Defending the right to abortion shouldn’t be a dangerous job

©Amnesty International.

News
September 28, 2024
Fernanda Doz Costa, Director of Gender, Racial Justice, Refugees and Migrants Rights Program at Amnesty International.

Hate emails, stigmatization, death threats, stalking, burglaries, attacks, harassment at work and at home. Killings. This is what life is like for many who provide life-saving reproductive care, including abortions.

Facilitating safe access to abortions has become an increasingly dangerous undertaking in most corners of the world, despite huge progress to expand access to healthcare.

From the United States to Ethiopia, Colombia and Poland, those who defend the right to abortion, including health professionals such as midwives, nurses and doctors, have been facing a relentless backlash.

In the USA, the National Abortion Federation recorded 11 murders, 26 attempted murders and 531 cases of assault, among many other types of attacks against people who facilitated abortions between 1977 and 2022. Since a devastating Supreme Court ruling two years ago greatly limited access to abortion services and created an environment of fear, there has been an increase in incidents like arsons, burglaries and death threats.


From the United States to Ethiopia, Colombia and Poland, those who defend the right to abortion, including health professionals such as midwives, nurses and doctors, have been facing a relentless backlash.Fernanda Doz Costa, Director of Gender, Racial Justice, Refugees and Migrants Rights Program, Amnesty International

In Sudan, abortion providers routinely face physical violence and public shaming.

“A provider was shot by the spouse of a woman who sought an abortion,” one gynecologist recently told us. “There have been a few instances where service providers have been beaten by members of the public, even when just educating about contraception, or intervening in child marriage cases, especially in rural communities. So, providers are scared.”

In other countries, such as Italy, anti-abortion activists organize online harassment campaigns against health professionals, which can have a deep impact offline. Attacks include barrages of insults, threats and trolling, and their profiles being reported to social media companies, in an attempt to get them banned from social media platforms.

Another form of intimidation that is common across the world are aggressive anti-abortion protests and pickets outside health clinics, a strategy to terrorize both people seeking medical care, particularly those relying on public services, and the professionals trying to provide it.

Not all is bad news. Over the last few decades, there has been a tremendous positive global trend towards advancing abortion rights around the world — in the past 30 years alone, more than 60 countries have liberalized their abortion laws. But, partly as a response to this, anti-rights initiatives continue to impede millions of people from accessing essential and vital health care. This happens even in countries where abortion services are legal on paper but challenging to access in practice.

Individuals and organizations advocating for limits to basic human rights have promoted an agenda that violently targets and stigmatizes anyone working to protect those in need of medical attention.

As a gynecologist from Nigeria told us: “I face harassment and stigmatization for the work I do. The stigma is among fellow professional colleagues who make remarks that are demeaning to me. On the basis of religion, they preach to me about the sins committed for supporting abortion care, the killing of ‘the unborn children’ and the ‘hellfire that awaits all murderers.’”

Similarly, Dr. Laura Gil, a doctor from Colombia, described the harassment and violence her and other colleagues who perform abortions face, even from colleagues: “They slashed one of my friend’s car tires. They glued shut a different colleague’s padlock so she couldn’t open her locker. When another friend who is a psychiatrist stood up for a patient who was asking to terminate her pregnancy because of a health risk, one of her colleagues hit her with a folder. All this mistreatment stems from the idea that people who do abortions are morally inferior.”

Why does this matter? You may ask.

When health professionals trying to care for their patients are prevented from doing their jobs, it is the most vulnerable who end up at high risk. It’s been long documented that limits to accessing abortion care particularly affect vulnerable populations who are unable to pay for the services in private – which is how many people access abortions in countries where the procedure is illegal.


When health professionals trying to care for their patients are prevented from doing their jobs, it is the most vulnerable who end up at high risk.Fernanda Doz Costa, Director of Gender, Racial Justice, Refugees and Migrants Rights Program, Amnesty International

These kinds of harassment campaign also have the pervasive effect of discouraging health professionals from pursuing certain specialities, which, in turn, greatly limits the availability of good quality accessible healthcare, as Dr. Gil told us.

It’s a silent and dangerous rollback on human rights that is placing many lives at risk.

Providing safe abortions should not be a risky job. In fact, in many countries it isn’t. There, doctors and nurses are able to care for their patients, provide information and advice about their options so they are able to make informed decisions about what is best for them and then access the services they need. Without harassment, hate campaigns and attacks, health professionals are able to do what they trained to do: save lives and support people to follow their lives plans as healthy and as free as possible.

Over the many years we have been working, side by side millions of brave activists and organizations from across the world, to ensure abortion services are a reality for all, we asked many health professionals working in challenging environments why they do it, despite all the risks.

Many told us of their unwavering commitment to dedicate their life to the service of humanity, to care for their patients, regardless of any considerations of creed, gender or any other factors.

On international safe abortion day, let’s all do our part to celebrate and protect them.