Black Maternal Health Week Isn’t Complete Without Our Abortion Stories

This Black Maternal Health Week, our abortion stories are essential—without them, neither progress nor celebration is complete.

By Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez
April 15, 2026

Long before I understood the systemic consequences of abortion stigma on Black women and girls, I felt its harm. I had an abortion after an unintended pregnancy at 17. The would-be father’s hateful email, the crisis pregnancy center’s insistence that I give birth, and the protestors at the clinic suggested I’d proven that the most dangerous place for a Black child was in the womb. The resulting shame followed me. Even after I’d finished college, gotten married, and given birth to my first child, abortion stigma wasn’t done with me.

After delivery, an emergency room visit revealed retained placenta tissue as the cause of my low milk supply, weakness, and intense bleeding. Nearly six weeks after delivery, I received a positive pregnancy test and needed a Dilation and Curettage (D&C). The medical team said that the procedure helped save my life and avoid infection.

Continued: https://www.essence.com/health-and-wellness/abortion-black-maternal-health/

USA – Is the ‘tech bro-ification’ of abortion here?

Repro workers and tech experts reveal startling gaps between the promises offered by abortion technologies and the realities facing abortion-seekers and support workers

by Nicole Froio and Jade Jasmine Hurley
June 11th, 2025

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion tech has emerged as a potential solution for an increasingly prohibitive reproductive rights landscape…

This exclusive Prism investigation delves into the role of tech in reproductive health care, finding gaps in how abortion workers are served by tech initiatives, a clash between funding abortion tech and industry layoffs, and tension in how best to address the changing legal landscape for abortion. Interviews with a dozen reproductive health workers, tech specialists, abortion fund staff, and reproductive rights advocates further revealed a lack of investment in backend tools for abortion support workers navigating a progressively underfunded field.

Continued: https://prismreports.org/2025/06/11/abortion-tech-repro-workers/

11.06.2025

Commentary

abortion and tech

abortion and technology

abortion apps

abortion chatbot

Abortion Freedom Fund

Abortion Policy API

Aid Access

Amy Merrill

automated abortion finder

Carolina Abortion Fund

Cathy Torres

Cecile Richards

Charley app

crisis pregnancy centers

If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice

National Network of Abortion Funds

self-managed abortion

Why it matters Kamala Harris isn’t afraid to say the word “abortion”

Pro-abortion advocates say Vice President Harris is running the most "unapologetic campaign on abortion rights" By NICOLE KARLIS, Salon

JULY 25, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t afraid to talk about and say the word “abortion.”

Unlike President Joe Biden, whose lack of use of the word has spurred news articles about the topic and websites tracking it, Harris has been notably more frank in her discourse about abortion (a detail that anti-abortion advocates have recently called out). The Vice President’s candid use of the word abortion and how she articulates what’s at stake is a welcome change, pro-abortion advocates say. It could energize voters who have felt hopeless in a post-Roe world.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2024/07/25/why-it-matters-kamala-harris-isnt-afraid-to-say-the-word-abortion/

The Black Women Who Fought for Ohio’s Historic Abortion Win

Voters recently approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion—thanks, in part, to the Ohio Women’s Alliance.

BY LARADA LEE-WALLACE
NOV 21, 2023

This year, on November 7, Ohio voters made history. In a statewide vote, constituents approved a constitutional amendment that will guarantee access to abortion and other reproductive health care, making it the seventh state in the nation where voters have protected abortion access since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, per the Associated Press. The victory came just a few months after a special election in which Ohio voters also rejected a Republican-backed measure that would’ve made changing the state’s constitution even more difficult—a move many believed was a deliberate attempt to derail the proposed amendment.

Continued: https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a45876130/ohio-abortion-rights-amendment-2023/

21.11.2023

Commentary

Abortion Fund of Ohio

Jordyn Close

Lexis Dotson-Dufault

Ohio ballot initiative

Ohio Women’s Alliance

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights

USA – Abortion Wins Elections for Democrats. What Should Advocates Demand in Return?

How can this popularity translate into political power for a movement that is not accustomed to making bold demands of its political leaders?

AMY LITTLEFIELD
Nov 20, 2023

If abortion were a 2024 presidential candidate, it would wipe the floor with Donald Trump. On November 7, abortion helped Democrats take back the Virginia House, keep the Kentucky governorship, and secure a Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. In Ohio, 57 percent of voters approved enshrining abortion access in the state Constitution; it was the seventh time abortion has faced a direct vote since Dobbs and the seventh time it’s won.

