Canada – Volunteers say they won’t be silenced after ‘abortion is healthcare’ banner vandalized in Regina

Black spray paint used to make sign say 'abortion is murder'

Kendall Latimer · CBC News
Feb 23, 2023

A pro-abortion-rights banner has been temporarily taken down in Regina after it was vandalized. The unknown culprit used black spray paint to change the message from "abortion is healthcare" to "abortion is murder."

Volunteers who work with the group behind the banner say they won't be silenced and that the vandalism has only reinforced their desire to create change.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/regina-abortion-is-healthcare-banner-vandalized-1.6756205


As Conservatives Try to Ban the Abortion Pill Mifepristone, New Research Shows Accessible Ulcer Drug Safely Ends Pregnancy Up to 12 Weeks

Mifepristone’s future is shaky—but women and pregnant people can still access misoprostol, a highly effective and medically safe method to end an early pregnancy.

2/14/2023
by CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

Over half of clinician-supervised abortions in the U.S. in 2020 were done with a combination of two medications: mifepristone and misoprostol. A Trump-appointed judge in Texas will soon decide a lawsuit brought by anti-abortion extremists asking him to force mifepristone off the market in all 50 states. If he does, as anticipated, reproductive rights advocates are ready to offer a safe and effective alternative to end pregnancy through three months: a higher dosage of misoprostol taken alone.

Misoprostol is a widely available ulcer medication that can induce a miscarriage by causing contractions of the uterus to expel a pregnancy. In the 1980s, Brazilian women began using misoprostol to end their pregnancies because abortion was unavailable through the medical system. Self-managed abortion with misoprostol resulted in precipitous declines in infection, hemorrhaging and death from unsafe abortion.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/02/14/misoprostol-abortion/


Abortion rights leaders set focus on access, medication — and the long fight ahead

The presidents of Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America both say that they’re alarmed at attempts to decrease access to medication abortion and that they see young people as key to their ability to change policy in the long term.

Grace Panetta, Political reporter
January 23, 2023

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Two of the most prominent leaders in the abortion rights movement told The 19th they’re preparing to tackle future abortion bans and restrictions at the state level, efforts to undermine medication abortion and abortion access deserts as the United States enters its first full year without Roe v. Wade.

Lawmakers, officials and leading abortion rights advocates gathered in Tallahassee for a speech by Vice President Kamala Harris and an accompanying rally hosted by Planned Parenthood on Sunday. They were marking the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe decision that established a federal right to abortion — one that was struck down last June. Advocates said the speech’s location in Florida’s capital drew attention to Republican lawmakers’ plans to pass additional abortion restrictions in their 2023 legislative session.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/01/abortion-leaders-focus-medication-access-policy/


This Trump Judge Could Effectively Ban the Abortion Pill

Matthew Kacsmaryk could revoke the FDA's approval of Mifepristone after anti-abortion groups filed a dubious lawsuit in Texas

BY TESSA STUART
JANUARY 18, 2023

THE ALLIANCE FOR Hippocratic Medicine does not have a robust online presence. Its website consists of a generic landing page that appeared in July, a month before the organization was legally incorporated in Amarillo, Texas. There’s no phone number, no email, no physical address, no board of directors listed. A single button, labeled “Learn more about AHM,” just reloads the page. According to records filed with the Texas Secretary of State, the group’s mailing address is located several states away, in Tennessee, but the decision to incorporate in Texas — in Amarillo, specifically — may prove critical in determining the fate of a lawsuit filed in November challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s 22-year approval of Mifepristone, a key component of the abortion pill.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-judge-matthew-kacsmaryk-ban-abortion-pill-1234658423/


The Father of the Abortion Pill

The 96-year-old scientist who came up with an idea for an “unpregnancy pill” decades ago has led an eventful life, from his teenage days in the French Resistance to his friendships with famous artists.

