UK – Police told how to search a woman’s home and her phone for evidence she’s had an abortion

Abortion providers say the new guidance proves how out of touch the police are – feeling women in vulnerable situations deserve compassion over prosecutions

By Jennifer Savin
19 May 2025

As anti-abortion groups in the UK step up their tactics and women's rights are being rolled back globally, the National Police Chiefs' Council has issued guidance in the UK telling officers how to search women's phones, menstrual-tracking apps and homes following a pregnancy loss, if they're suspected of having had an illegal abortion.

Branding the guidance 'harrowing' and flagging concerns that police did not consult with abortion providers before issuing it, Katie Saxon, Chief Strategic Communications Officer at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said, "As an abortion provider, we know how the police treat women suspected of breaking abortion law. But to see it in black and white, after years of criticisms of the way an outdated law is enforced, is harrowing.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a64814425/police-guidance-abortion-drugs/

19.05.2025

News

arresting women for abortion

bodily autonomy

Clue

Louise McCudden

MSI Reproductive Choices

National Police Chiefs’ Council

Offences Against the Person Act

UK – Police could search homes and phones after pregnancy loss

New national guidance suggests officers look for menstrual tracking apps or abortion drugs

Saturday 17 May 2025
Phoebe Davis

Police have been issued guidance on how to search women’s homes for abortion drugs and check their phones for menstrual cycle tracking apps after unexpected pregnancy loss.

New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on “child death investigation” advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy” in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC, which sets strategic direction for policing across the country UK, also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy”. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, “such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers”, it states.

Continued: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/police-could-search-homes-and-seize-phones-after-sudden-pregnancy-loss

‘We’re ready to fight’: activists brace as US anti-rights figures descend on Africa

Ultra-conservative campaigners fly in for ‘family values’ conferences to share tactics with African allies who oppose abortion and LGBTQ+ rights

Jessie Williams
Fri 9 May 2025

Advocates for sexual, reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights in Africa are bracing themselves for an influx of some of the most powerful, ultra-conservative campaigners from the US, Poland, Switzerland and the Netherlands over the coming months.

The prominent campaigners, who all oppose abortion, transgender and LGBTQ+ rights, and are against sexuality education, are due to speak at a series of conferences focused on African “family values” and “national sovereignty”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/may/09/africa-family-values-anti-rights-conferences-conservative-christian-abortion-lgbtq-gender-uganda-kenya-rwanda

09.05.2025

Commentary

Africa Christian Professionals Forum

Alliance Defending Freedom

Ann Kioko

Anti-Homosexuality Act

Austin Ruse

Bettina Roska

Center for Family and Human Rights

Christian Council International

CitizenGO

Fatima Maada Bio

Henk Jan van Schothorst

Joy Asasira

Julius Maada Bio

MSI Reproductive Choices

National Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission

Nelly Munyasia

Okwara Masafu

Pan-African Conference on Family Values

Purposeful

Ramatu Bangura

Reproductive Health Network Kenya

Saoyo Tabitha Griffith

Sarah Shaw

Sharon Slater

Southern Poverty Law Center

Women’s Probono Initiative

UK – ‘Utterly traumatised’: anger at ordeal of UK woman accused of illegal abortion

Calls for law change after ‘cruel and unnecessary investigation’ into Nicola Packer that CPS brought to trial

Hannah Al-Othman and Raphael Boyd
Thu 8 May 2025

When Nicola Packer took a pregnancy test in November 2020, as the country was in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic, she did not even believe she was pregnant.

Aged 41 at the time, she thought it more likely that she was perimenopausal, but had been feeling under the weather and when her friend – with whom the pregnancy had been conceived – suggested she took a test, she only did so to “prove him wrong”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/08/anger-ordeal-woman-accused-abortion-nicola-packer

08.05.2025

Commentary

Charing Cross hospital

Jonathan Lord

MSI Reproductive Choices

Nicola Packer

prosecuting women for abortion

Global voices on ending USAID, part 2

On 1 July 2025, USAID is officially to be dismantled. Since President Donald Trump froze the funds of the US development agency at the beginning of the year, we have been receiving messages from various parts of the world. The senders want to describe the situation in their countries, discuss the way forward – or simply express their shock. We want to offer the various voices a platform to summarise their thoughts in short statements. This is the second of two parts of their statements.

by D+C / E+Z
May 7, 2025

The end of USAID has had a profound impact on the reproductive health of women in Africa and Asia. In total, MSI Reproductive Choices has lost $ 14 million in funding because it refused to comply with the rules and regulations of the Trump administration. This funding must now be replaced by other funds, as must a further $ 6 million for services previously provided by UN organisations, state health systems and other organisations. One of the countries most affected by the cuts is Zimbabwe, where a combined $ 6.5 million in USAID funding has been cancelled. Only by filling these service gaps in a timely manner can a significant increase in unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and pregnancy-related deaths be avoided.

