North Korean defectors arrested by Chinese authorities were detained in border security facilities for interrogation, where they endured beatings and forced labor. Pregnant defectors, particularly those trafficked to Chinese men, were subjected to forced abortions or had their newborns killed.

More than 5.6 million American women live in counties with no or limited access to maternity care. The rise in maternity deserts is most likely a factor in the decline of early prenatal care. Restrictive abortion bans don't help either.

“It’s a choice to ensure zero abortions." Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape.

No crime was committed, yet a South Korean woman faces a murder charge for having an abortion at 36 weeks. She did not know she was pregnant until a late stage and was then delayed by a lack of access and information and repeated refusals. South Korea has no abortion law or gestational limits.

On this episode of The Thought Project (46 mins),Amy Adamczyk talks about her book Fetal Positions: Understanding the Cross-National Public Opinion About Abortion. Adamczyk unpacks why views about abortion vary so widely around the world.

My Voice My Choice coordinator Nika Kovač: "Today is a victory for women in Europe and a good day for European democracy. For the first time, the Commission confirms unequivocally that EU funds can be used to guarantee access to safe abortion care – particularly for women in vulnerable situations."

A dispute over shortages of abortion medication in Argentina has escalated into a broader constitutional battle over whether the government is upholding the country’s 2020 abortion law. (They are not! The drug shortages are deliberate.)

Good news from the European Commission. While they did not approve a new fund for abortion, they expanded use of an existing fund, which can also help cover travel costs. The My Voice My Choice campaign is pleased, saying their priority was always “getting results for women, not the legal form."

105 members of the European Parliament sent a letter to the Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen, putting pressure on her to support the European Citizens’ Initiative “My Voice, My Choice”. It could improve access to safe abortion in Europe by funding travel from countries with less access.

Three new rules from the U.S. State Department impose sweeping new conditions on organizations receiving U.S. foreign aid. This study examines how the rules affect organizations that support transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people around the world.

Meta's chatbots are prohibited from offering underage users content about sexual health, including “anatomy and physiology of reproductive organs, puberty education, menstrual health, fertilization and reproduction, STI and HIV prevention, contraceptive methods, consent education and abstinence."

In Uganda where abortion is mostly illegal, pregnant women and girls are often forced to resort to unsafe abortion, leading to the issue of 'fetus dumping.'

Tanzania is a State Party to the Maputo Protocol, which obliges African governments to permit abortion in specific circumstances, including rape, incest and threats to a woman’s physical or mental health. In contrast, the "Geneva Consensus Declaration" is an anti-choice tool and non-binding.

An NGO in Nigeria has called for stronger policy attention on abortion. Only about one in four abortions in the country is classified as safe, largely due to restrictive laws and limited access to trained providers.

Ipas has secured a major grant to expand global access to abortion and contraception. “Our vision is to prevent 16.3 million unsafe abortions and 22.6 million unintended pregnancies, and to avert 39,000 maternal deaths by 2032.”

Representational government rests on a simple idea: that the laws the nation lives under generally reflect what the public wants. But abortion serves as a clear example of how difficult it can be to translate public opinion into law.

There are fears that the European Commission could, this week, reject the initiative aimed at guaranteeing access to safe abortion across the EU. The ‘My Voice, My Choice’ campaign is mounting a last-ditch lobbying effort.

The anti-choice effort to restrict mifepristone is in court on Tuesday - a key claim being that easy access results in women being coerced into taking pills. The opposite is true - abortion bans and restrictions trap women in abusive situations.

Nigeria is dramatically reducing women’s access to contraceptive services that help prevent unintended pregnancies, while simultaneously seeking to intensify criminal penalties for abortion – often the consequence of those same unintended pregnancies. punchng.com/nigeria-cann...

The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has taken to insulting female journalists. Critics link his ‘Trump-lite’ condescension to Reform’s moves against women’s rights including abortion rights.

Quebec’s justice minister has reversed course in the face of strong criticism of his plan to enshrine abortion rights in his constitution bill. Women's groups and feminists warned that legislating on abortion could potentially open the door to legal challenges from anti-abortion groups.

Ireland - A man who forced a pregnant woman to take abortion pills before locking her in a room has been jailed for nine years. Apparently, the crime was "unlawfully ending the pregnancy" even though it should have been aggravated assault against her.

A new Human Rights Watch report documents how Russia is restricting abortion at all levels. Tactics include pressuring private clinics to stop doing abortions, toughening licensing requirements, revoking their licenses, and reclassifying abortion drugs as controlled substances.

Carole Sekimpi writes that the expansion of the global gag rule came at the worst time. Last year, global health aid fell by 21%. With the global gag rule in place and USAID dismantled, lifesaving health programmes worldwide have had to close or reduce services on a widespread scale.

“I feel that generally, Black women are not heard, and even when we know that something is impacting our bodies, we have to go through more hoops and loops to finally be heard and seen,” Chante Burg in Kentucky.

“Every package we send out is a bullet fired at the patriarchy.” Volunteer-run groups are quietly mailing free abortion pills across the U.S.—reaching tens of thousands of people shut out by laws, cost, distance, privacy concerns and a shrinking clinical system.

