Abortion in Afghanistan: ‘My mother crushed my stomach with a stone’

By AFP
December 04, 2025

When Bahara was four months pregnant, she went to a Kabul hospital to beg for an abortion. “We’re not allowed,” a doctor told her. “If someone finds out, we will all end up in prison.”

Abortion in Afghanistan is illegal and you can be locked up for having or assisting one.

But Bahara was desperate. Her jobless husband had ordered her to “find a solution” -- he did not want a fifth daughter. “We can barely afford to feed” the girls as it is, Bahara, 35, told AFP. “If it was a boy, he could go to school and work.”

Continued: https://www.mydailyrecord.com/news/national/abortion-in-afghanistan-my-mother-crushed-my-stomach-with-a-stone/article_98859b6c-5ea4-5b4e-93c2-a1638c62c344.html

Russia faces a shrinking and aging population and tries restrictive laws to combat it

Russia has grappled with a shrinking and aging population for decades, with President Vladimir Putin viewing it as a threat to national security

By KATIE MARIE DAVIES, Associated Press
October 25, 2025

For a quarter century, President Vladimir Putin has faced the specter of Russia's shrinking and aging population.

In 1999, a year before he came to power, the number of babies born in Russia plunged to its lowest recorded level. In 2005, Putin said the demographic woes needed to be resolved by maintaining "social and economic stability.”

In 2019, he said the problem still “haunted” the country.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russia-faces-shrinking-aging-population-restrictive-laws-combat-126856077

25.10.2025

Banning abortion is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes

October 16, 2025
Seda Saluk, Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Michigan

Pregnant women crossing borders to get an abortion. People who miscarry facing jail time or dying from infection. Doctors who won’t perform lifesaving procedures on a pregnant patient for fear of prosecution.
For years, this was the kind of thing that happened in Poland, Nicaragua or El Salvador. Now, it’s headline news in the United States.

As a scholar who studies the relationship between reproductive rights and political regimes, I see the U.S. mirroring a pattern that has happened in authoritarian regimes around the world. When a government erects barriers to comprehensive reproductive care, it doesn’t just cause more death and suffering for women and their families. Such policies are often a first step in the gradual decline of democracies.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/banning-abortion-is-a-hallmark-of-authoritarian-regimes-265459

USA – Catholic Hospital Mergers Pose Growing Threat to Abortion Access

Center for American Progress
Sep 29, 2025

Washington, D.C. — By 2020, at least 1 in 6 U.S. hospital beds were located in Catholic hospitals. While consolidation has been increasing in American health care, Catholic health care providers are uniquely constrained by religious directives that restrict contraception access, abortion, gender-affirming care, fertility treatments, and other forms of lifesaving reproductive health care.

As the market share of Catholic hospital networks continues to grow, patients are left with fewer choices, charged higher prices, and forced to face greater challenges in accessing high-quality reproductive care. A new report from the Center for American Progress discusses this aspect of health care consolidation and recommends policies to slow consolidation, increase transparency, and protect patients’ access to care.

Continued: https://www.americanprogress.org/press/release-catholic-hospital-mergers-pose-growing-threat-to-abortion-access/

29.09.2025

Research

Barak Richman

belief-based care denial

Catholic directives

Catholic hospitals

Center for American Progress

Federal Trade Commission

Religion often shapes someone’s view of abortion – but what about a woman’s actual decision?

September 25, 2025
Amy Adamczyk

Many factors can shape how someone views abortion – gender, age and education, to name a few. Around the world, however, religious belief is the most powerful predictor that someone will disapprove, as I document in my 2025 book, “Fetal Positions.” Faith traditions’ teachings about abortion vary – and there is diversity of opinions within faiths, too. On average, though, people who say that religion is important in their lives are far more likely to think abortion is morally wrong.

But here’s the paradox: There’s a difference between abstract views and personal decisions. On average, strong religious beliefs and involvement in a religious community do not make an American woman less likely to terminate her first pregnancy, so long as she conceives without a potential marriage partner.