Across Africa, where I lead MSI’s work expanding access to lifesaving sexual and reproductive healthcare, the USAID cuts led by the world’s richest man are devastating for women living in the poorest communities of the continent. Denied this lifeline, women will no longer be able to safely space their pregnancies, pushing them further into the cycle of poverty, while those in the most desperate circumstances will be left with no option but to risk their lives by resorting to unsafe abortion.

Continued: https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/president-donald-trump-froze-funds-us-development-agency-beginning-year-we-have-been-0

South Africa – Dr Dusi, Dr Google, stigma and all the other reasons pregnant women are risking their lives

In today’s newsletter, Tanya Pampalone and Mia Malan explain why South Africa still has unsafe abortions.

By Bhekisisa Team
May 5, 2025

There are piles of R100 notes, a hand holding a tinted vial, a small plastic bag of brown herbs and a bloody sanitary pad with a message in green type: “Thank you Dr Dusi. Now I’m Free.” There is also a phone number where, presumably, you’ll find someone at the other end of the line eager to help.

If Dr Dusi doesn’t pick up, or, more likely, has changed his number, don’t worry. There are plenty of others to call. Dozens of them.

Continued: https://bhekisisa.org/health-news-south-africa/2025-05-05-dr-dusi-dr-google-stigma-and-all-the-other-reasons-pregnant-women-are-risking-their-lives/

‘We are failing’: doctors and students in the US look to Mexico for basic abortion training

Since Roe was overturned, a growing number of would-be abortion providers have begun to leave the country in search of an education as training in the US dwindles

Carter Sherman
Wed 9 Apr 2025

On paper, it should not be difficult for Dr Sebastian Ramos to learn to perform abortions. As a family medicine doctor, Ramos works in a specialty that frequently provides the procedure. He lives in deep-blue California, where it is still allowed. And the administrators running Ramos’s residency program – a kind of apprenticeship that US doctors must undergo to become full-fledged physicians – support Ramos’s desire to learn how to do it.

But over the course of his three-year-long residency, Ramos is guaranteed just three days’ worth of training at Planned Parenthood. Residents get to participate in only a handful of abortions.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/doctors-mexico-abortion-training

A tale of two conferences: women against women as ‘poison of patriarchy’ returns and abortion fight intensifies

Last week, anti-choice campaigners emboldened by current US politics met in New York at the same time as UN delegates gathered to address the widespread inequalities women face. The battle to protect rights has never felt more urgent

Isabel Choat in New York, The Guardian
Sat 22 Mar 2025

In a meeting room on the 27th floor of a swish Manhattan hotel, Denise Mountenay is telling the audience that the right to abortion is “Nazi thinking.” Mountenay regrets her own abortions, and says she has been called by God to spread the word that she and other women “were lied to, deceived, pressured into making the most horrible choice: to choose death instead of life”.

She goes on to list reasons why abortion is “not a safe procedure. [That’s what] they want woman to think – that is a lie.” Many of her claims, including that abortion leads to breast cancer, have been thoroughly disproved by scientific studies.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/mar/22/women-rights-un-anti-abortion-choice-poison-of-patriarchy-returns

22.03.2025

Commentary

69th Commission on the Status of Women

anti-choice bullshit

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice deception

Campaign Life Coalition

International Planned Parenthood Federation

MSI Reproductive Choices

Nelly Munyasia

Oxfam

Pan-African Conference on Family Values

Project 2025

Richard and Helen DeVos Centre for Life

sexual and reproductive health and rights

Sima Bahous

Southern Poverty Law Center

How will Canada lead on sexual and reproductive health and rights in the era of Trump?

Barely two months into his Presidency, Donald Trump has devastated global sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

by Jacqueline Potvin
March 21, 2025

On January 24, Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy (the “global gag rule,”) which restricts US global health funding from going to any non-government organization that provides abortion services, advocacy, or information.

This reinstatement will harm women and people who can become pregnant, limiting their access to important healthcare information and services. Its effects will be exacerbated by wide-sweeping cuts to US Agency for International Development (USAID) funding and staff. These moves come at a time when Canada’s own commitments to global sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), which have recently been strong, may be at risk.

Continued: https://rabble.ca/human-rights/how-will-canada-lead-on-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights-in-the-era-of-trump/

Prayer and prosecutions: the US ‘hate group’ waging war over Britain’s abortion clinic buffer zones

Anti-abortion campaigners cheer as JD Vance brands safe zones an attack on ‘liberties of religious Britons’

Shanti Das
Sun 16 Feb 2025

Rachael Clarke remembers life before buffer zones. Almost every day, the head of staff at the UK’s biggest abortion provider would get emails from staff worried about protesters outside clinics – and women crying in the waiting room.

Some of the protesters had huge placards with graphic images of foetuses. Others held candlelit vigils and said prayers. One scattered baby clothes in the bushes. “We had everything from people telling women that having an abortion was putting their baby in a meat grinder to people following nurses down the road in the dark telling them they were killing babies,” says Clarke.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/16/prayer-and-prosecutions-the-us-hate-group-waging-war-over-britains-abortion-clinic-buffer-zones