USA – What to Know About Later Abortions: Myths, Barriers and Patient Stories

As abortion bans spread and delays mount, women seeking care later in pregnancy face growing barriers and persistent misconceptions about why they need it.

7/7/2026
by Carrie N. Baker

Later abortion is one of the most stigmatized and least understood aspects of reproductive health—yet some of the voices perpetuating that stigma come from inside the reproductive rights movement itself.

Meanwhile, while most abortions happen in the first trimester, later abortions are increasing as restrictions and bans are delaying care and creating the very conditions that make them necessary. To address these misconceptions, Erika Christensen and Garin Marschall created Patient Forward after Christensen experienced a later abortion in 2016. The organization is dedicated to eliminating later abortion stigma and barriers.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/07/07/later-abortion-myths-late-term-facts-patient-stories-birth-weeks-gestation/

07.07.2026

Commentary

barriers to later abortion

Dr. Diana Foster Greene

Latin American Feminists Train U.S.-Based Doulas on New Mifepristone Protocol for Second-Trimester Abortions

U.S. abortion doulas are turning to decades of Latin American feminist expertise to make second-trimester medication abortions safer, less painful and more accessible

June 5, 2026
by Carrie N. Baker

Across the world, women living in countries that ban licensed clinicians from performing abortions have always found ways to access abortion outside of the medical system. Today, abortion pills have made it much safer.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and many states banned abortion, U.S.-based activists turned to Latin American feminists who have run collectives supporting women seeking abortions outside of the medical system for decades.

With their guidance, U.S.-based activists have created their own feminist collectives that now serve thousands of women and girls each month in 38 states that ban and restrict abortion access, including the entire Southeast and much of the Midwest of the country. These collectives provide free abortion pills and the doula support to see them through.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/06/05/two-mifepristone-home-self-managed-abortion-pills-later-late-term-second-trimester-pregnancy/

USA – The Mental Health Cost of Abortion Bans for Patients — and Physicians

Dawn Attride
April 23, 2026

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ended the constitutional right to abortion, Caroline Rouse, MD, said her maternal-fetal medicine practice in Indianapolis has profoundly changed.

Under Indiana’s near-total ban, patients who could previously receive time-sensitive care in their own community are now unable to and/or forced to travel to other states.

Continued; https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/mental-health-cost-abortion-bans-patients-and-physicians-2026a1000cv0?form=fpf

Abortion Rights in Canada are Under Attack

Forced-birth groups are testing their strategy

Dr. Jen Gunter
Nov 28, 2025

My friends in Canada, and anyone else who cares about human rights and not descending into fascism, The National Post sounded a right-wing dog whistle about abortion, and you need to pay attention. We have lived this in the United States, and trust me when I tell you, this is how it starts.

The cause for alarm? The National Post, a right-wing national rag, ran a piece featuring an undercover forced birther allegedly visiting four clinics, claiming she was 22 weeks pregnant and trying to arrange an abortion. The videos were highly edited and apparently filmed two years ago, when the person who made them claimed to have been pregnant. I make no excuses for not taking the word of someone who shoots clandestine videos about abortion. When someone publicly admits to misleading multiple people, their word is meaningless.

Continued: https://vajenda.substack.com/p/abortion-rights-in-canada-are-under

How Innovators Are Emotionally Supporting Abortion Seekers in a Post-Roe World

With laws constantly changing and often unclear, being able to reach abortion seekers on an emotional level is a critical touchpoint in the new digital landscape of access.

James Estrada, Common Dreams
Jul 10, 2025

In the three years since the Dobbs decision resulted in abortion bans in 42 states across the U.S, the ecosystem of abortion access in America has shifted and stretched to meet the ever-changing moment. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Planned Parenthood vs. Medina has paved the way for even more states to further target abortion providers by enabling states to withhold state funding to clinics that provide sexual health services from sexually transmitted infection tests to cervical cancer screenings simply because they also offer abortion care.