Continued; https://theconversation.com/religion-often-shapes-someones-view-of-abortion-but-what-about-a-womans-actual-decision-265330

25.09.2025

National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health

religion and abortion

Tina Fetner

United States

Religion

Luxembourg – If you oppose abortion, just don’t get one

Enshrining access to abortion in Luxembourg’s constitution would safeguard a human right, says editor-in-chief Cordula Schnuer

Cordula Schnuer, Editor-in-chief
20/09/2025

Luxembourg’s chief Catholic - Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich - has likened enshrining the right to abortion in the constitution to totalitarianism, saying people need to be free to express their opinion in a democratic country and that there are also women who oppose abortion becoming a constitutional right.

Hollerich is free to say this exactly because we live in a democracy. No one is refusing his right to his opinion, which includes believing that even in case of rape or incest women should not seek an abortion.

Continued: https://www.luxtimes.lu/luxembourg/if-you-oppose-abortion-just-don-t-get-one/91254221.html

20.09.2025

Opinion

Cordula Schnuer

Jean-Claude Hollerich

LUXEMBOURG – Healthcare rights are not political extremism

Written by Jana Degrott
Published on 15.09.2025

Cardinal Hollerich’s recent statements opposing constitutional protection for abortion access fundamentally misunderstand the nature of healthcare rights and constitutional protection.

The cardinal suggests that constitutional protection is unnecessary since abortion is already legal in Luxembourg. However, legal access without constitutional protection leaves medical care vulnerable to political shifts and legal uncertainties that can prove fatal. The tragic cases across Europe demonstrate this clearly:

Continued: https://delano.lu/article/healthcare-rights-are-not-political-extremism

15.09.2025

Opinion

Cardinal Hollerich

constitutional right to abortion

American Crusaders Aim to Boost African Women While Attacking Our Rights

by Fadekemi Akinfaderin and Ramatu Bangura
August 19, 2025

Over stock footage of an African city and people smiling, an American man’s calm voice says, “A stronger future begins with stronger families.” Posted to Instagram in June by the Mormon Church in West Africa, the video features images of people seemingly happy and dancing — but they never speak. The sequence closes with an invitation to join the Strengthening Families conference and movement.

The United States-based Mormon Church has been hosting annual Strengthening Families forums in both Anglophone and Francophone countries in West Africa since 2019, to try to grow its membership and expand its influence in Africa. The meetings function as platforms to promote messages and activities that oppose reproductive women’s health and LGBTQi rights, and bring together government officials and socially conservative activists from across the region and the US.

Continued: https://passblue.com/2025/08/19/american-crusaders-aim-to-boost-african-women-while-attacking-our-rights/ 

19.08.2025

Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Care Bill

Strengthening Families conference

South Carolina providers push back against faith-based assaults on abortion care

by Emma Akpan
August 14, 2025

… In January 2025, five doctors sued the state of South Carolina against the 2023 Heartbeat Law, which prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or after about nine weeks. Their lawsuit is particularly important, as the Heartbeat Law was instrumental in the state Supreme Court's decision to uphold the six-week abortion ban. For these doctors, not only is the decision devastating for patients, but exemplifies why anti-abortion advocates, lawmakers, and religious leaders should not be allowed to use their faith to implement a life-threatening law that doctors must unquestionably follow.

The plaintiffs have therefore inverted faith-based pro-life logic by counter-arguing the questions: Don't doctors who need to administer abortions get to use their faith to challenge such laws? And if the other side can claim conscientiousness to prohibit abortion, then why can't doctors claim conscientiousness to protect their right to perform abortions?

Continued: https://scalawagmagazine.org/2025/08/south-carolina-providers-push-back-against-faith-based-assaults-on-abortion-care/

Australia – Mater Hospital’s religious abortion ban left couple feeling ‘abandoned’

By Emma Pollard
July 22, 2025

After a miscarriage and unsuccessful IVF attempts, Brisbane woman Elisa and her husband Brent were feeling cautiously joyful at their 12-week pregnancy scan early this year. It showed a "beautiful baby" with 10 little fingers and 10 little toes.

"I have to say we did fall in love with our little baby girl and we were … really thinking that it's finally happening for us," Elisa said.

That joy came crashing down less than 30 minutes later.

Continued: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-23/mater-hospital-religious-abortion-ban-couple-feeling-abandoned/105532550