If you work in reproductive health or public health you often hear people talking about the “unmet need for contraception” in a certain country or region. But here’s an unmet need that never gets discussed outside of small circles: second-trimester abortion.
Weekly global roundup: Philippines Congress (finally!) set to vote on embattled RH Bill; Nepal recruits female police officers to stem violence against women; All-female mine deprogramming teams make history in Laos; and survivors of sexual violence in Kenya’s 2007 post-election chaos still await justice.
Weekly global roundup: Nepali women learn about their right to divorce and increasingly do so; Argentina’s new Gender Identity Law first in the world; Tanzania’s President petitioned over contraception access; relativity in rape threats for women in South Sudan.
Weekly global roundup: USAID unveils a new policy on gender equality and women’s empowerment – but is it too late? Women struggle in fledgling South Sudan; FIFA may let women play in hijab; and unsafe abortion haunts Nepal despite liberal laws.
Weekly global roundup: Saudi women left on the Olympics sidelines; Lebanese activists demand marital rape laws; WHO says injectables still safe to use; Ugandan women trafficked to Malaysia; and a fatal witchcraft accusation in Nepal.
For centuries Nepal banned abortion under any circumstance. Women were imprisoned and many more died in the process. Now the highest legal authority in the country has explicitly recognized a woman as the master of her own body.
Santorum plays the race card with Obama, a third-gender option in the Nepali census, Planned Parenthood returns to San Francisco, and Mother Jones looks at abortion-breast cancer lies.
Iran slowly reduces its maternal mortality rate, Pakistan tries to provide access to RU 486 to a firestorm of protest, teens in Wales have problems accessing abortion, and Australia has an unprecedented abortion trial.
Great news out of Nepal! In just a few years, the country has gone from
a total abortion ban to allowing abortion under most circumstances to
this week, the Supreme Court ordering the government to set up an
abortion fund for poor women and to invest in an education campaign on
abortion.
The government of Nepal recently became the first in the region to recognize women’s fundamental right to reproductive health in its Interim Constitution. Will reproductive rights make the final cut?