"The federal government was coming for abortion — that’s what they were so upset about,” said Krista Hollinger of Planned Parenthood in California. “But instead... they took away diabetes screening, mental health services, cancer screening, diabetes treatment — all of the primary care.”

India - Two conflicting decisions authored by former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud have created a doctrinal puzzle over whether foetal viability or reproductive autonomy should prevail in late-term abortion cases.

Over 60% of maternal deaths in 2023 took place in regions experiencing conflict or institutional/social fragility. “The majority of women dying in pregnancy today are...dying because of structural weaknesses in health systems, often rooted in conflict, crisis and instability.”

“Running a clinic in an environment like we have today is oftentimes not sustainable,” said ​Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation. Even states with some of the most protective abortion policies have to do more with less.

Advocates in Nepal say the government needs to take immediate steps to decriminalize abortion in all cases. They want the abortion law amended to remove all barriers to accessing abortion - including gestational limits - and the repeal of abortion clauses from the penal code.

An activist network in Nigeria has launched a nationwide campaign advocating for urgent reform of the country's colonial-era abortion laws, which have caused massive maternal mortality and suffering, but have remained unchanged for over six decades.

In an era where far-right groups and authoritarian governments are undermining global health and human rights, "Canada's leadership on sexual and reproductive health and rights is working and it matters more now than ever." – Frédérique Chabot of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.

Violet Zulu of Zambia was sentenced to 7 years in prison for abortion with no legal help. Zulu was freed last month after international rights groups helped her file an appeal. But she represents many women in Africa who take desperate decisions when facing barriers to legal abortion services.

Poland is experiencing a coordinated and escalating campaign of anti-abortion intimidation and disinformation that directly undermines women’s access to lawful healthcare. Right-wing actors have been systematically obstructing legal medical care through fear, harassment, and institutional pressure.

Australia - This month marks the 20th anniversary of the overturning of a law that prohibited medication abortion. While there's still access problems, nearly half a million prescriptions for mifepristone have been dispensed since 2012.

The ancient Greek understanding of abortion cannot be seen through the lens of individual autonomy. Reproductive decision-making was embedded within the patriarchal hierarchy and regulated by norms designed to safeguard male economic and social interests.

Prosecuting private diagnostic centres does nothing to stop the demand for sex determination in India. It only drives the practice underground and increases unsafe abortion. The solution is transforming social relations and gender inequities on which son preference and sex selection are premised.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has been taking a lot of heat around the abortion issue. One of his MPs who is anti-abortion crossed the floor in a bid to reignite the abortion debate. Crisafulli said there would be no change to the abortion laws.

A look back at the cinematic power of Mike Leigh’s film Vera Drake, from 2004. The narrative is grounded in the mundane details of 1950s working-class London, showing the disjunction between abortion law and the lived experiences of women subject to it.

Researchers have found that 6 of 10 abortion restrictions — bans on Medicaid funding for abortion, mandated waiting periods, 2nd-trimester abortion bans, ACA marketplace insurance coverage bans, biased counseling laws, and ultrasound requirements — were linked to higher rates of maternal mortality.

The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights has come out in support of proposed amendments to the abortion law, which would broaden access within regulated medical settings, strengthen informed consent, and expand safe facility-based services.

In at least 70,000 cases in 21 states, parents were referred to law enforcement agencies over allegations of substance use during pregnancy. In many cases, the referrals began with false positive results from flawed drug tests — sometimes triggered by the women’s prescribed medications.

A new law in Puerto Rico recognizes fetal personhood. “A zygote was given legal personality,” said Rosa Seguí Cordero, an attorney with the National Campaign for Free, Safe and Accessible Abortion in Puerto Rico. “We women were stripped of our rights.”

Don't miss this analysis by Abortion, Every Day. The Heritage Foundation has published another chilling roadmap: “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years”, to erase LGBTQ families, decimate the social safety net, and push women out of public life altogether.

The battle over abortion is intensifying in Europe, as the European Commission will decide by March whether to advance the citizens’ initiative My Voice, My Choice. An anti-choice group hung a large poster in the courtyard of the European Parliament, after a pro-choice group did the same in Dec.

After Quebec loosened restrictions on the abortion pill, the province saw nearly an 80% increase in use in 2025. “It's been used around the world for years,” said Dr. Diane Francoeur. “But Canada lags all the time, especially Quebec … because there was a lot of regulation around it.”

Patients over a certain BMI seeking surgical abortions can face substantial limits and delays. Those barriers can lead to a scramble to find alternative care, leaving patients with lingering frustration, physical discomfort and emotional distress.

Unsafe abortions continue to quietly claim the lives of women in the Busoga Sub-region of Uganda, with medical experts warning that the scale of the crisis is far bigger than official figures suggest.

Sri Lanka continues to live with one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, causing immense harms to women. An editorial calls for law reform. "This is not a political demand, but a medical and humanitarian one. ... The evidence is already there. What remains is the courage to act."