By Pam Belluck
Jan. 17, 2023

When the idea struck him, nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Étienne-Émile Baulieu believed it could be revolutionary. Creating a pill that could abort a pregnancy would transform reproductive health care, he thought, allowing women to avoid surgery, act earlier and carry out their decisions in private.

“When science meets women’s cause, it is irresistible,” Dr. Baulieu, 96, a French endocrinologist and biochemist often called the father of the abortion pill, said on a recent Sunday afternoon in his apartment in a century-old building a short walk from the Eiffel Tower.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/health/abortion-pill-inventor.html


Telehealth abortion providers eye new options for patients under loosened FDA rules

By Katie Palmer
Jan. 9, 2023

In the past year, there’s been a significant surge in interest in medication abortion via telehealth, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the Food and Drug Administration made it possible for patients to get a prescription online and have the drug delivered to their front doors.

Now, telemedicine patients will have more pathways to care. A finalized rule from the FDA makes permanent the ability to distribute the medication by mail, while newly allowing retail pharmacies to distribute mifepristone, one of two drugs used to safely end an early pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.statnews.com/2023/01/09/abortion-telehealth-online-pharmacy-mifepristone/


Record’ number of abortion pills sent to Malta in 2022

Doctors for Choice say 424 pills were sent to Malta, up from 356 in 2021

December 26, 2022
Daniel Ellu

A record number of abortion pills - 424- were sent to Malta this year, the pro-choice organisation Doctors for Choice claimed on Monday.  The organisation said 356 pills were sent in 2021.

“As an abortion rights organisation based in Malta, we consider the increase in abortion pill packs sent to Malta by reputable online telemedicine providers to be a positive thing,” Doctors for Choice said in a statement.

Continued: https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/record-number-abortion-pills-sent-malta-2022.1003744


Abortion access in Thailand hampered by stigma and limited resources

Sunday, 27 Nov 2022

BANGKOK (The Straits Times/ANN): After finding out in 2020 that she was five weeks pregnant, Kiri (not her real name), then 24, knew she wanted to get an abortion. “It was quite a clear option for me,” said Kiri, who had just started a new job and was not ready to be a mother or get married.

But the process took a lot longer. Not knowing any local abortion avenues, it took her three weeks of research, calls and refusals before she finally secured an appointment to terminate the pregnancy in another province, a two-hour drive from her home in Bangkok.

Continued: https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/aseanplus-news/2022/11/27/abortion-access-in-thailand-hampered-by-stigma-and-limited-
resources


USA – For-Profit Abortion Telemedicine Start-Ups Are Proliferating in Wake of “Roe”

Garnet Henderson, Truthout
November 26, 2022

In 2020, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must suspend its requirement that patients pick up mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortion, in person. After some back-and-forth under the Trump administration, the FDA permanently repealed the rule, which had long been decried by medical experts as unnecessary, in 2021.

This opened the door for providers to send abortion pills by mail in all but the 19 states that outlaw provision of abortion via telemedicine. (Many of those same states now ban abortion entirely.) This regulation change, along with increased popular interest in abortion access following Roe’s overturn, has led to a proliferation of telemedicine companies offering abortion pills. Some of these companies are run by people with prior experience in abortion care and connections in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements; others are not. Regardless, some abortion access advocates are raising concerns about whether the rise of for-profit telemedicine companies is the best way to serve abortion seekers.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/for-profit-abortion-telemedicine-start-ups-are-proliferating-in-the-wake-of-roe/


‘Extremely reckless’: Anti-abortion campaign calls for remote consultations to stop

During Covid pandemic, women seeking abortions did not need to visit GP in person

Sarah Burns
Sat Nov 12 2022

An anti-abortion campaign has described plans to continue remote consultations for women seeking access to abortion care in the State as “extremely reckless”.

Women seeking an abortion during the coronavirus pandemic did not need to visit a GP in person, but this measure was due to lapse following the end of Covid 19 travel restrictions.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2022/11/12/extremely-reckless-anti-abortion-campaign-calls-for-remote-consultations-to-stop/