The most liberal laws on abortion are found in the richest industrial countries. Does that matter? Advocates for reproductive health care say yes, because the abortion gap is often a bellwether indicating that health care for women in many developing countries offers few or no reproductive choices or respect for reproductive rights. The issue has … Read more
Every year, 25 million women across the world are forced to obtain unsafe abortions. The United States, through its foreign policy, is deeply complicit in the violation of these women’s right to life and equality under international law. International human-rights frameworks guard against these violations and hold the US and other countries accountable. The International Covenant … Read more
The annual women’s conference at the United Nations may have encountered severe weather on its second day, when a blizzard swept through the region and events had to be canceled at the UN, but the real storm originated with the actions of the host country, the United States. Indeed, the role that the US ambassador … Read more
A respected medical journal and a leading American population research and policy organization have teamed up to create a commission to fill gaps and turn vague promises in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into real gains for women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. The initiative, sponsored by the London-based journal The Lancet and … Read more
In 1973, Jesse Helms, a newly elected United States senator and an ideologue contemptuous of the United Nations, dismissive of international treaties and completely devoid of compassion for the world’s poor, put his name on an amendment to the landmark 1961 United States Foreign Assistance Act banning any use of US funds to support abortion … Read more
Even as more countries have expanded the rights of women to safe, legal abortions in the last 20 years, some countries — particularly certain areas in the United States and in Central America — have rolled back such rights with equal intensity by imposing tighter restrictions. The issue of abortion, embedded in the universal … Read more
