Madagascar – Don’t the Lives of Women and Girls Matter?

Jan. 11, 2025
By Nicholas Kristof - Opinion Columnist, reporting from Madagascar

When he returns to the White House, President-elect Trump is widely expected to slash funding for women’s health organizations around the world, and people on the left and the right alike are focused on what that means for abortions.

But the impact of any Trump cuts would go far, far beyond abortions, and would probably be devastating to millions of women and girls worldwide. Trump’s approach would reduce the availability of contraception and likely increase maternal mortality and cervical cancer.

Continued : https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/opinion/columnists/family-planning-women.html

12.01.2025

Ashley Judd speaks out on the right of women to control their bodies and be free from male violence

by Edith M. Lederer, The Associated Press
April 29, 2024

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Actor Ashley Judd, whose allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein helped spark the #MeToo movement, spoke out Monday on the rights of women and girls to control their own bodies and be free from male violence.

A goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Population Fund, she addressed the U.N. General Assembly’s commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the landmark document adopted by 179 countries at its 1994 conference in Cairo, which for the first time recognized that women have the right to control their reproductive and sexual health – and to choose if and when to become pregnant.

Continued: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/04/29/ashley-judd-speaks-out-on-the-right-of-women-to-control-their-bodies-and-be-free-from-male-violence/

Poland’s radical antiabortion law didn’t have the intended effect

By Lee Hockstader, Washington Post
November 29, 2023

WARSAW — A right-wing government in Poland, in league with the Catholic Church and legitimately worried about plummeting birthrates, pushed for the toughest abortion law of any major European country three years ago. The results are now in, providing a telling lesson in unintended consequences.

Across broad swaths of Europe that are graying, antiabortion politicians should think twice if they believe tighter abortion restrictions will help reverse population decline.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/poland-abortion-ban-birth-fertility/ (Or https://wapo.st/3Gjq7fU)

29.11.2023

Law and Justice party

In coronavirus-hit Mexico, many women are ‘determined to not have babies’

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul
Jan 3, 2022

MEXICO CITY — Everyone knew the pandemic would bring death. Edith García Díaz thought it would also bring birth — lots of birth.

As a state health official, she worried that the crisis would impede access to contraceptives, leading to a rise in pregnancies. Doctors were swamped with covid-19 patients. Couples were hunkering down at home, afraid to go out. Early in the pandemic, Mexico’s population agency warned that the pandemic could result in 120,000 additional unplanned births — an unwelcome reversal in the long battle to tame the fertility rate.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/03/coronavirus-mexico-baby-bust/

Biden Wants More Stable Diplomacy. An Abortion Fight Is a Test

U.S. funding for overseas health providers that offer abortion services has vacillated with the changing of administrations for decades. Congress is debating whether to settle the policy by law.

By Lara Jakes
Feb. 11, 2021

WASHINGTON — As it reaches out to allies rattled by four years of erratic American diplomacy, the Biden administration wants to enlist Congress in advancing foreign policies that will withstand the whims of any single president.

An early test lies in the fate of what is known as the Mexico City policy.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/politics/biden-abortion-mexico-city-rule.html

Millions of women lose contraceptives, abortions in COVID-19

By ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL and CARA ANNA, Associated Press
19 August 2020

NEW DELHI -- Millions of women and girls globally have lost access to contraceptives and abortion services because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now the first widespread measure of the toll says India with its abrupt, months-long lockdown has been hit especially hard.

Several months into the pandemic, many women now have second-trimester pregnancies because they could not find care in time.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/baby-boom-ahead-covid-19-millions-women-care-72460772

Coronavirus baby boom or bust? How the pandemic is affecting birthrates worldwide.

By Miriam Berger
July 15, 2020

It has been five months — a bit more than half the length of an average pregnancy — since the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic.

With millions of people cut off from reproductive health care and stuck at home, some experts predicted that the crisis would create the conditions for a baby boom, at least in some countries. Other analysts predicted a baby bust, driven by economic and social instability.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/07/15/coronavirus-baby-boom-or-bust-how-pandemic-is-affecting-birthrates-worldwide/

House Democrats move to permanently restore funding for abortion access abroad

By Laura Kelly
07/06/20

House Democrats are working to repeal restrictions imposed by the Trump administration that block U.S. foreign aid from helping fund programs that provide women access to an abortion as part of a $66 billion spending bill.

The proposal, part of the House Appropriations Committee's annual State and Foreign Operations bill, would permanently repeal the Trump administration’s “Global Gag Rule,” also known as the Mexico City Policy, that prevents any U.S. funding from going to any international organization that acknowledges abortion as a possible treatment.

Continued: https://thehill.com/policy/international/506028-house-democrats-move-to-permanently-restore-funding-for-abortion-access

Bowing to U.S. demands, U.N. waters down resolution on sexual violence in conflict

Bowing to U.S. demands, U.N. waters down resolution on sexual violence in conflict

Michelle Nichols
Apr 23, 2019

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A U.S. threat to veto U.N. Security Council action on sexual violence in conflict was averted on Tuesday after a long-agreed phrase was removed because President Donald Trump’s administration sees it as code for abortion, diplomats said.
Amal Clooney and Nadia Murad listen to Denis Mukwege speaking at the United Nations Security Council during a meeting about sexual violence in conflict in New York, New York, U.S., April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

A German-drafted resolution was adopted after a reference was cut referring to the need for U.N. bodies and donors to give timely “sexual and reproductive health” assistance to survivors of sexual violence in conflict.

Continued: https://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKCN1RZ27T-OCATP