The Global Impact of Abortion Laws and the Censorship of Reproductive Health Information
Public Health is a major focus area in the global effort to help save and improve lives across the globe. As abortion remains partially or totally criminalized in numerous countries, the fight to promote sexual and reproductive rights, as well as women’s health, also relies on access to information.
The Status of Global Abortion Laws
The protection of sexual and reproductive rights (particularly the right to have an abortion) remains a taboo subject. The World’s Abortion Laws Map from the Center for Reproductive Rights shows us the status of abortion laws around the globe:
- Blue countries: Abortion can be performed upon request.
- Green countries: Laws permit abortion under a broad range of social and economic circumstances.
- Yellow countries: Laws only permit abortion on the basis of health or therapeutic grounds.
- Red countries: Laws only allow abortion when the woman’s life is at risk.
- Maroon countries: Abortion is strictly prohibited altogether, and laws do not permit abortion under any circumstances (including when the woman’s life or health is at risk).
In some countries, abortion is still criminalized in complete disregard of women’s right to self-determination, dignity, health, bodily autonomy, and, ultimately, their right to life.
Health Consequences of Restrictive Legislation
According to the UN Human Rights Council Working group, the ability for a woman or girl to make her own decisions about pregnancy “is at the very core of [her] fundamental right to equality, privacy and physical and mental integrity and is a precondition for the enjoyment of other rights and freedoms”. The group also stressed that when the legal and safe voluntary termination of pregnancy is not possible, “unsafe abortions cause the deaths of some 47,000 women each year and a further five million suffer some form of temporary or permanent disability.”
Censorship and Access to Information
Around the world, access to information is increasingly blocked and manipulated. There are cases in which even providing information about abortion practices could be considered a crime. Recently, we were told that the website of the abortion rights non-governmental organization womeonwaves.org, which provides reproductive health services and education to women in countries with restrictive abortion laws, was inaccessible in Brazil.
To check whether womenonwaves.org is blocked in Brazil and in other countries, we analyzed OONI measurements from around the world. OONI Probe is free and open source software designed to measure the blocking of websites and various other forms of internet censorship. As part of our analysis, we also checked whether womenonweb.org - the sister organization of womenonwaves.org - is blocked around the world too.
Confirmed Blocking of Reproductive Rights Websites
In this report, we share OONI data confirming the blocking of womenonwaves.org and womeononweb.org in several jurisdictions:
| Website | Countries with Confirmed Blocking |
|---|---|
| womenonwaves.org | Brazil, Iran, Turkey |
| womenonweb.org | South Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia |
Transparency of Network Interference is more important than ever. The United Nations Human Rights Committee released a General Comment on the Right to Life in 2018 which calls upon States to “not apply criminal sanctions against women and girls undergoing abortion or against medical service providers assisting them in doing so, since taking such measures compel women and girls to resort to unsafe abortion.”