With Covid lockdowns blamed for rising rates, MPs and teachers say it’s time to ‘face reality’ and allow younger teens access to birth control
Malet*, 14, stands in the long queue at the maternity clinic in Harare. She is here for her routine checkup. Most of the people in the queue are teenage girls.
Malet fell pregnant the first time she had sex. Her baby is due in two months.
Continue reading...Criminalisation disproportionately affects indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian women and exacerbates inequality, says Human Rights Watch
Gladys, an indigenous woman from rural Ecuador, went to hospital after injecting poison into her stomach to end her pregnancy. Doctors went straight to the police, and she was sentenced to two months in jail for having an abortion with consent.
Elsewhere in the South American country, a 20-year-old Afro-Ecuadorian woman went to hospital after a fall, and found out she was pregnant and miscarrying. She was swiftly arrested and spent four months awaiting trial, where she was cleared.
Continue reading...Belgium’s prime minister among signatories to open letter backing global right to safe abortions and reopening of clinics closed in pandemic
Government ministers from five European countries, including Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander de Croo, are among 29 politicians, healthcare and women’s rights activists who have signed an open letter calling for the removal of all legal barriers to abortion.
The letter, signed by gender and equality ministers from France, Canada and Norway, and international development ministers from Sweden and the Netherlands, states that women’s right to safe, legal abortion is being eroded by misinformation and attacks on services. It calls for the reopening of abortion clinics closed during the pandemic.
Continue reading...Investing in midwifery could prevent two-thirds of maternal and newborn deaths, but investment and training are urgently needed
The world is facing a shortage of 900,000 midwives, with more than half the shortfall in Africa, where nearly two-thirds of maternal deaths occur, according to a new survey.
Insufficient resources and a failure to recognise the importance of the role mean there has been little progress since the last study in 2014, according to the State of the World’s Midwifery report, which looked at 194 countries.
Continue reading...More than 140 rights groups call for repeal of 1973 Helms amendment widely misinterpreted as total ban on funding abortion services overseas
Joe Biden is being urged to clarify a longstanding US law restricting overseas aid that has been misinterpreted by successive administrations as an outright ban on funding abortion for any reason.
As the US president marked his first 100 days in office on Friday, more than 140 human rights and global health organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International US and the Global Justice Center, signed a letter asking him to confirm that US aid can be used for abortion care in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger.
Continue reading...UNFPA says £130m being withheld would have helped prevent 250,000 child and maternal deaths in poorest countries
The British government is slashing its funding to the UN population fund (UNFPA) in a move described as “devastating” for women and girls.
The agency confirmed on Wednesday that the UK, its largest donor, is cutting funding for contraceptives and reproductive health supplies by 85% this year – from £154m to £23m – and cutting core funding from £20m to £8m.
Continue reading...Critical UN report says the legislation is ‘deeply wrong’, subjugates women and shifts the burden of guilt on to the victim
Twenty countries still allow rapists to marry their victims to escape criminal prosecution, according to the UN’s annual state of world population report.
Russia, Thailand and Venezuela are among the countries that allow men to have rape convictions overturned if they marry the women or girls they have assaulted.
Continue reading...Charity warns of 22,000 additional deaths in poorest countries if Wish reproductive health programme ends
The director of a leading sexual and reproductive health charity has accused the government of “abandoning” women and girls it promised to help, as aid cuts derail a leading Tory programme to reduce maternal deaths and prevent unsafe abortions in poor countries.
The threat to the women’s integrated sexual health (Wish) programme could mean 7.5m additional unintended pregnancies, 2.7m unsafe abortions and 22,000 maternal deaths over the next year, said Dr Alvaro Bermejo, director general of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
Continue reading...Law, which supporters hope will force the supreme court to revisit Roe v Wade, does not provide exceptions for cases of rape or incest
Arkansas has passed a new law banning nearly all abortions in the state, a sweeping measure that supporters hope will force the US supreme court to revisit Roe v Wade but opponents vow to block before it takes effect later this year.
The state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, said he was signing the bill because of its “overwhelming legislative support and my sincere and long-held pro-life convictions”.
Continue reading...Law would widen strict rules in country where thousands suffer complications from unsafe terminations
A bill to liberalise Malawi’s abortion laws will be debated by MPs today in the face of opposition from faith groups.
If passed, the termination of pregnancy bill would allow abortions when a woman’s mental or physical health is in danger, in cases of rape and incest, and when there are serious foetal abnormalities.
