Western ‘family values’ rhetoric undermines ubuntu and reproductive justice for all in Africa

After commemorating International Human Rights Day on 10 December, a look at how Western-influenced right-wing movements are gaining traction in Africa and are using so-called traditional family values to undermine sexual and reproductive health rights and LGBTQIA+ rights.

By Sesona Buyeye and Duduetsang Mmeti
16 Dec 2025

Across the world, right-wing movements – often cloaked in the language of “moral and religious preservation” and “anti-wokeness” – are pushing back against progressive human rights advancing reproductive freedoms for women, girls and queer people.

Alarmingly, these movements are also gaining traction across parts of Africa, where significant strides have been made in embracing democracy, advancing constitutionalism and advocating non-racialism and reproductive freedoms in the post-colonial era.

Continued: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-12-16-western-family-values-rhetoric-undermineines-ubuntu-and-reproductive-justice-for/

Why Can’t All Pregnancy Care Be Like Abortion Care?

To most of the medical system, we’re secondary to the fetuses we carry.

By Irin Carmon, a features writer at New York Magazine
Oct 23, 2025

Four days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I arrived hot and resentful to a Manhattan hospital for a 32-week ultrasound accompanied by my husband. There was no particular reason for the scan, no diagnosed concern, just an impersonal risk calculation based on the fact that I was, at 38, of “advanced maternal age.”

This would be my second child, and admittedly some jadedness had set in. As a reporter, I’d also been more than a little distracted; I’d been covering the high court’s decision in Dobbs, which had almost instantly banned abortion in 13 states.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/make-pregnancy-care-like-abortion-care.html

Scotland – Paramedic jailed for secretly giving woman drug to abort their child

July 7, 2025
Catriona Renton, BBC Scotland News

A paramedic who secretly gave a pregnant woman an abortion drug, killing their unborn child, has been jailed for 10 years and six months. Stephen Doohan, who was a clinical team leader with the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS), administered the drug after he found out the woman was pregnant with his baby.

The woman, who did not know Doohan was married when they were in a relationship, suffered a miscarriage after the 33-year-old crushed pills into a syringe and injected her as she lay in bed at his Edinburgh home in 2023.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9qxneddqn2o

07.07.2025

News

intimate partner violence

Judge Lord Colbeck

reproductive coercion

reproductive violence

Scott McKenzie 'Mark Stewart'Fiona Kirkby

Scottish Ambulance Service

Edinburgh woman speaks out after secretly being given abortion drug by vile paramedic

Sally Hind & Cara Blackhall
Mon 19 May 2025

An Edinburgh woman has spoken out after she was secretly given an abortion drug by a paramedic to kill their unborn child.

Stephen Doohan is facing jail after he concocted a sick plan to end the woman's pregnancy when she told him she was having his baby, reports The Daily Record.

Continued: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/edinburgh-woman-speaks-secretly-being-075452107.html

19.05.2025

News

reproductive coercion

Scott McKenzie

Scottish Ambulance Service

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

Abortion Bans Are Making It Impossible for Advocates to Help Abuse Victims

“To have to say to someone, ‘You live in a state where you’re more likely to be criminalized than the person who’s abusing you’—it’s devastating,” If/When/How’s Sara Ainsworth told Jezebel.

By Kylie Cheung
March 26, 2025

In 2007, Erica DuBois learned she was pregnant just two months after becoming cancer-free. And then the abuse began, she recalled to Jezebel. Her partner would invoke religion to justify physically harming her: “He talked about the beatings and violence like a test—if the baby survived, then it was God’s will,” DuBois said. She eventually gave birth to a healthy baby girl, but as a result of these sustained beatings, her first pregnancy was the only one that didn’t end in a miscarriage. She sometimes tried to take birth control pills, but when her abuser found them, he punished her. This violence would only escalate when she inevitably became pregnant.

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/abortion-bans-are-making-it-impossible-for-advocates-to-help-abuse-victims

India – “Just Because Woman Below Average Intelligence…”: Court Questions Abortion Request

The bench had last week directed that the woman be examined by a medical board at the state-run JJ Hospital in Mumbai.

Press Trust of India
Jan 08, 2025

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Wednesday questioned whether a woman with intellectual disability has no right to become a mother.

A division bench of Justices R V Ghuge and Rajesh Patil was hearing a petition filed by a 27-year-old woman's father, seeking permission for medical termination of her 21-week pregnancy on the ground that she was of a mentally unsound mind and unmarried. The man in his plea submitted that his daughter wanted to continue the pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/just-because-woman-below-average-intelligence-court-on-abortion-plea-7427279

08.01.2025

News

abortion coercion

Bombay High Court

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act

Prachi Tatke

R V Ghuge

Rajesh Patil

reproductive coercion

UK – Silent prayer outside of abortion clinics is a form of reproductive coercion

August 28, 2024
Pam Lowe, Sarah-Jane Page

Christian prayer is usually an unchallenged activity in Britain, often constructed as benign or even positive. But in some contexts, prayer can be experienced as intimidating, particularly when it is deemed “out of place” or when the motives for prayer are questioned.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that praying outside of abortion clinics is considered wrong by most of the British public.

In the wake of legislation – that has been passed but not yet enacted – to stop activism in the immediate vicinity of all abortion clinics in Britain, anti-abortion campaigners have reacted strongly, arguing that legislating against silent prayer would breach their human rights.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/silent-prayer-outside-of-abortion-clinics-is-a-form-of-reproductive-coercion-237408

28.08.2024

anti-choice harassment

anti-choice hatred

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice prayer

anti-choice protesters

buffer zones

Pam Lowe

public shaming of abortion patients

reproductive coercion

safe access zones

silent prayer at clinics

UK – Abortion clinic payout woman shocked at prayer arrest

Aug 21, 2024

A woman arrested after praying outside an abortion clinic has received a payout from police. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce from Worcestershire was accused of breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) outside the clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham, but the charges were dropped last year.

She said her aim was to be "a peaceful and prayerful presence for women in crisis pregnancies". She received £13,000 from West Midlands Police, which said it settled her civil claim "without any admission of liability", adding the city council brought in the PSPO to deter protesters.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gze361j7xo

21.08.2024

News

Alliance Defending Freedom UK

anti-choice harassment

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice protesters

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce

March for Life UK

Public Spaces Protection Order

reproductive coercion

Europe

United Kingdom

Anti-choice

From Green to Red Tide: Latin America Is Leading the Way in the Fight Against Obstetric Violence

Since the early 2000s, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia and Costa Rica have all passed legislation laying out the rights of people at the time of labor and delivery.

June 8, 2024
by CELESTE MARIEL JEREZ and CORA FERNÁNDEZ ANDERSON

Organizations across the world last month celebrated the “Week of Dignity in Childbirth,” originally called for in 2004 by a French NGO to raise awareness of mistreatment of women during labor and birth. Only recently recognized as a prominent issue, mistreatment and abuse in reproductive healthcare was acknowledged as a global problem by the World Health Organization in 2014.

The issue is widely prevalent worldwide, even in the United States where 20 percent of mothers reported mistreatment during pregnancy and delivery, according to 2023 CDC report. Rates are higher among Black (30 percent) and Hispanic (29 percent) women, as well as those with state or federal health insurance (26 percent).

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/06/08/latin-america-obstetric-violence-women-health-sexual-childbirth-pregnancy-labor-delivery/