Women on Web Telemedicine Abortion Service Turns 15!

May 10, 2021
Women on Web

For 15 years now, Women on Web, the first ever telemedical abortion service, has made sure that pregnant people around the world have access to safe abortions. The first abortion Women on Web provided was to a woman living in Lisbon, who completed the online consultation on May 10, 2006, when abortion was still illegal in Portugal.

Continued: https://www.womenonweb.org/en/page/20954/women-on-web-telemedicine-abortion-service-turns-15

13.05.2021

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Lawmaker urges Malta to stop criminalising women who seek abortions

By Emma Batha, Thomson Reuters Foundation
MAY 12, 2021

LONDON, May 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A Maltese lawmaker made history on Wednesday by calling for the decriminalisation of abortion in the Mediterranean island, which has one of the world’s strictest bans.

In the first such move to amend the country’s tough abortion laws, independent MP Marlene Farrugia presented a bill which would remove criminal sanctions for women who seek terminations.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/article/malta-law-abortion/lawmaker-urges-malta-to-stop-criminalising-women-who-seek-abortions-idUSL8N2MZ4QE

12.05.2021

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UK – Pills in the post: how Covid reopened the abortion wars

As some European countries rolled out ‘telemed’ abortion, others shut down access completely.

by Sarah Hurtes and Daniel Boffey
Wed 21 Apr 2021

Kay, 34, realised her period was late a month into Britain’s lockdown. The coronavirus death count was spiralling across the country. Covid-19 was putting the NHS under unprecedented strain and Boris Johnson had given the British people what he described as “a very simple instruction” in an address to the nation from Downing Street: “You must stay at home.”

A worrying, unsettling time, and Kay, a mother of a six-year-old girl, needed to get hold of a pregnancy test kit. She went online and, two days later, took delivery of the test, learning of a positive result via two pink lines. It was the news she had dreaded.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/21/pills-in-the-post-how-covid-reopened-the-abortion-wars

21.04.2021

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USA – Covid Put Remote Abortion to the Test. Supporters Say It Passed.

Medication abortion was briefly available online in some states, but a court ruling blocked it. Advocates want it back.

BY REBECCA GRANT
04.05.2021

LAST SUMMER, Cindy Adam and Lauren Dubey received the news they had hoped for, but hadn’t expected to get so soon. Their new telemedicine clinic would be able to offer remote medication abortion services, at least for the time being.

Medication abortion — which most commonly involves taking two medications, 24 to 48 hours apart, during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy — has been available in the U.S. since 2000. But, despite a growing chorus of advocates and experts who say remote access is just as safe as in-clinic care, the Food and Drug Administration requires providers to dispense mifepristone, the first of the two medications, inside the walls of a clinic, hospital, or medical office, citing the risk of complications. Most abortion providers interpreted this language to mean they could not mail mifepristone to patients’ homes, rendering fully remote abortion care impossible.

Continued: https://undark.org/2021/04/05/digital-abortion-access/

05.04.2021

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N. Ireland – Free, safe, legal, local

Emma Campbell describes the long fight for reproductive rights in Northern Ireland

March 24, 2021
Emma Campbell

Northern Ireland has finally emerged from the shadow of a British law that wreaked untold misery on the island of Ireland. On 22 October 2019, tired but buoyed, we celebrated that people were no longer at risk of being charged with a criminal offence for accessing an abortion. After a long struggle, the women of Northern Ireland now have the best abortion law in the UK and Ireland.

Sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act criminalised doctors and abortion seekers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with punishment up to ‘penal servitude for life’. This remained in place until the 1967 Abortion Act allowed abortion to carried out legally in certain circumstances, even if it wasn’t fully decriminalised.

Continued: https://www.redpepper.org.uk/alliance-for-change/

Women struggle to access abortion as pandemic adds to hurdles in Europe

By Catarina Demony
NOVEMBER 16, 2020

LISBON (Reuters) - Helplines across Europe have reported higher demand for their services as the coronavirus pandemic adds to the hurdles many women face to access abortion.

While abortion is legal in most of Europe, some women have struggled to get appointments in public health systems overwhelmed by the pandemic. Others could not escape abusive partners because of lockdowns, non-governmental organisations and some women who chose to have an abortion told Reuters.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe-abortion/women-struggle-to-access-abortion-as-pandemic-adds-to-hurdles-in-europe-idUSKBN27W11P

Poland’s abortion ban: a crushing blow to reproductive rights

BMJ Opinion
November 4, 2020

On 22 October 2020, the Constitutional Tribunal in Poland ruled that abortion on the grounds of fetal abnormality was unconstitutional, further restricting Poland’s already stringent 1993 abortion law. This verdict means that only two of the previous three grounds for pregnancy termination remain valid: when the pregnancy poses a serious risk to the mother’s health, or when it is a result of a criminal act. Abortions justified by these conditions constitute only 2% of legal abortions carried out in Poland. Poland is the only EU state that does not allow for abortion on request nor on socio-economic grounds. Even prior to the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling last week, obtaining an abortion on any of the legal grounds was remarkably difficult, with doctors and hospitals resorting to conscientious objection, or purposefully referring women for additional and unnecessary tests in order to exceed the gestational limit of fetal viability.

Continued: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/11/04/polands-abortion-ban-a-crushing-blow-to-reproductive-rights/

Use of ‘at-home abortion pills’ rises amid pandemic – and faces new threats

Medication abortions have are a safe and accessible method of terminating pregnancy, but they have been targeted by onerous FDA restrictions

Cecilia Nowell
Sun 1 Nov 2020

With six conservative justices now sitting on the supreme court, the future of abortion access in US looks increasingly uncertain. But in addition to concerns about whether abortion clinics can stay open, activists are warning that lesser-known abortion medications are also under threat.

Medication abortions have been proven to be a safe and effective method of terminating pregnancy, and because they can be completed without doctor supervision, they serve as a crucial alternative for those who have had other abortion services shuttered in their state, or who do not feel safe accessing traditional health services.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/01/at-home-abortion-pills-increasingly-in-demand-amid-pandemic-under-new-threats

Abortion increasingly hard to access in Turkey

By FARIBA NAWA
Oct 6, 2020
Listen: 6:43 podcast

When Sevilay, a 38-year-old, stay-at-home mom in Istanbul, learned she was pregnant with a third child, she agonized over what to do.

“I became very upset when I learned about my
pregnancy. I wondered whether I could do it or not. I was already having a hard
time with two kids. There was nobody that could help me.”

Continued: https://news.wbfo.org/post/abortion-increasingly-hard-access-turkey

06.10.2020

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How the pandemic has affected abortion rules around the world

By Miriam Berger
September 26, 2020

Argentina’s president was expected to propose a landmark law to decriminalize abortion, setting a new standard for Latin America. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. The release date was delayed, indefinitely.

Ruth Zurbriggen, a reproductive rights activist with the group Socorristas en Red, felt “pain and rage.” But the group’s work continued — efforts, she said, made even more pressing as the pandemic took center stage.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/09/26/coronavirus-pandemic-global-abortion-access-reproductive-health