Special Newsletter for International Safe Abortion Day – 3 September 2024
INTERNATIONAL CALL TO ACTION: #Abortion Solidarity!!!
This September 28 – International Safe Abortion Day – we highlight the collective efforts of our diverse, inter-generational, cross-border community in advancing the right to access safe abortion and reproductive justice. As we face persistent and emerging threats to abortion rights and reproductive justice, we unite in #AbortionSolidarity to uphold and advance these fundamental freedoms.
Join us in mobilizing for reproductive justice and ensuring that everyone has the support, information, services, and resources they need to make autonomous decisions about their own bodies and lives.
This September 28 – International Safe Abortion Day – we pay tribute to the collective efforts of all those who make abortions safe and accessible. While having an abortion is an individual’s decision, access to safe abortion is made possible through the collective efforts of a supportive community. This includes healthcare providers offering compassionate and skilled care, activists tirelessly advocating for reproductive rights, legal advocates working on policy and strategic litigation, support networks, and partners, family and friends providing emotional and logistical support. These collective efforts ensure that abortions are both a legal right and a safe, accessible, and stigma-free reality for everyone who needs abortion care, regardless of their circumstances.
Abortion rights and access are improving in many countries, but they are under attack in others, both demand urgent consolidated actions, solidarity, and mutual support. The criminalization and prosecution of those who seek and provide safe abortions continues in many parts of the world. Some governments threaten to roll back safe abortion provision, promote anti-abortion sentiments, and adopt public health budget cuts – reducing access even further. As an example, in Indonesia, where abortion is already criminalized, a new law was passed that gives the police the sole authority to grant abortion to victims of rape, increasing barriers for survivors.
Moreover, anti-rights groups have built well-coordinated and well-funded transnational networks, with evolving tactics and global reach. In response, we have developed innovative strategies and global solidarity across movements.
Here are some ideas for activities around 28 September:
- Organize and mobilize with others. Remember, we are many and we are strong.
- Support and volunteer for community helplines, collectives of doulas and acompañantes, groups providing access to bona fide abortion pills, and communities of care.
- Organize events such as forums, mobilizations, dialogues, and solidarity activities.
- Harness the power of storytelling: share inspiring abortion stories, stories of mobilizations, and stories of gains in your contexts.
- Use edutainment, music, dance, artworks and poetry in your mobilizations.
- Bust the stigma through conversations, creative activities, and information.
- Invite journalists and the media to write articles about the issues, and your activities and successes.
When we look back at history, we see that our movements have survived and thrived, in spite of attacks and threats. Tireless mobilizing and organizing in every world region has made us an unstoppable force. Amid challenges, our movements continues to thrive, securing victories from Mexico to France to Armenia.
Among these gains is the ability to continuously nurture young activists and cultivate new generations. We have also watched the symbol of the green wave in Latin America reach Africa, Asia, and the US. Women, girls, trans, and non-binary people of all races and ages, ethnicities, socio-economic statuses, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, and immigration statuses have the right to access safe abortions. Those experiencing intersecting oppressions face additional barriers to access, so it is crucial for our movement to harness intersectionality as a tool for analysis, advocacy, and policy development to ensure abortion access is available to all. All oppressions impact our reproductive lives. We struggle against a common enemy and fight for shared goals—health, rights, justice, and freedoms for all. Sex workers, transgender persons, non-binary persons, immigrants, refugees, people with disabilities, and youth, amongst others, are often overlooked. False and misleading information and stigma that exacerbate and fuel barriers must be exposed and rejected.
We call on our allies in the broader social justice movements to join us in taking action for the right to access safe abortion. As a collective movement, we have the power to advance reproductive justice and bodily autonomy and secure the freedom to decide whether and when to continue a pregnancy for all, especially the most vulnerable.
We call on all our governments to:
- Decriminalize abortion legally, politically and socially!
- Expand access to safe abortion by removing all policy barriers, expanding legal grounds, increasing upper time limits, and removing third-party approval.
- Ensure freedom and justice for all unjustly criminalized for accessing abortion and for all service providers and human rights defenders criminalized for providing access to safe abortion.
- Establish accessible and inclusive abortion care systems for all, including in the public health care system and through self-managed abortion support.
We call on global institutions and funding bodies in support of the health and rights of those with unwanted pregnancies to:
- Mobilize resources to support and protect all those who ensure safe abortion access.
- Offer core and flexible funding so that organizations, abortion care facilities, legal aid groups, and accompaniment systems can sustain their work in helping keep abortions safe and accessible.
Lastly, we call on all those working for universal access to health care, for reproductive justice and broader social justice, and for human rights to join us, to organize events and activities with us, publish information about the situation in your countries and regions, as well as internationally, and mobilize together on 28 September for universal access to safe abortion.
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INTERNATIONAL SAFE ABORTION DAY: 28 SEPTEMBER 2024
Materials, translations and visuals
French translation (coming soon)
العربية اللغة Arabic translation (coming soon)
Social media cards (on a Google drive)