Category: Abortion
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Letter to Rebecca Long-Bailey
On 18 January, I wrote a letter to Rebecca Long-Bailey MP as a member of the Labour Party and an abortion rights advocate, to ask her more about her views on abortion, as reported in the Guardian, Telegraph and Catholic Herald during the previous week, and to respond to them. I felt none of these…
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A call for consensus and cooperation to resolve differing estimates of abortion-related deaths
This article, in press, is about the difference between estimates of maternal deaths from unsafe abortion from the World Health Organization and those from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), USA, both published in 2014 in two different Lancet journals. The article, co-authored by Iqbal Shah, Carla AbouZahr and me, is in the International Journal of Gynecology &…
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The Case of Dr Carlos Morín, Barcelona, Spain – “Hasta el final”
The history of the persecution of Dr Carlos Morín, former director of the Ginemedex clinic in Barcelona, Spain, the staff of his clinic and the thousands of women who had abortions there began in Britain in 2004 and reached its climax, at least for the moment, on 17 June 2016, in the Regional Court of…
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“Just because abortion is easy doesn’t mean it’s right” : do you agree?
During a day of excellent presentations on the question of “How can a state control swallowing?” on medical abortion and the law, organised by Prof Sally Sheldon of Kent University Law School, an unexpected question was asked from the floor, during the session I chaired: “Just because it [abortion] is easy doesn’t mean it’s right:…
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Opposing the criminalisation of self-use of abortion pills
More officials in European governments seem to have discovered that women are buying MA pills over the internet and are having abortions outside their health systems. The immediate response to this is that these abortions are or should be “illegal”; indeed, they are illegal under the law in Ireland, the UK and Italy, if not…
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What kind of research is needed for abortion advocacy?
At the 5th Research Meeting on Unwanted Pregnancy and Unsafe Abortion, Mexico City, 28-30 September 2015, Silvina Ramos presented an excellent new CLACAI publication (in Spanish) on a renewed agenda for abortion research in the LAC region: “Investigacion sobre aborto en America Latina y el Caribe: una agenda renovada para informar politicas publicas e incidencias”. I was asked to…
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Women’s right to safe abortion: interview for London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Online Course
Improving the Health of Women, Children and Adolescents: from Evidence to Action is a free online course of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. I was interviewed on the subject of abortion for one of the sessions; this is what I said below. The course first ran in autumn 2015 and is due to be…
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Abortion today: what women need and want
Berer Presentation to Gynuity Medical Abortion Meeting NY 9 June 2015 This is a presentation I gave to a meeting about medical abortion, organised by Gynuity Health Projects in New York, 9 June 2015. Click on the link to read it.
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The Brazilian government pays compensation for a maternal death taken up by CEDAW – a decision that has global implications
Lisa Hallgarten, RHM The Brazilian government has agreed to pay compensation for the death of a pregnant woman in 2002. The decision could have implications for governments around the world where women are dying from preventable deaths in pregnancy, childbirth and abortion. The Brazilian government’s move follows landmark decisions by the Committee on the Elimination…
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China: how can the one-child policy and rights-based family planning be reconciled in the face of recently reported abuses?
Lisa Hallgarten, RHM social media and communications Marge Berer, RHM editor Two recent news stories from China have reawakened concern about overzealous enforcement of China’s one-child policy and the emergence of voices critical of the policy and its implementation. Historically, being a country with 25% of the total world population within its borders, China’s population…