UK – Prosecuted, shamed and traumatised for mistake of taking abortion pills too late

In 2020, Nicola Packer had an abortion - then was arrested and put on trial. Now, found not guilty, she hopes she will be the last woman in history prosecuted under England’s archaic law

Friday 16 May 2025
Phoebe Davis

Nicola Packer was still bleeding from major surgery when she was arrested, escorted by two police officers out of hospital, put in the back of a van and taken to Charing Cross police station.

She saw strangers’ faces, patients and staff staring at her. “You look around to see if people are looking at you, thinking, ‘Oh my God, what has she done?”

Packer is sitting on her sofa at home in a small seaside town. The living room leads out on to a patio covered in flower pots, where she likes to spend her evenings after work.

Continued: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/prosecuted-shamed-and-traumatised-for-mistake-of-taking-abortion-pills-too-late

RFK Jr orders mifepristone review as anti-abortion groups push for ban

Health secretary cites ‘new data’ that emerged from flawed study conservatives are using to pressure US government

Susan Rinkunas
Wed 14 May 2025

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Wednesday that he had directed the FDA to review the regulations around the abortion pill mifepristone.

The review, he said, was necessary due to “new data” – data that emerged from a flawed analysis that top US anti-abortion groups are now using to pressure the Trump administration to reimpose restrictions on the abortion pill, if not pull it from the market entirely.

“It’s alarming,” Kennedy told the Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, during a congressional hearing. “Clearly, it indicates that, at very least, the label should be changed.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/14/rfk-jr-fda-abortion-pill-mifepristone

Virtual Abortion Care Is a Lifeline, Not a Safety Net

by Amy Hagstrom Miller
May 1, 2025

New data from the Guttmacher Institute shows that more people are turning to virtual abortion care—and while that tidbit might sound like a silver lining in our post-Roe world, it can be dangerously misleading if we’re not careful.

Telehealth is, without a doubt, an essential tool. My organization was one of the first abortion providers in the country to offer telemedicine back in 2009. And since the FDA allowed abortion pills to be delivered by mail in 2021, we have worked tirelessly to expand our virtual abortion care into 10 states to reach as many patients as possible. But let’s be clear: virtual care alone isn’t a silver bullet. And it’s not a stand-in for truly accessible care.

Continued: https://time.com/7281013/abortion-telemedicine-virtual-access

USA – A Conversation About Abortion Care — and It’s Not All Bad News

Angel Foster of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project on how abortion with pills is here to stay, even as anti-abortion forces double down.

April 28, 2025
By Colleen DeBaise

It can be difficult to find good news in women’s health these days, but here’s a sliver: Abortion, to some extent, is easier and cheaper to access than ever before.

To talk us through how that’s possible in a post-Dobbs world, we spoke to Angel Foster, a professor at the University of Ottawa who in 2023 co-founded the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, also known as the MAP. The MAP currently assists 2,500 patients a month, prescribing and sending abortion pills primarily to U.S. states where abortion is banned or restricted.

Continued: https://thestoryexchange.org/protecting-abortion-care-in-the-u-s-a-conversation-with-a-top-provider/

29.04.2025

Interviews/Podcasts

Dr. Angel Foster

Margaret Carpenter

Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project

shield laws

telehealth abortion

telemedicine abortion

USA – Abortions Are Rising—Even After Dobbs. A New Book Explains Why.

“It’s a story of resistance and resilience and hope.”

Julianne McShane, Mother Jones
April 17, 2025

New data released this week reaffirmed a seemingly paradoxical reality of the post-Roe v. Wade era: Abortion rates have continued to rise despite the increasing restrictions nationwide.

The latest data, compiled by the abortion rights research and policy organization the Guttmacher Institute, shows that throughout 2024, clinicians provided more than one million abortions in states without total abortion bans, a slight increase compared to 2023. A closer look at the data reflects how healthcare providers and patients have adapted to changing circumstances—which have made access both more difficult and, in some ways, easier—since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization revoking the constitutional right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/abortions-are-rising-even-after-dobbs-a-new-book-explains-why/

Above and Beyond Restoring Roe

Abortion rights aren’t enough. The best reproductive care outcomes result from meeting basic needs.

By Jade Prévost-Manuel
Mar 5, 2025

Taylor Young has never wanted to be a mom. From the time the now 27-year-old began dating, she experienced persistent anxiety around the thought of getting pregnant in Ohio, a Republican-controlled state where Young felt her right to abortion was tenuous.

