A History of Abortion Undergrounds—and a Guide to Starting One

Journalist Rebecca Grant shifts the abortion conversation away from laws and morals to focus on access: getting people the care they seek.

Jessie Kindig
August 4, 2025

On a rainy evening in June 2001, abortion pirates sailed into Dublin harbor. Their converted fishing trawler had a portable clinic bolted to the deck, and the cargo included 20 doses of medication abortion (mifepristone and misoprostol), thousands of condoms, 120 IUDs, and 250 morning-after pills. The ship’s nearly all-female crew included a nurse and a gynecologist and was led by Rebecca Gomperts, a freckled and dark-haired Dutch doctor in her mid-thirties. The boat made its way up the River Liffey and docked close to a waiting crowd of activists and journalists.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/198369/abortion-undergrounds-history-guide

How a $5 Pack of Abortion Pills in Ethiopia Sparked a Movement to ‘Demedicalize’ Access in the U.S.

In her new book, Access, Rebecca Grant chronicles activists' decades-long fight to defy abortion restrictions—including the origin story of Plan C.

By Rebecca Grant
June 24, 2025

This is an excerpt from Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom, by Rebecca Grant. The book chronicles activists’ decades-long mission to defy abortion restrictions and fight for reproductive freedom, from the U.S. to France, Mexico, the Netherlands, and more.

In 2014, Elisa Wells and Francine Coeytaux were positioned outside a pharmacy in Ethiopia waiting for a colleague to come out. The pharmacy was sandwiched between two stores with green signs that read “Fujifilm Digital Print Shop” and set back from the bustling red-and-yellow sidewalk. A few moments later, their companion, a woman, emerged holding a box. White and light brown with a yellow rose and branded as a “Safe-T” kit, its label read: “This pack contains treatment for early medical abortion.”

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/how-a-5-pack-of-abortion-pills-in-ethiopia-sparked-a-movement-to-demedicalize-access-in-the-u-s

How a network of women in Latin America transformed safe, self-managed abortions

June 8, 2025
By Marta Martínez, Liana Simstrom
Podcast: 41-Minute Listen

In November 1990, more than 3,000 women descended on the sleepy beach town of San Bernardo del Tuyú, Argentina, for what was becoming a legendary event.

Activists, doctors, academics, social workers and lawyers from across the Americas traveled all the way to attend a feminist gathering known as an Encuentro.

While they publicly debated their political demands, the piece of information that made the biggest impact on the future of abortion was exchanged in private, in whispers.

Continued; https://www.npr.org/2025/06/08/g-s1-68729/latin-america-abortion-activism

08.06.2025

Interviews/Podcasts

'La Escuela Socorrista

abortion accompaniment workshop

abortion manual

abortion pills

abortion support networks

Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe

First Responders Network

Gabriela Luchetti

green bandana

green wave

Ibis Reproductive Health

Kelly Blanchard

Las Libres

Lesbianas y Feministas por la Descriminalización del Aborto

Lesbians and Feminists for Abortion Decriminalization

self-managed abortion

self-managed abortion manual

Socorristas En Red

Veronica Cruz

Women on Waves

World Health Organization

Canadian non-profit that facilitates abortion pill access sees surge in U.S. requests

By Hannah Alberga, The Canadian Press
November 27, 2024

A Canadian non-profit that helps women obtain the abortion pill in countries with restrictions says it saw a fourfold increase in U.S. requests after the presidential election.

The majority of inquiries came from women who were not pregnant, suggesting many want the drug on hand in case they need it, says Venny Ala-Siurua, executive director of Women on Web.

Ala-Siurua, based in Montreal, says some women fear abortions could become illegal or harder to access in the U.S. after Donald Trump takes office.

Continued: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/11/27/canadian-non-profit-that-facilitates-abortion-pill-access-sees-surge-in-u-s-requests/

In Morocco, Women Turn To Booming Online Abortion Pill Market

By Claire GOUNON
May 26, 2024

Asmaa was terrified at the thought of giving birth again, but with abortion largely illegal in Morocco she turned to the thriving illicit online pills market to end her pregnancy.

The 37-year-old mother of one went on Facebook after her gynaecologist told her about other women who had managed to get their hands on abortion pills through the platform.

