Gender Equality United States Project #49602

Abortion Access for All

by Ipas

Project Report | Feb 25, 2022
Celebrating Abortion Access in Columbia and Helping Cyclone Refugees in Southern Africa

By Chandra Noyes | Major Gifts Advisor

This quarter, supporters like you can rejoice with Ipas and reproductive rights advocates around the world as we celebrate the exciting news from Colombia that its highest court has decriminalized abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. We’re bolstered by this news and congratulate our colleagues in Colombia who worked for decades towards this goal. As the Green Wave of legalization continues across Latin America, innumerable lives will be saved by legislation that recognizes that abortion is an essential service and right.

In the US, this fall the Biden-Harris Administration and the White House Gender Policy Council (GPC) released the first-ever National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality. While this strategy provides a roadmap for closing gaps in gender justice and addresses intersectional injustices in the United States, the GPC strategy is a missed opportunity to demonstrate the United States’ leadership in advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights abroad, including the right to safe abortion. In February, Ipas joined more than 120 reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in signing an open letter to President Biden ahead of his State of the Union address to request that he speak to the national abortion access crisis and reiterate his support for the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). A critical piece of legislation that would establish a right to abortion throughout the United States, the WHPA would help to guard against the abortion bans and other medically unnecessary abortion restrictions being advanced and enacted by state politicians across the country.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ipas is partnering with a woman-led community organization to help gender-based violence (GBV) survivors and other women in the community sustain access to sexual and reproductive services during the pandemic. Based in Kinshasa, CREEIJ (Cadre de Récupération et d’Encadrement pour l’Epanouissement Intégral des Jeunes) develops training projects for unemployed young people. This project taught 150 women, predominantly GBV survivors, how to make reusable protective masks. Within three months, about 20,000 masks were produced and then purchased by Ipas and distributed to women and girls needing access to facilities providing sexual and reproductive health services.

Our thoughts have been with the people of Southern Africa, who have endured devastating damage from tropical cyclones Ana, in late January, and Batsirai, in early February, which killed more than 90 people and displaced thousands. Ipas teams in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia have been working quickly to ensure that reproductive health care is available to women and girls affected by the storm, particularly in the many emergency camps across the region. Our teams have been able to deliver support to mobile health clinics, supply reproductive health supplies and equipment, including delivery and dignity kits, and provide shelter and support for health providers.

Global abortion access is an achievable goal, and we must remain steadfast in our work ensuring that people have access to all facets of reproductive care. As we advance through this year, we hope that you will continue to engage in the reproductive justice movement. Thank you again for your support.

Links:

Permalink

Oct 29, 2021
Global Strides in Abortion Access

By Elizabeth Clark | Annual Fund Officer, Ipas

Thank you for continued support and belief in the right of all women and people who can get pregnant to access reproductive health care, including abortion. Your support of Ipas through the GlobalGiving platform allows us to continue fighting for abortion access globally.

While reproductive rights continue to be contentious here in the United States, with near-total bans on abortion care in Texas and other states now following that lead, we continue to see progress around the world for abortion access. In the Francophone region of Africa, for example, an innovative effort to strengthen the movement for safe abortion is underway. Le Centre ODAS (Organisation pour le Dialogue pour l’Avortement Sécurisé / Organization for Safe Abortion Dialogue) launched in September and will unite diverse actors working to expand abortion access across Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ipas is serving as the initiative’s founding host, providing support over the first three years as Le Centre provides training opportunities, shares best practices, coordinates strategies, and mobilizes funding for ODAS members to pursue an ambitious regional agenda to expand abortion access. In many settings in Francophone Africa, attention has rarely been paid to the great unmet need for safe abortion. Le Centre ODAS is an exciting step forward, and we are glad for your support as it continues to grow.

