Why so many clinics that provide abortion are closing, even where it’s still legal

May 16, 2025
Michigan Public Radio, by Kate Wells
4-Minute Listen, with Transcript

On the last day of patient care at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Marquette, Mich., a port town on the shore of Lake Superior, dozens of people crowded into the parking lot and alley, holding pink homemade signs that read "Thank You!" and "Forever Grateful."

"Oh my god," physician assistant Anna Rink gasped, as she and three other Planned Parenthood employees finally walked outside. The crowd whooped and cheered. Then Rink addressed the gathering.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/05/16/nx-s1-5397314/planned-parenthood-clinics-abortion-close-telehealth-rights

USA – RFK Jr. Is Coming for Abortion Pills

And he’s relying on bogus science to make his case.

Julianne McShane, Mother Jones
May 15, 2025

Earlier this month, the Trump administration scored seemingly positive headlines when it asked a federal court to dismiss a case brought by three Republican states seeking to restrict telehealth access to mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a medication abortion.

Several news outlets claimed in headlines that the administration would “defend” access to the pills, despite the fact that Project 2025 and several of Trump’s top appointees have made it clear that they believe access to mifepristone—which, along with the second drug, misoprostol, now account for more than 60 percent of all abortions that occur nationwide—should be drastically rolled back, as I have previously reported. In reality, the administration merely argued the states do not have standing to sue and did not weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the pills.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/rfk-jr-is-coming-for-abortion-pills/

Kenya – Women staring at death over poor post-abortion care

Thursday, May 15, 2025
By Angela Oketch

Only two out of every 10 primary-level health facilities in Kenya are equipped to provide basic post-abortion care (PAC) to women, a new study has revealed.

The study conducted by the Ministry of Health, the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), and the Guttmacher Institute found that just 18.3 per cent of facilities met the minimum criteria for delivering basic PAC services.

Continued: https://nation.africa/kenya/health/women-staring-at-death-over-poor-post-abortion-care-5042470

15.05.2025

News

African Population and Health Research Center

Annet Nerima

Kenya Human Rights Commission

RFK Jr orders mifepristone review as anti-abortion groups push for ban

Health secretary cites ‘new data’ that emerged from flawed study conservatives are using to pressure US government

Susan Rinkunas
Wed 14 May 2025

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Wednesday that he had directed the FDA to review the regulations around the abortion pill mifepristone.

The review, he said, was necessary due to “new data” – data that emerged from a flawed analysis that top US anti-abortion groups are now using to pressure the Trump administration to reimpose restrictions on the abortion pill, if not pull it from the market entirely.

“It’s alarming,” Kennedy told the Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, during a congressional hearing. “Clearly, it indicates that, at very least, the label should be changed.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/14/rfk-jr-fda-abortion-pill-mifepristone

Australia – June Dryburgh was asked to help out at an abortion clinic. She stayed for 47 years

For almost five decades, she witnessed first-hand how access to safe and legal abortion improves women’s lives. Now, she fears for the future

Justine Costigan
Wed 14 May 2025

When June Dryburgh cleaned out her desk after almost five decades as a counsellor, it was a reminder that even though many of her consultations were brief, their impact was significant. “I found so many letters and cards. There was even a long letter from one woman who wanted to share just how much the care she received at the clinic had meant to her,” she says.

Dryburgh started at the East Melbourne Fertility Control Clinic (FCC) less than a decade after abortion was effectively decriminalised in Victoria, Australia. She saw first-hand how access to safe abortion changed lives, and personally helped more than 100,000 women. She was also witness to anti-choice campaigners’ relentless efforts to wind back this access, weathering daily harassment of staff and patients, which turned deadly when a gunman entered the clinic in 2001 and shot their security guard.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/15/june-dryburgh-was-asked-to-help-out-at-an-abortion-clinic-she-stayed-for-47-years

USA – What Would It Mean to Defend All Abortions?

Democrats love to avoid it, and Republicans love to lie about it. But later-abortion care has never been more important.

