A total of 17,456 babies were born to girls aged 10 to 14 in Brazil in 2021. The annual figures are falling, but still reflect the plight of ruined childhoods and the failures of judges and doctors when it comes to the issue of abortion rights.
Pregnancies among girls and adolescents continue unabated in Central America, where legislation to prevent them, when it exists, is a dead letter, and governments are influenced by conservative sectors opposed to sex education in schools.
Viviana Mazur is a doctor at the Santojanni Hospital in Mataderos, a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. She has witnessed the advances in women's rights in Argentina, where until 2020 abortion was only allowed on two grounds, while it is now available on demand up to 14 weeks of pregnancy.
An open hearing in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is raising hopes that this country and other Latin American nations might overturn or at least mitigate the severe laws that criminalize abortion.
No woman in Peru should have to die, have her physical or mental health affected, be treated as a criminal or have an unwanted pregnancy because she does not have access to abortion, said Dr. Rocío Gutiérrez, an obstetrician who is the deputy director of the
Manuela Ramos Movement, a non-governmental feminist center that works for gender rights in this South American country.
Toronto resident Miranda Knight describes her abortion experience as relatively simple. After finding out she was pregnant on a Wednesday in 2017, she booked an appointment at an available clinic and got one for the following Monday. She had the procedure that day and left the clinic by noon.
The 24 June
decision of United States Supreme Court to overturn the country’s nearly 50-year constitutional right of a woman to an abortion is being felt worldwide.
Women’s rights groups fear a new legal provision in Poland requiring doctors to collect records on all pregnancies could create what they have described as a ‘pregnancy register’ to monitor whether women are having abortions.
Arti Zodpe is from the Tamasha (folk dance-drama) theatre in Sangli, in India’s Maharashtra state. After evening performances, some of the singers and dancers offer sex work services to the audience.
Abortion has long been a contentious issue across the world, and the debate is only heating up, prompting women to stand up and speak out for their reproductive rights.
The Argentine Senate's rejection of a bill to legalise abortion did not stop a Latin American movement, which is on the streets and is expanding in an increasingly coordinated manner among women's organisations in the region with the most restrictive laws and policies against pregnant women's right to choose.
When Bimla Chandrasekharan saw that women who gave birth to baby girls were being sent out of the house by their angry husbands and mothers-in-law she realised a basic biology lesson was needed.
The image of a group of men in suits making decisions about the rights of women is becoming an emblematic sign of the backlash against our human rights, particularly those related to women´s bodily integrity and reproductive and sexual freedoms.
The Zika virus epidemic and a rise in the number of cases of microcephaly in newborns have revived the debate on legalising abortion in Brazil. However, the timing is difficult as conservative and religious groups are growing in strength, especially in parliament.
She is just 14, but Janida avoids eye contact with others, preferring to look down at the ground and nodding her head if someone tries to engage her in conversation.
International and local human rights groups are carrying out an intense global campaign to get El Salvador to modify its draconian law that criminalises abortion and provides for prison terms for women.
Audible gasps echoed through the United Nations' Trusteeship Council chamber on Tuesday, with audiences told the grim impacts of unsafe reproductive practices on women worldwide.
Nearly two dozen health, advocacy and faith groups are calling on President Barack Obama to take executive action clarifying that U.S. assistance can be used to fund abortion services for women and girls raped in the context of war and conflict.
For most of human history, reproductive rights essentially meant men and women accepting the number, timing and spacing of their children, as well as possible childlessness. All this changed radically in the second half of the 20th century with the introduction of new medical technologies aimed at both preventing and assisting human reproduction.
Chile, one of the most conservative countries in Latin America, is getting ready for an unprecedented debate on the legalisation of therapeutic abortion, which is expected to be approved this year.
A mix of conservative Catholicism and nationalism has become the predominant view in Polish public debate, with some worrying effects.