Leila Hessini is Director of Community Mobilization and Youth Leadership at Ipas and board chair of the Global Fund for Women. She has worked on women’s human rights issues, with a focus on sexual and reproductive rights, for over twenty years. Leila’s global experience is informed by extensive residency in Egypt, Morocco, France and the United States and engagement with women’s human rights advocates in over 40 countries. Leila serves as advisor to the Urgent Action Fund and to the Center for Women’s Leaderships’ 16th days of activism against gender-based violence. She also serves on the board of the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights and the Safe Abortion Action Fund.
Abortion stigma is a form of gender discrimination and punishment, and it represents social control of both women who need abortions and providers who provide them.
Fortunately for women, pills have changed the landscape of abortion. Abortion with pills, also known as medical abortion (MA), provides a safe, low cost and easy to use method to terminate pregnancies, and one to which access is increasing in several countries.
Across the globe, men are making key decisions about women’s most basic human rights. Women’s, feminist, queer and LGBT groups, however, have claimed a space that cannot be denied and are standing up for our rights. One poignant example of these efforts culminates today, November 9.
Worldwide, roughly 43 million women have an abortion each year. Yet these same women face stigma, a form of social control used to dehumanize, devalue, and isolate them. Providers are grappling with effective ways to reduce abortion stigma.