Continued: https://www.barrons.com/news/in-morocco-women-turn-to-booming-online-abortion-pill-market-62a86370

The long and winding history of the war on abortion drugs

Along with the stethoscope and camembert cheese, mifepristone may be one of France’s greatest inventions. It’s one of two drugs taken for medical abortions, along with misoprostol, and has been making headlines in the US, where a Texas judge issued a ruling to ban it nationwide. FRANCE 24 takes a look at the history of these two drugs.

26/04/2023
by Lara BULLENS

Two separate rulings filed one after another in quick succession on April 7 had US abortion providers holding their breath. The first, issued by Trump-appointed federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, ordered a hold on mifepristone, one of two drugs taken for medical abortions. The second, issued by Obama-appointed federal judge Thomas O. Rice, came less than an hour later. His ruling ordered the exact opposite.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/health/20230426-the-long-and-winding-history-of-the-war-on-abortion-drugs

This doctor says bans won’t stop her from getting abortion pills to women in the U.S.

BY LAURA KINGSTAFF
APRIL 3, 2023

AMSTERDAM — It was nearly three decades ago, as a young medical trainee in West Africa, that Rebecca Gomperts witnessed scenes that would set in motion her life’s work. Gruesome hemorrhages, perforated wombs, bloodied young women gasping out their lives: all the aftermath of botched illegal abortions.

“The methods — oh, how invasive they were,” the 57-year-old Dutch activist-physician said, shaking her head at the memory of stricken women staggering or being carried into the hospital. “Sticks. Bleach.”

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-04-03/dutch-doctor-telemedicine-group-abortion-pill-struggle

‘It’s a war’: the doctor who wants Americans to get abortion pills before it’s too late

Rebecca Gomperts has found innovative ways to circumvent abortion restrictions worldwide – and a US ruling could make her work even more urgent

Poppy Noor

Mon 20 Feb 2023

In the first month of the coronavirus pandemic, when planes from India temporarily stopped flying, Rebecca Gomperts faced a problem. A Dutch physician and abortion specialist, she had spent the two years prior shipping the pills commonly used to end a pregnancy – mifepristone and misoprostol – to people in countries where they couldn’t access them. Now, mifepristone wasn’t available to her any more.

Gomperts is a doctor who has gone to extraordinary lengths to circumvent abortion restrictions around the world, including parking her boat in international waters outside of countries like Poland to administer abortions. So she pivoted. She trialled misoprostol-only abortions, as that drug was more easily available outside India. The results weren’t ideal, but they were much better than nothing.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/20/abortion-pills-us-ruling-rebecca-gomperts-interview

20.02.2023

misoprostol-only abortions

USA – Meet the Doctors Taking to the High Seas to Perform Abortions

They might be in murky legal water.

Maddie Bender
Updated Jul. 24, 2022

When states cracked down on gambling in the 20th century, Americans took their money offshore to casino boats in the Mississippi River and along the Pacific Coast. They reasoned that once a vessel was more than 12 nautical miles offshore, it would be outside of U.S. territorial waters—and therefore wouldn’t have to abide by gambling restrictions.

Inspired by these boats, one doctor is betting on these same legal loopholes to set up a floating health clinic in the Gulf of Mexico and offer comprehensive reproductive care, including surgical abortions. It’s not a completely new idea, and it’s not uncontroversial, either: Some wonder whether the idea is more of a performative gimmick than a feasible solution to reproductive care, and there are a slew of legal issues to take into account, too. But all agree that it is the kind of workaround that will proliferate in a post-Roe America.

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-doctors-taking-to-the-high-seas-to-perform-abortions

24.07.2022

International Maritime Group

If You Can’t Get an Abortion on Land, Can You Get One on a Boat?

A doctor explains her long-brewing plan to set up a floating clinic in the Gulf of Mexico.

BY CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI
JULY 14, 2022

In the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, reproductive health clinics in states with abortion bans have been forced to curtail their services. This has been particularly acute in the South, where there will soon be no legal abortion services in a wide swath of the country.

Some patients are now forced to travel hundreds of miles for care. Someday soon, they may not have to. To serve patients on the Gulf Coast who may be closer to the water than an abortion clinic, Amy Autry, an OB-GYN and professor at the University of California San Francisco, is spearheading a project that would provide abortion services on a boat in federal waters a few miles off the coastline. The nonprofit is called PRROWESS, an acronym that stands for Protecting Reproductive Rights Of Women Endangered by State Statutes.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/07/abortion-care-boat-gulf-of-mexico.html

14.07.2022