Abortion wins. Abortion rights activists have known this. Voters have often chosen to defend abortion when they get a direct vote, including in red states. What’s changed is that Democrats have finally started treating abortion like an issue they can win on—and in the wake of Dobbs, they’re doing just that.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/abortion-democrats-elections/

How to Spot Abortion-Related Misinformation

Between pregnancy “crisis centers” and “abortion pill testing,” there's a lot of questionable info out there. Here's how to tell what's evidence-based and what's not.

Lux Alptraum
Oct 24, 2023

In mid-September, the New York Times Opinion section ran a piece with a shocking headline. “In Poland, Testing Women for Abortion Drugs Is a Reality. It Could Happen Here,” the paper breathlessly declared.

As I read the piece, I felt a shudder of panic go down my spine. For years, abortion advocates have been confidently assuring people that abortion pills cannot be detected in the system when they’re taken by mouth. An effective test for abortion pills could have terrifying ramifications—at a bare minimum, it could discourage people from seeking follow-up care after a self-managed abortion.

And yet, at the same, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right here. What was the scientific justification for developing such a test?

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-spot-abortion-misinformation/

Q&A: Renee Bracey Sherman on the history of abortion coverage

OCTOBER 11, 2023
By FEVEN MERID

In 2016, Renee Bracey Sherman founded We Testify, an organization that centers the stories of people who have abortions—particularly those from communities of color and those who face significant barriers to reproductive health resources—in the hopes of transforming the public discussion around the procedure. “Abortion is probably one of the most lied-about, misunderstood, misrepresented medical, political, personal, familial issues there is,” she told me recently.

Since she founded We Testify, Bracey Sherman has produced a documentary with Planned Parenthood and is now working on a book, Countering Abortionsplaining, with Regina Mahone, an editor at The Nation.

Continued: https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/qa_renee_bracey_sherman_abortion_archives.php

11.10.2023

Interviews/Podcasts

abortion stories

Alicia Gutierrez-Romine

Bronze Thrills magazine

Countering Abortionsplaining

women's abortion stories

United States

Activism

Human Rights

A brief history of abortion – from ancient Egyptian herbs to fighting stigma today

September 21, 2023
Alisha Palmer

You might be forgiven for thinking of abortion as a particularly modern phenomenon. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that abortion has been a constant feature of social life for thousands of years. The history of abortion is often told as a legal one, yet abortion has continued regardless of, perhaps even in spite of, legal regulation.

The need to regulate fertility before or after sex has existed for as long as pregnancy has. The Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Ebers is often seen as some of the first written evidence of abortion practice.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-abortion-from-ancient-egyptian-herbs-to-fighting-stigma-today-213033

How a trial in Texas changed the story of abortion rights in America

August 9, 2023
By Sarah Varney

During the five decades that followed Roe v. Wade, lawsuit after lawsuit in states across the country chipped away at abortion rights. And again and again, the people who went to court to defend those rights were physicians who often spoke in clinical and abstract terms.

"The entirety of abortion rights history is a history of doctors appearing in court to represent their own interests and the interests of pregnant people," said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin. But in July, in a Texas courtroom, the case for abortion was made by women themselves who had been denied abortions and sued the state to clarify the exceptions to its ban, which makes it illegal to perform an abortion unless a patient is facing death or "substantial impairment of a major bodily function."

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/08/09/1187378801/texas-abortion-law-trial-reproductive-rights

How Meta Created a Wild West for Abortion Misinformation

New cases from Meta’s Oversight Board highlight Meta’s haphazard approach to reproductive health.

BY JENNIFER NEDA JOHN
JULY 31, 2023

In March, a member of an anti-abortion Facebook group shared a post describing what it claimed was “pro-abortion logic”: “We don’t want you to be poor, starved or unwanted. So we’ll just kill you instead.”

That same month, another Facebook user shared a link to a news article covering a South Carolina bill that would have criminalized abortion as homicide, thus making it eligible for the death penalty. In the caption, the user criticized lawmakers’ logic that “it’s wrong to kill so we are going to kill you.” On Instagram, another post struck the same tone, criticizing the idea of being “so pro-life” that “we’ll kill you dead if you get an abortion.”

Continued: https://slate.com/technology/2023/07/abortion-misinformation-meta-oversight-board.html