After Years of Silence, Texas Medical Board Issues Training for Doctors on How to Legally Provide Abortions

The course includes examples of when abortion is permitted to protect the life of the patient, but many experts say the complications women face in pregnancy are impossible to capture in a brief presentation.

by Cassandra Jaramillo, Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser – ProPublica
February 5, 2026

For the first time since Texas criminalized abortion, the state’s medical regulator is instructing doctors on when they can legally terminate a pregnancy to protect the life of the patient — guidance physicians have long sought as women died and doctors feared imprisonment for intervening.

The new training from the Texas Medical Board comes nearly five years after the state passed its strict abortion ban in 2021, threatening doctors with severe penalties. ProPublica’s reporting has shown that pregnancy became far more dangerous in the state after the law took effect: Sepsis rates spiked for women suffering a pregnancy loss, as did emergency room visits in which miscarrying patients needed a blood transfusion; at least four women in the state died after they didn’t receive timely reproductive care. More than a hundred OB-GYNs said the state’s abortion ban was to blame.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-medical-board-abortion-training-doctors

The Abortion Ban That Didn’t End Abortion in Poland

Five years after Poland's top court gutted abortion rights, access to legal procedures has quietly expanded – but only for women who learned to work within a system designed to say ‘no’.

Ada Petriczko
February 4, 2026

Edyta was 29 weeks pregnant when the MRI results came back. She opened the report in a hospital corridor in Warsaw. Missing temporal bone. Disrupted neuronal migration. Abnormalities in the corpus callosum.

“I just stood there. I couldn’t move,” she tells BIRN. “The entire pregnancy everyone kept saying nothing was wrong – and then suddenly my baby's brain wasn’t developing normally.”

Continued: https://balkaninsight.com/2026/02/04/polands-precarious-post-abortion-ban-compromise-leaves-women-at-mercy-of-the-system/

USA – The Fake Clinics Taking Over Reproductive Healthcare

As abortion clinics disappear nationwide, “crisis pregnancy centers” are transforming reproductive healthcare into a far-right fantasy—quietly collecting hundreds of millions in public funds as Medicaid faces historic cuts.

Sonia Chajet Wides
February 3, 2026

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — A small crowd of abortion rights advocates gathered at a public comment session of the Gwinnett County Department of Planning and Development in July 2025. The most diverse and second-most populous county in Georgia, Gwinnett County distributed millions of dollars in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grants to local nonprofits in 2025, with most recipients receiving something in the tens of thousands.

One organization, Georgia Wellness Group, was set to receive a much bigger prize: $450,000.

Continued: https://inthesetimes.com/article/fake-clinics-crisis-pregnancy-abortion-reproductive-healthcare

America’s culture wars are killing people overseas

When “pro-life” foreign aid hurts women and children the most.

by Sara Herschander
Jan 30, 2026

“The mark of barbarism is that we treat babies like inconveniences to be discarded,” Vice President JD Vance bellowed to a crowd of zoomer nuns, bagpipers, and white nationalists at the annual March for Life in Washington, DC, last Friday.

The vice president then proceeded to announce a threefold expansion of the Mexico City policy, a decades-old, controversial foreign policy that prohibits organizations from receiving foreign aid if they mention abortion as a family planning option. It was reinstated last year when President Donald Trump resumed office.

Continued: https://archive.is/vdb65

(https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/477125/foreign-aid-dei-gender-global-gag-mexico-city)

UK – Woman denies abortion clinic ‘buffer zone’ offence

January 29, 2026
Tom Edwards

A woman has pleaded not guilty to a public order offence after being accused of silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, 48, from Malvern in Worcestershire, is the first person in England and Wales to be charged under new "buffer zone" legislation which came into force in October 2024 and restricts some activities near abortion facilities.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgdj3r00p6o

29.01.2026

News

anti-choice harassment

anti-choice protesters

buffer zone law

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce

Latest US Restrictions on Aid ‘Bully’ Recipients to Accept ‘Extremist Ideology’

29/01/2026
Kerry Cullinan

Global health organisations have reacted with anger to the new US foreign aid policy, which prohibits all aid recipients, bar military, from performing or promoting abortion, “gender ideology”, or “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI).

“Catastrophic”, “bullying”, “draconian” and “ideologically driven” – are some of their reactions to the Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance (PHFFA) policy, announced by US Vice-President JD Vance at an anti-abortion event last Friday evening.

Continued; https://healthpolicy-watch.news/latest-us-restrictions-on-aid-bully-recipients-to-accept-extremist-ideology/

MSF condemns sweeping expansion of the Global Gag Rule

The US Government’s new Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance policy entrenches discrimination against the world’s most vulnerable.

January 27, 2026

On Friday, the Trump Administration introduced its new Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance (PHFFA) policy, which expands the Global Gag Rule to its most extreme version to date and imposes alarming new conditions, in an attempt to reshape US foreign assistance along ideological lines.

The policy intensifies its prohibition on safe abortion care and adds extensive restrictions on other categories of health and rights, including gender-affirming and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) frameworks. These moves directly contradict established medical consensus and evidence-based standards for delivering effective health care and humanitarian assistance.

Continued: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/msf-condemns-sweeping-expansion-global-gag-rule

Trump expands policy banning aid to groups abroad that discuss or provide abortions

January 23, 2026
By Jonathan Lambert, NPR
3-Minute Listen, with transcript

For over four decades, Republican presidents have banned U.S. funds from going to groups that provide or promote abortion — and Democratic presidents have reversed the ban.

On Friday at the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., Vice President JD Vance announced a major expansion of the policy. The Mexico City policy, named for where it was first unveiled, will now also bar funding to groups that promote "gender ideology" and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Continued; https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5683204/abortion-trump-mexico-city-policy

Chile’s president-elect names staunch abortion opponent as gender equality minister

Far-right incoming president picked Judith Marín, who has publicly decried bills to decriminalise abortion, for the role

John Bartlett in Santiago
Wed 21 Jan 2026

Chile’s incoming far-right president José Antonio Kast has named a vehement opponent of abortion who has repeatedly stated her support for life “from conception to natural death” as the country’s new women and gender equality minister.

Judith Marín, 30, was once ejected from Chile’s senate by police for screaming “return to the Lord” during a vote to decriminalise abortion under restricted circumstances.

She is an evangelical former student church group president who belonged to the Eagles of Jesus, a far-right Christian group which recruits at universities around the country.

Continued; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/21/chile-abortion-opponent-gender-equality-minister

21.01.2026

USA – Women With High-Risk Pregnancies Have Limited Options Under Abortion Bans

Our reporting has found that abortion bans generally don’t include exceptions that cover health concerns pregnant women with chronic conditions can face — or if they do, doctors aren’t using them.

by Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser
January 20, 2026

For over a year, we’ve been writing about pregnant women who have died in states that banned abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And we’ve been trying to better understand: Who are the women who are most likely to suffer because of these new laws?

Many of the early cases we uncovered involved fast-moving emergencies. While women were miscarrying, they needed procedures to quickly empty their uterus, and, tragically, they didn’t get them in time.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/high-risk-pregnancies-chronic-conditions-abortion-bans

20.01.2026