USA – I Wanted an Abortion. My Friends Had Other Ideas.

“Progressive” anti-abortion activists claim to be a feminist wing of the movement. But when one of their former compatriots tried to end her pregnancy, they went to extreme lengths to stop her.

By Rebecca Grant
Nov 11, 2025

On the morning of June 26, 2024, Charlotte Isenberg woke up worried.

The 20-year-old was pregnant and had an appointment for an ultrasound at a Planned Parenthood in Charlotte, North Carolina. She didn’t dread the scan itself, a state requirement 72 hours before having a medication abortion. Instead, she was afraid of who might be waiting for her at the clinic.

After a 30-mile drive, Isenberg and her boyfriend pulled through the gate that protected the Planned Parenthood from prying eyes. It was as they backed into a parking space that Isenberg spotted her: a woman who’d traveled 400 miles from Washington, D.C. A once-friend whom Isenberg had not told the exact details of her appointment.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a69167837/charlotte-isenberg-anti-abortion-activist-story/

A History of Abortion Undergrounds—and a Guide to Starting One

Journalist Rebecca Grant shifts the abortion conversation away from laws and morals to focus on access: getting people the care they seek.

Jessie Kindig
August 4, 2025

On a rainy evening in June 2001, abortion pirates sailed into Dublin harbor. Their converted fishing trawler had a portable clinic bolted to the deck, and the cargo included 20 doses of medication abortion (mifepristone and misoprostol), thousands of condoms, 120 IUDs, and 250 morning-after pills. The ship’s nearly all-female crew included a nurse and a gynecologist and was led by Rebecca Gomperts, a freckled and dark-haired Dutch doctor in her mid-thirties. The boat made its way up the River Liffey and docked close to a waiting crowd of activists and journalists.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/198369/abortion-undergrounds-history-guide

How a $5 Pack of Abortion Pills in Ethiopia Sparked a Movement to ‘Demedicalize’ Access in the U.S.

In her new book, Access, Rebecca Grant chronicles activists' decades-long fight to defy abortion restrictions—including the origin story of Plan C.

By Rebecca Grant
June 24, 2025

This is an excerpt from Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom, by Rebecca Grant. The book chronicles activists’ decades-long mission to defy abortion restrictions and fight for reproductive freedom, from the U.S. to France, Mexico, the Netherlands, and more.

In 2014, Elisa Wells and Francine Coeytaux were positioned outside a pharmacy in Ethiopia waiting for a colleague to come out. The pharmacy was sandwiched between two stores with green signs that read “Fujifilm Digital Print Shop” and set back from the bustling red-and-yellow sidewalk. A few moments later, their companion, a woman, emerged holding a box. White and light brown with a yellow rose and branded as a “Safe-T” kit, its label read: “This pack contains treatment for early medical abortion.”

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/how-a-5-pack-of-abortion-pills-in-ethiopia-sparked-a-movement-to-demedicalize-access-in-the-u-s