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
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An Irish parliamentary committee on Wednesday recommended that a constitutional ban on abortion be repealed, paving the way for the liberalization of one of the world’s strictest abortion laws.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
State-run clinics are exempt from the ban on U.S. funding going to groups that provide abortion services. But many government clinics rely on essential support from NGOs, who can no longer afford to offer it, says Skye Wheeler of Human Rights Watch. Read more
The use of contraceptives is gaining momentum worldwide and preventing millions of unsafe abortions and maternal deaths each year in the world’s poorest countries, experts said on Tuesday. Nearly 40 million more women and girls use modern contraceptives now compared to five years ago across 69 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, according to a report by advocacy group Family Planning 2020 (FP2020). Read more
Kentucky’s 20-week abortion ban has proven to be less than ideal for women with complex pregnancies. Legislators and anti-abortion advocates made the claim that the fetus can start feeling pain at 20-weeks, but medical studies have disproved the claim. Read more