Kenya – A hospital bed is not a crime scene

May 8, 2026

There is a girl at the centre of this case.
Seventeen.
In pain.
Bleeding.
Afraid.
She went to a clinic for help. She was arrested instead.

Removed from a hospital bed, made to sign a statement, subjected to a forced medical examination, and detained when she should have been healing. Before we debate statutes and sections, we must sit with this: a child seeking care was treated as a criminal.

This is not just a legal issue. It is a public health crisis in slow motion.

Continued: https://hapakenya.com/2026/05/08/a-hospital-bed-is-not-a-crime-scene/

08.05.2026

USA – They Came for Mifepristone. The Abortion Rights Movement Is Ready.

As the abortion pill heads back to the Supreme Court, advocates have a backup that’s effective and safe: misoprostol alone.

Nina Martin, Mother Jones
May 7, 2026

Medication abortion is back at the US Supreme Court—which is exactly where abortion opponents want it. Last week, in a late Friday afternoon move guaranteed to stoke maximum confusion and panic, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a Food and Drug Administration rule allowing telemedicine prescription of mifepristone, one of two drugs that make up the gold-standard abortion-pill regimen. On Monday morning, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito put that ruling on pause until May 11.

But even as abortion advocates expressed relief that telemedicine abortions can continue for a few more days, the order by Alito—the same ultraconservative who wrote the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022—was at best a reprieve. At some point soon, the court’s right-wing supermajority could drastically curtail or cut off access by mail to an extremely safe and effective drug that has been used by hundreds of thousands of women a year since Dobbs, including in states where abortion is banned. Almost two-thirds of abortions in the US now happen with pills, and nearly 30 percent occur by telemedicine.

Continued; https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/they-came-for-mifepristone-the-abortion-rights-movement-is-ready/

Stranger Removal: Inside Kenya’s Dangerous Underground Abortion Market

Abortion in Kenya exists in a legal grey zone. It is permitted under the 2010 Constitution in specific circumstances.

Elvine Tina Ouma
May 7, 2026

On March 3, 2025, a short video went viral on TikTok, captioned “Get ready with me to go for stranger removal.” The two-minute clip amassed more than 90k+ views, likes, comments, and shares. The video documented a young woman preparing for an abortion without ever mentioning the word.

The phrase “stranger removal” is a part of a growing digital code. It is ‘algospeak’—coded language used to evade automated content moderation systems that flag posts containing words like abortion.

In Kenya, the phrase has quickly entered online slang. But its spread reflects something more significant. Behind the coded language is an expanding underground abortion market shaped by legal ambiguity, high costs, and limited access to safe services. Increasingly, that market is taking shape online.

Continued: https://www.theelephant.info/analysis/2026/05/07/stranger-removal-inside-kenyas-dangerous-underground-abortion-market/

USA – ‘Chaos’ followed ruling on abortion drug access, and providers say more uncertainty lies ahead

By Deidre McPhillips
May 6, 2026

Like on many other days, the last thing Leah Coplon did before she left work Friday was to check a litigation tracker. Coplon, the director of clinical operations for Abortion on Demand, was watching for any updates about legal action on abortion pills. Around 5 p.m., it was quiet.

Coplon made a short commute to downtown Portland, Maine, to attend a May Day rally. She had just arrived when she got the news.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/06/health/abortion-providers-mifepristone-chaos-court

06.05.2026

Massachusetts Abortion Access Project

“We are going to die”: The frontline costs of Uganda’s new US health agreement

“We are fighting political and cultural wars. Wars that are not ours.”

Soita Khatondi Wepukhulu
6 May 2026

On an early morning in February, 23-year-old Suzan Akello was found lying dead on a veranda outside a house she had visited in Namataala, Mbale town, in eastern Uganda. Friends said she could not afford a clinic and had taken herbal medicine to terminate a pregnancy. By the time Akello needed urgent care, it was too late.

Post-abortion care services (PAC) are legal in Uganda, secured through years of advocacy and government-NGO collaboration, some under US-supported programmes. But health workers, activists, and patients told The New Humanitarian that in recent months, post-abortion care and critical HIV/AIDS services are increasingly caught in the fallout of a new $2.3 billion health agreement between Uganda and the United States, one that is integrating donor-funded programmes into Uganda’s public health system while reducing reliance on NGOs.