In 2018, she discovered the childfree subreddit, an online forum on Reddit for people who do not have children and do not want them. In that forum, she learned about bilateral salpingectomy, a procedure that removes both fallopian tubes and permanently prevents pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.yesmagazine.org/body-politics/2025/03/05/progress-2025-beyond-roe

Canada – Yukon woman shines light on the cracks in abortion access in the territory

Prohibitive costs, limited services, and stigma make obtaining abortion care challenging, say some physicians

Cali McTavish · CBC News
Mar 03, 2025

A Yukon woman is raising the alarm about the cost and difficulty of accessing abortion medication in the territory.

Jane Doe says she had to seek an abortion through the emergency room, because the Opal clinic — the territory's only dedicated abortion services provider — is only open one day a week, for four hours. Jane Doe is a pseudonym. CBC is not disclosing her identity for personal safety reasons.

That day, she says, she was left waiting, watching other patients come and go, until a female doctor was on shift — even though she hadn't asked to be seen by a female doctor.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-woman-shines-light-on-the-cracks-in-abortion-access-in-the-territory-1.7472276

03.03.2025

Sigourny Whipple-Grantham

telemedicine abortion

Yukon abortion access

Yukon Status of Women Council

Yukon Strategy for Patient Oriented Research

Canada

Health

Human Rights

The doctor indicted by Louisiana for prescribing abortion pills saved my life

Margaret Carpenter’s devotion to her patients should be celebrated, not criminalized

By Maya Gottfried
Feb. 14, 2025

Margaret Carpenter, based in New Paltz, New York, has been indicted for prescribing abortion pills to a person in Louisiana — where nearly all abortions are illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. It isn’t the only legal threat she faces: In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Carpenter for sending abortion pills to someone in the state. On Thursday, a judge fined her more than $100,000 and ordered her to stop prescribing and mailing abortion drugs to Texas patients.

I know Carpenter as “Dr. Maggie.” She has been a hero of mine for a long time, but not just for standing up for people’s rights to reproductive health. When I was 35, she helped save my life.

Continued: https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/margaret-carpenter-abortion-pills-louisiana-new-york-shield-law/

14.02.2025

abortion pills

Dr. Maggie

Dr. Margaret Carpenter

Ket Paxton

Maya Gottfried

prosecuting doctors for abortion

shield laws

telemedicine abortion

The Forgotten—and Incredibly Important—History of the Abortion Pill

Mifepristone took longer to get approved than most drugs—but not because it was unsafe.

Nina Martin, Mother Jones
Feb 7, 2025

At his Senate confirmation hearings to head the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. surprised no one by admitting that he planned to order a new review of the safety of abortion pills. While Kennedy claimed that President Donald Trump has not taken a position—yet—on medication abortion, “he’s made it clear to me that he wants me to look at the safety issues,” Kennedy said. “And I’ll ask [agencies] to do that.”

This, of course, is exactly what anti-abortion groups have been pushing for. Since 2022, when the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, abortion opponents have been ramping up unfounded claims that mifepristone and misoprostol are dangerous. Their efforts have included a flurry of letters to the new administration, explicit directives in the far right’s Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump term, and a barrage of ever-more-extreme lawsuits and state bills.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/abortion-pill-forgotten-history-attacks-mifepristone-ru486-anti-abortion-extremists-new-book/

07.02.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

Abortion Pills: US History and Politics

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Feminist Majority Foundation

Food and Drug Administration

manual vacuum aspiration

Reproductive Health Technologies Project

Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies

Roussel-Uclaf

RU-486

Searle

Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Company

shield laws

telehealth abortion

telehealth clinics

telemedicine abortion

Leading voices call for decriminalisation of women ending their own pregnancies

The new proposals would bring English and Welsh law in line with Northern Ireland where abortion was fully decriminalised in 2020, and also countries including France and Canada.

By Mollie Malone, home news correspondent
Sunday 12 January 2025
With Video – 3:19 minutes

More than 30 organisations are urging parliament to remove the threat of criminal investigation and prosecution for women who end their own pregnancies in England and Wales.

A joint statement, signed by leading abortion care providers and institutions including the British Medical Association, Women's Aid, and the Royal College of Gynaecologists, asks politicians to relook at the law to prevent women who are suspected of ending their own pregnancy outside of the legal abortion limits, from being criminally pursued.

Continued: https://news.sky.com/story/leading-voices-call-for-the-decriminalisation-of-women-ending-their-own-pregnancies-13287119