chivilcoy request misoprostol and mifepristone -- two medications used to end pregnancy -- but some now leave empty-handed, Cecilia Robledo, a local councilor who runs the organization, told AFP by telephone.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250306-abortion-access-under-threat-in-milei-s-argentina

DRC – Dr. Jean-Claude Mulunda: Breaking the silence on the need for safe abortion care in humanitarian settings

IPAS
Feb 28, 2025

Early in his career, Ipas Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) director Dr. Jean-Claude Mulunda, then a coordinator with a refugee agency, was confronted with the plight of women and girls who had suffered sexual violence fleeing Central African Republic for refuge in DRC.

“In my report to the supervisor, I noted that over 60% of the women and girls were rape victims. Many of them, including little girls who could not be more than 12, were pregnant. They were also dealing with sexually transmitted infections and malnutrition,” he explains.

Continued; https://www.ipas.org/news/drc-safe-abortion-care-in-humanitarian-settings/

Guttmacher Releases First-Ever State-Level Data on Medication Abortion Provision

Data show medication abortion remains critical as federal attacks on access intensify

Feb 27, 2025

The Guttmacher Institute released the latest round of data from its Monthly Abortion Provision Study, an initiative launched in 2023 to produce monthly estimates of clinician-provided abortions in US states without total abortion bans. In addition to state and national abortion estimates from January 2023 through November 2024, for the first time the data also include state-level estimates of the proportion of abortions provided via medication in 2023 in states without total abortion bans and the proportion of all abortions that were provided by online-only clinics in 2023 in states without total bans or bans on telemedicine provision. In an accompanying policy analysis, Guttmacher experts put these findings in the larger political context, outlining the current and future threats to medication abortion in the United States.

The new data confirm that medication abortion accounts for the majority of abortions provided in nearly all US states without total abortion bans, ranging from 95% in Wyoming and 84% in Montana to 44% in Washington, DC and 46% in Ohio. These estimates expand on Guttmacher’s previous finding that 63% of all clinician-provided abortions in 2023 in the United States (excluding states with total abortion bans) were medication abortions.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2025/guttmacher-releases-first-ever-state-level-data-medication-abortion-provision

27.02.2025