On 24 June 2024, Amnesty International launched a new campaign calling on people the world over to help make public support for abortion rights visible to all.
Over the past 30 years, huge strides have been taken in the fight for the right to abortion, with laws changing for the better in more than 60 countries. However, there is still much to be achieved, while progress remains under threat.
From Argentina and Benin to Ireland and France, visionary human rights defenders have secured major advances in the formal recognition of abortion rights. The anti-Taliban women’s protests in Afghanistan, the #MahsaAmini protests in Iran and the #GreenWave protests in Latin America are evidence too of extraordinary activist courage in claiming sexual and reproductive rights.
Today, however, the world is also witnessing mounting efforts to stymie that progress, to undo hard won gains and advance instead policies and laws that will deny millions of their sexual and reproductive rights.
Amnesty International’s ‘1000 Ways to Support Abortion Rights’ campaign, which launches on 24 June 2024 across the organization’s social media channels, offers engaging and influential ways for all to get onboard with efforts around the globe to resist rights erosion and protect the right to abortion.
“In countries such as Ghana, Poland, Venezuela and the US, doctors, nurses, educators, and advocates defending the right to abortion and providing essential, life-saving services, are themselves under threat – intimidated, vilified, stigmatised, subjected to unjust prosecution. Yet they are standing up for our universal rights to dignity in the most intimate of realms of sex and reproduction: we owe them our vocal support and our visible solidarity,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard.
“Amnesty’s abortion rights campaign provides a platform to help people everywhere clearly and publicly express support for abortion rights in whatever way works best for them: a TikTok collaboration with loved ones, a poll of a circle of friends, the signing of a public petition. Simple, action-oriented ways that, when taken together, will help elevate the public profile of the widespread but often discounted global support for abortion rights. Standing together – visibly, clearly – we can make it far more difficult for those in power to ignore our demands.”
Over the last year, Amnesty International has released several reports focusing on the right to abortion globally, including decriminalizing abortion in Morocco, barriers to abortion access in Northern Ireland, and the need to recognize and protect those who defend the right to abortion. Most recently, the organization released a briefing detailing how reproductive health and rights organizations have reported that their abortion-related content has been removed or marked as sensitive content, while some have even been temporarily suspended from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Now, not only is access to abortion restricted or under attack around the world: social media companies like Meta and Tiktok are removing information about abortion, and provide little to no transparency to reproductive rights organizations when their content is taken down. This prevents people from accessing life-saving information and making informed decisions about their bodies. Sign the petition now and ask them to stop taking down abortion information.
Sign Amnesty’s petition here! Tell Meta and Tiktok to stop taking down abortion information!!
SOURCE: Amnesty International, 24 June, 2024