Continued: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2026/05/06/frontline-costs-uganda-new-us-health-agreement

Kenya – The Frame That Kills: Post-Abortion Care, Colonial Penal Law, and the Right to Health

Health and Human Rights Journal –VIEWPOINT
6 May 2026
Jessica Oga, Moses Mulumba, Stuart Ssebibubbu, Fatina Mwebe, and Nimrod Muhumuza

On April 24, 2026, the Kenyan Court of Appeal at Malindi reinstated criminal proceedings against a 17-year-old girl who had received post-abortion care for an incomplete abortion and against the clinical officer who had treated her.[1] The judgment in Kenya Christian Professionals’ Forum v. PAK will be read as a setback for abortion rights in Kenya, and in that frame, it is a setback. But the frame is the problem.[2] PAK is not, on its facts, an abortion case. It is a post-abortion care case prosecuted under abortion statutes, and in this viewpoint, we argue that the court of appeal’s central failure was to allow the slippage between these two categories to govern the proceedings. Recognizing this slippage as the mechanism of harm reframes both the doctrinal failure and the violation of the right to health that the judgment entails.

Continued: https://www.hhrjournal.org/2026/05/06/the-frame-that-kills-post-abortion-care-colonial-penal-law-and-the-right-to-health/

Investing in Midwives is Essential to Improve Sexual and Reproductive Health

The International Day of the Midwife (May 5) reminds us that safe birth is not a stand-alone event, but part of the broader continuum of sexual and reproductive health and rights

05/05/2026
Teguest Guerma, Health Policy Watch

Most maternal deaths occur during labour, birth, or shortly after birth. Nearly 290,000 women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth in 2020, with 95% of these deaths occurring in low- and lower-middle-income countries.

The major causes included severe bleeding, hypertensive disorders, infections, complications from unsafe abortion, and obstructed labour. Yet these events are largely preventable or treatable when skilled care, referral, medicines, blood, and emergency obstetric services are available.

Continued: https://healthpolicy-watch.news/investing-in-midwives-is-essential-to-improve-sexual-and-reproductive-health/

05.05.2026

Commentary

maternal deaths

midwives and abortion

USA – Abortion Access Is in Chaos. Blame the Supreme Court.

The court’s conservatives promised that repealing Roe would bring stability. It has done the opposite.

By Jill Filipovic
May 05, 2026

… Overturning Roe didn’t resolve a contentious national argument and bring about an era of considered debate followed by a democratic process to set abortion laws that reflect public opinion; it just made abortion rights far more fragile, including in the liberal states that seek to protect them. Instead of turning the issue back to the states, abortion opponents are now focused on ending abortion access nationwide. Instead of providing clarity, the courts have created chaos.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/05/supreme-court-abortion-pill-access.html

05.05.2026

Commentary

abortion pills

Jill Filipovic

misoprostol-only abortions

overturning Roe v. Wade

shield laws

telemedicine abortion

Ethiopia – A health worker’s journey in providing comprehensive abortion care

How HRP’s training programme supports safer services around the world

5 May 2026
World Health Organization

For nearly ten years, comprehensive abortion care has been available at Jemo Health Centre on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. Tewodros Tibebu, a health care worker at the centre, has worked in comprehensive abortion care for four years.

While comprehensive abortion care has been widely legal in Ethiopia since 2005, access remains challenging. Tewodros says he sees every day how social barriers delay care.

Continued: https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/a-health-worker-s-journey-in-providing-comprehensive-abortion-care

05.05.2026

Commentary

Jemo Health Centre

Tewodros Tibebu

World Health Organization

What Court of Appeal ruling on abortion means for Kenyan women

Thousands of women lose their lives every year in Kenya to botched backstreet abortions. Rising cases are now colliding with legal uncertainty as courts redefine reproductive rights protections.

By Moraa Obiria
Saturday, May 02, 2026

What you need to know:
A landmark abortion case in Kenya now raises new fears over prosecution and access to care.
Court ruling shifts legal burden to women and providers navigating restrictive abortion laws in Kenya.

Continued: https://nation.africa/kenya/news/gender/what-court-of-appeal-ruling-on-abortion-means-for-kenyan-women-5443164