With laws constantly changing and often unclear in the eyes on abortion seekers, being able to reach abortion seekers on an emotional level is a critical touchpoint in the new digital landscape of access. Innovators have stepped up to meet the demand for emotional support, helping individuals feel heard and get informed throughout the abortion process as laws change and stigma abounds. They’re pairing abortion seekers with counselors, peers, and educators as the digital entry point to care, meeting and supporting the actual and immediate needs, whether they are anxious, confused about where to find care, or feeling stigmatized.

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/support-abortion-seekers

USA – The future of federal abortion data collection is unclear

Federal data collection on abortion is indefinitely on pause, making it difficult to determine how the reversal of Roe v. Wade has reshaped Americans' lives.

Chabeli Carrazana
June 23, 2025

A government watchdog says it’s unclear when — or even whether — we’ll know going forward how the end of national abortion protections impact Americans’ health outcomes, livelihoods and financial futures as the federal government turns away from abortion data collection indefinitely.

A report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office and first shared exclusively with The 19th analyzed the existing data on the economic impact of abortion bans and found that government tracking has been very limited — and could become more so due to changes made by the Trump administration.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2025/06/federal-data-abortion-unclear-gao-report/

23.06.2025

Commentary

data collection on abortion

Diana Greene Foster

Government Accountability Office

National Institutes of Health

Australia – How abortion is weaponised in family court

A recent change to the Family Law Act may still fall short of protecting women from being cross-examined about their sexual health history.

By Madison Griffiths
June 14 – 20, 2025

In the mid 1990s, Louisa* – barely an adult – made two decisions to spare herself a lifetime of pain. On two separate occasions, she slipped quietly through the gates of a concealed clinic, careful to avoid the protesters gathered out the front. Louisa had weighed up her options and knew that acquiring abortion care was her best bet. She wasn’t yet financially or emotionally fit to become a mother. Nor could she bear to be tethered to the man who had got her pregnant.

Almost two decades later, in 2021, Louisa arrived at the Family Law Court in Brisbane’s central business district. She was ready, she thought, to fight for the custody of her then seven-year-old daughter. The last thing she expected was for those choices in her early 20s to be raised in the hearings. On the sixth day, the independent children’s lawyer asked Louisa’s ex-husband if he was aware that, in a previous relationship, she had terminated two pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/health/2025/06/14/how-abortion-weaponised-family-court

USA – What Would It Mean to Defend All Abortions?

Democrats love to avoid it, and Republicans love to lie about it. But later-abortion care has never been more important.

Amy Littlefield
May 13, 2025

Ayana, 28 years old and 28 weeks pregnant, eases herself onto the procedure table at Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland. She is a Black woman with the tiny bearing and erect posture of a bird. Above her head, a flock of pink and blue butterflies decorates the ceiling. In a few minutes, a doctor will perform an injection to the fetal heart to end her pregnancy.

Ayana had spent months in turmoil over this abortion. As she chased after her two older kids while lugging her 1-year-old on family outings to the arcade and the movies, she tried to imagine hauling two car seats instead of one. While she changed her baby’s diapers, she thought about what a newborn would subtract from him. The family was already stretched thin.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/defending-all-abortions/

She was tracking post-Roe abortions. The government just pulled her funding.

Diana Greene Foster, who was behind the landmark Turnaway Study, wanted to study the health and economic impacts of the loss of abortion access.

Shefali Luthra, The 19^th
April 9, 2025

Diana Greene Foster is responsible for landmark research on the effects of abortion access — a massive 10-year study that tracked thousands of people who had an abortion or were denied one. But funding for a follow-up to her seminal Turnaway Study has just been cut as part of a wave of canceled health policy research.

Foster received a MacArthur “genius grant” for the Turnaway Study. That piece of research, which examined the impact of restrictions even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, helped shape public understanding of how abortion access can affect people’s health and economic well-being by finding that people who were denied abortions were more likely to experience years of poverty compared to those who could terminate their unplanned pregnancies.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2025/04/abortion-government-funding-diana-greene-foster/

09.04.2025

Commentary

Research

ational Institutes of Health

Diana Greene Foster

funding cuts for abortion research

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