Although the Trump administration made many moves to limit access to abortion and reproductive care, the administration was not as successful as people feared it would be in 2017, and now people are even more worried about what will happen in 2018. Read more
An Irish woman will be touring Ireland in 2018 with the aim to convince voters to support changes to the abortion law as the referendum approaches. She wants to tell her abortion story so others can see the urgency in the referendum. Read more
Boots, a pharmacy chain in the UK, had promised to drop the price of emergency contraception by October, but two weeks ago stated that the price of emergency contraception had only dropped in 69 of its 2,500 stores nationwide. Read more
Trump’s birth control mandate will resolve some of the lawsuits filed by religious organizations under the Obama administration, but the new mandate is expected to affect tens of thousands of women, which will put the program back into court with even more lawsuits. Read more
With the Trump administration expanding the global gag rule in 2017, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation increased funding to improve the economic and social status of women in developing countries. However, this extra funding doesn’t even come close to making up for the loss in funding from the global gag rule. Read more
A Message from the President of Uplift International It has been a rough year. The Trump administration has imposed sweeping policy changes globally and locally that adversely affect women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). At the same time, we have seen a growing movement of empowered women claiming their rights in 2017. This should give us hope. The Trump administration instituted a draconian policy that undermines women’s right to reproductive health. [...]
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed a bill Monday that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The bill, passed by the state's Republican-controlled legislature last week, is a "vile assault on women's ability to make their own decisions about their own health care," Wolf, a Democrat, said at a press conference. Read more
An Irish parliamentary committee on Wednesday recommended that a constitutional ban on abortion be repealed, paving the way for the liberalization of one of the world’s strictest abortion laws. Read more
India’s decision to ban condom ads on daytime television drew widespread ridicule on Wednesday as a retrograde step that threatened progress on sexual and reproductive health. Read more
Under US President Donald Trump's "Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance" policy, any foreign aid organisation that wants US funds cannot "perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in foreign countries". Sebastiao Muthisse from AMODEFA, the Mozambican Association for Family Development, outlined the dilemma the aid organization faced. They were not prepared to sign Trump's so-called 'global gag rule' forbidding mention of abortion, and, as a result, projects had to close. Read more