Amy Littlefield
May 13, 2025

Ayana, 28 years old and 28 weeks pregnant, eases herself onto the procedure table at Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland. She is a Black woman with the tiny bearing and erect posture of a bird. Above her head, a flock of pink and blue butterflies decorates the ceiling. In a few minutes, a doctor will perform an injection to the fetal heart to end her pregnancy.

Ayana had spent months in turmoil over this abortion. As she chased after her two older kids while lugging her 1-year-old on family outings to the arcade and the movies, she tried to imagine hauling two car seats instead of one. While she changed her baby’s diapers, she thought about what a newborn would subtract from him. The family was already stretched thin.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/defending-all-abortions/

‘Sculpting within the law’: Where does Poland stand on abortion?

Ada Petriczko
May 12, 2025

WARSAW - Two years after Donald Tusk became Poland's prime minister and promised to reform strict abortion rules, many of the women who supported him are disillusioned and say a May 18 presidential vote is unlikely to bring the change they were promised.

This is despite the fact that a liberal candidate could replace conservative President Andrzej Duda, who has long opposed easing some of Europe's strictest abortion laws.

"I'm still shocked that they reached for our votes when they needed them, and then completely discarded us," said activist Anna Pięta, who helped create a viral campaign that urged women to vote in 2023.

Continued: https://www.context.news/money-power-people/polish-presidential-vote-unlikely-to-resolve-abortion-impasse

Abortion in Italy: a combination between neo-fascism and neoliberalism

The experience of Non Una di Meno Padua reflects a situation in Italy, where the right to abortion is diminishing due to conscientious objection, lack of information and the presence of "pro-life" groups, all in the context of a far-right government and cuts to public health.

12 May 2025
Margherita Gobbo, Translated by Ciarán Lawless

Non Una di Meno (NUDM, "Not One Less") is a transfeminist movement that began in Argentina in 2015, then spread globally, fighting against patriarchy, male violence, and gender-based violence. Active in several Italian cities, NUDM, among other activities, has taken action in defence of family planning clinics: public social and health services dedicated to sexual and reproductive health, born out of the feminist struggles of the seventies and institutionalised by law in 1975. Originally created as social, political and feminist health centres as well as gynaecological hospitals, these clinics have been under growing attack for years, with closures and funding cuts.

Continued: https://voxeurop.eu/en/abortion-italy-fascism-neoliberalism/

The right to abortion is under threat in Britain. Secure it now – or risk losing it

Decriminalisation is finally possible – but unless we future-proof the law against anti-abortion extremists, the right to choose hangs in the balance

Stella Creasy
Mon 12 May 2025

Opening the Pandora’s box of abortion reform is something no one should do without the confidence that they are able to manage the resulting chaos. Moves to decriminalise abortion, in response to the continued prosecution of women for having one, could unintentionally enable the restriction of access under a future regressive government. To prevent this and protect services, it is time to write into our statute that safe and legal access to abortion is a human right across our nation.

It still shocks many people to realise that in 2025 abortion is not actually legal for most of the UK. Only in Northern Ireland do women have a right to an abortion. Everywhere else they are exempted from prosecution if it is determined they have met certain access conditions. This is not a quaint jurisprudence debate – it is driving the explosion in recent years of investigations and prosecutions of women and girls for having abortions in England.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/12/britain-abortion-right-decriminalisation-law

12.05.2025

Commentary

abortion law reform

buffer zones

decriminalisation of abortion

Guyana – Legal abortion yields 97% decline in complications

By Fred Nunes, Stabroek News
May 12, 2025

Since the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1995 (MTOPA), Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) has experienced a 97% decline in admission for complications arising from unsafe abortion.

In 1991, there were 1,828 admissions to GPHC for complications resulting from unsafe abortions. That placed septic abortion as the third highest cause of admission and incomplete abortion as the eighth.

Continued: https://www.stabroeknews.com/2025/05/12/features/in-the-diaspora/legal-abortion-yields-97-decline-in-complications/

12.05.2025