In Mexico, after years of hard work by activists, the supreme court ruled criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional. It is a historic ruling that expands reproductive rights across Mexico, and also led to Coahuila becoming the fifth Mexican state where abortion is legal during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (joining the states of Mexico City, Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Veracruz). But in the rest of Mexico, abortion remains legally restricted. With the supreme court ruling, the process can begin to lift those legal restrictions state by state. Our partners and staff in Mexico look forward to supporting advocates’ work to lift remaining legal restrictions and to help health providers and the ministry of health ensure high-quality abortion services are available and accessible.

Ipas and our partners knew when the COVID-19 pandemic began that abortion access would suffer worldwide. We worked tirelessly to ensure that information on abortion with pills is widely available in the countries where we work, and we launched a webpage full of resources on how to safely self-manage an abortion with pills: www.ipas.org/AbortionWithPills. The page includes an instructional video, a how-to guide, tips for finding abortion pills that are safe and effective, and further resources from partner organizations.

We continue the fight for global abortion access and are so grateful to have you on our team. These past two years have posed new challenges for reproductive rights, but also have shown the vital importance of our efforts to ensure all people have access to reproductive health care, including abortion. We are honored to share our progress and challenges with you, our dedicated donors.

As we head into the new year, I am excited to see what is next for Ipas and the movement. I hope you are, as well.

Links:

Permalink

Jul 7, 2021
Shifting Power in Global Health

By Elizabeth Clark | Annual Fund Officer, Ipas

Nur Banu, 20 year old, from Bangladesh

As we head into summer here in the United States, the cautious hopefulness about reuniting with the people and activities we love is palpable. What a welcome relief after such a difficult year. But as a global organization, we deeply feel the pandemic’s impact on people around the world. Continuing high case levels, vaccine inequality, and lockdowns make it difficult for people to obtain the health care they need. Our work to expand access to abortion and contraception so that every person can determine their own future has never been more needed than now. We are grateful for your support as we continue this work to make abortion and contraception accessible to those who need it, regardless of where they live.

Ipas’s Accomplishments in Two Minutes

It is hard to describe our accomplishments in two minutes, but our President and CEO Anu Kumar took up the challenge to describe the past twelve months. We have lived through so much this past year, but Ipas has stayed laser-focused on abortion rights and our vision for global reproductive justice, and we did a ton of innovative work. Look at the video to hear in Anu’s own words our accomplishments in two minutes.

Shifting Power in Global Health—Beginning with Ipas

As a global reproductive justice organization, it’s our job to tackle the patriarchy head-on and fight the racist, sexist and colonialist policies and practices that deny women and girls the right to safe, high-quality abortion and contraceptive care. But, just as important, here at Ipas, we have started looking inward at how to “decolonize” Ipas itself.

Post-coloniality is a journey, one that the global health field has just begun. This year at Ipas, we are excited to share that we began our own multi-year journey to shift power within our organization. We are calling it the Ipas Road Map, and it’s a plan to transform Ipas into a networked global organization with authority, power and leadership dispersed and shared across a network of offices, rather than centralized in the U.S.

Our President and CEO, Anu Kumar, recently wrote a blog post titled “Shaping a post-colonial INGO” to explain these changes. We hope you will read it and learn more about this exciting shift in the way we work to achieve Ipas’s mission.

Women-led Climate Justice

On Earth Day, Ipas launched our new website IpasClimateJustice.org. It is a beautiful and moving online experience that highlights the connections between reproductive justice and climate justice through real women's stories. We spoke with women in Bangladesh and Mozambique who are fighting climate change every day. Their experiences illustrate the impact of environmental stress on reproductive health, as well as the resiliency of women and their communities. Women know what they need to survive and thrive, and we need to listen.

We urge you to take a look at the stories and experiences of the women featured and think about how we can center women’s voices like theirs when solving climate crises.

We Are So Grateful

We deeply appreciate your continued support, belief in our mission, and dedication to spreading the word about Ipas and our work to ensure access to abortion and contraception for women and girls around the world. Thank you. Please keep sharing our work with your friends and networks! The more people who know about the important work we do, the more we can accomplish, together.

Links:

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.