Continue reading...‘Women’s bodies are not political bargaining chips’ says UNFPA director, as US funding restored after Trump era
The decision by US president Joe Biden to refund the UN population fund, UNFPA, offers “a ray of hope for millions of people around the world”, said the agency’s executive director.
Dr Natalia Kanem said the announcement on Thursday would have an “enormous” impact on the agency’s work, particularly as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...President’s move to end ‘abortion ban’ on overseas funding hailed – now aid groups want apology for harmful Trump policies
Health groups around the world are celebrating the end of a harmful policy banning US funding for overseas aid organisations that facilitate or promote abortion, which was scrapped by the US president, Joe Biden, in a presidential memorandum on Thursday.
Reproductive rights advocates are urging the new administration to now go further and permanently repeal the Mexico City policy – known as the “global gag rule” – to prevent it being reinstated by a future Republican president. The policy has been blamed for contributing to thousands of maternal deaths in the developing world over the past four years.
Continue reading...Joe Biden’s election as US president raises reproductive funding hopes – but some caution that reversing rule’s impact will not be quick
Nelly Munyasia breathed a huge sigh of relief when Joe Biden won the US election in November.
“I am excited and I am hopeful that things are going to be better. We are going to access funding and we are going to save the lives of women and girls,” she says, before explaining how tough the past four years has been.
Continue reading...Organisation says Black Lives Matter movement reaffirmed commitment to changing name to MSI Reproductive Choices
Marie Stopes International (MSI) is to change its name in an attempt to break its association with the family planning pioneer.
From Tuesday, the abortion and contraception provider, which operates in 37 countries, will abbreviate the initials and go by the name MSI Reproductive Choices.
Continue reading...Protests follow ruling that law allowing abortion of malformed foetuses is incompatible with constitution
Thousands of people marched in cities across Poland on Saturday in the third straight day of protests against a near-total ban on abortion, with some promising further action in the coming days.
The protesters were reacting to Thursday’s ruling by Poland’s highest court that an existing law allowing the abortion of malformed foetuses was incompatible with the constitution.
Continue reading...More than 100 women launch action as activists say practice is serious violation of human rights and privacy
A group of more than 100 Italian women have asked prosecutors to investigate who is behind the burial for nearly a decade of foetuses in graves marked with the names of their mothers in a cemetery in Rome.
The practice only came to light last week after one of the women, whose curiosity was sparked after reading about the so-called “fields of angels” in local newspapers, discovered a plot with a wooden cross bearing her name and the date on which the foetus was buried at Prima Porta cemetery. She subsequently posted about her experience on Facebook.
Continue reading...Ruling is result of lawsuit filed over deaths in childbirth of two women due to staff negligence and lack of facilities
Health rights activists in Uganda have welcomed a landmark court ruling that the government should increase its health budget to ensure women receive decent maternal healthcare services.
The ruling is the result of a lawsuit filed in 2011 over the deaths in childbirth of two women – Jennifer Anguko and Sylvia Nalubowa – in a public health facility.
Continue reading...Critics of the Helms amendment, which currently prevents the use of aid to fund abortion services abroad, say it is ‘deeply rooted in racism’
The first bill to repeal a US law preventing aid from funding abortion services overseas was introduced to congress on Wednesday.
Democratic congressswoman Jan Schakowsky said the Helms amendment, a policy introduced in 1973, was “deeply rooted in racism” and must be replaced to allow US money to be used to support safe abortion services worldwide.
Continue reading...Unplanned pregnancy rates have fallen globally, report finds, but coronavirus could endanger access to services
Rates of unplanned pregnancies have fallen around the world, according to new data published by health research organisation the Guttmacher Institute and the UN Human Reproduction Programme (HRP) on Wednesday.
Global rates of unintended pregnancies have fallen from 79 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 49 in 1990 to 64 in 2019, thanks in part to a concerted effort to increase access to contraceptives, but there are concerns that decades of progress in reducing the numbers risk being undone by Covid-19, as lockdown restrictions hamper health services.
Continue reading...Low priority for reproductive health during lockdown leaves millions unable to access contraception or safe terminations
Sadhna Gupta* discovered she was pregnant just after India imposed a crippling lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The 21-year-old from the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar didn’t want to be pregnant. With no public transport available, clinics closed and Bhubaneswar at a standstill, she bought an abortion pill without consulting a doctor. While what she did was not unusual, Indian law requires a prescription for the pills from a licensed medical professional.
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