Abortion

A slide of the graphic recording of the webinar series by CREA and CommonHealth. On a white background are coloured illustrations to give the effect of spiral writing pads and notes. A hand is visible till the forearm holding a pen and writing ‘The Implications of MTP Amendment on Access Beyond COVID-19’. The pointers are typographically presented.

Brushstrokes: Decriminalisation of Abortion in India

·September 1, 2020
·Curated Content
·0 Comments

The graphic representations of a three-part webinar series organised by Common Health and CREA address these questions and attempt to build an understanding of the decriminalisation of abortion and how it could ensure access to safe, affordable, timely and rights-based services.

Picture of activist Jasmine George

Interview – Jasmine George

·December 2, 2019
·Shikha Aleya
·0 Comments

Jasmine George is a TEDx speaker, lawyer, and a sexual and reproductive health advocate from India. She is the founder of Hidden Pockets and currently curates conversations around sexuality and other fields. She is passionate about using alternative means in law and technology to explore sexuality

a still from everyday feminism's comic, 'the hypocrisy of pro-life rhetoric'

Brushstrokes: The Hypocrisy of Pro-Life Rhetoric

·November 1, 2019
·Curated Content
·0 Comments

Pro-life arguments have invoked faith and religion to decry a person’s right to seek an abortion, and the right to decide what to do with one’s body. But, as Everyday Feminism’s comic, The Hypocrisy of Pro-Life Rhetoric, breaks it down for us, it is not with religion or faith where the problem lies.

A brown hand holding the pride flag infront of the Whitehouse (in the background) . Screen reader support enabled. A brown hand holding the pride flag infront of the Whitehouse (in the background) .

The United States of Indian-Americans

·July 15, 2017
·Sonia Dhawan

It is very easy to fall into the trap of believing that the survival of the larger group is more important than the rights of an individual. This is especially true in diasporic communities, where people are constantly struggling to keep their cultural identities intact while simultaneously assimilating to the majority culture just enough to survive.

An adult female receiving a vaccination that was administered by a public health clinician by way of a jet injector.

The (Pseudo) Science of Not Trusting Women

·July 1, 2016
·Kristin Francoeur

Medical abortion is a threat to scientific authorities because it is technology easily used without the help of a medical provider. Since there is doubt that women will use the drug safely without supervision (even though they did it before and are still doing it), some think the kinder option is to remove their opportunity to fail.

Actor Ryan Gosling, bare-chested. Over the photo is written in white, "Hey girl, just want to let you know that I respect your autonomy to make your own healthcare decisions."

Toeing a Difficult Line – When and How to Talk about Men’s Relationship with Abortion

·May 1, 2016
·Kristin Francoeur and Surabhi Srivastava

Mainstream media is beginning to pay attention to men’s relationship with abortion – a welcome counterpoint to the anti-woman, anti-abortion rhetoric Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) spew on the topic.

A leafless tree with red umbrellas hung on its branches.

Why We Need to Bridge the Gap between Sex Workers’ Movements and Abortion Rights Activism

·April 5, 2016
·Kristin Francoeur and Surabhi Srivastava

Abortion and sex work share the distinction of being topics on which even feminist activists sometimes find it difficult to remain non-judgmental, confronting feminists with the question: to what lengths are we really willing to go to respect and enable women’s choices and bodily autonomy?

A diagram of the female reproductive organs against a blue backdrop

Abortion ‘Vacations’ and Other Complications – I

·March 1, 2016
·Kristin Francoeur

If I had a dollar every time I heard an opponent of abortion rights say something like “If you remove the option for abortions, women will stop getting them,” it’s safe to say I would go up a tax bracket or two. In many places today, Global South or North, I would need all of those dollars in order to travel a considerable distance for an abortion that may neither be legal nor safe.

Alejandra Sardá-Chandiramani in her house. Sitting on a chair, she is talking with hand gestures to explain something. There's a bookshelf peeking from the left side of the picture.

Interview: Alejandra Sardá-Chandiramani on Sexuality and Social Movements in Latin America

·November 1, 2015
·TARSHI Team

Alejandra Sardá-Chandiramani is a sexual rights activist with Akahata in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In a 2014 visit to TARSHI, Alejandra interviewed with us on human rights, social movements, and the issues around sexuality in Latin America.

Drawing of an aloe vera plant in red colour. On top of it is written "Gather" in blue. In the background is written in blue, "Theodore Priscianus, a 4th century Roman doctor, documented a mixture of aloe, apopanax root, and myrrh to induce an abortion. It was used 'when a woman was too young or the opening of the womb was too small.' Aloe had over thirty different medicinal uses in ancient times, and continued to be used by midwives and pharmacists to "stimulate" menstruation through the 1800s."

Brushstrokes: 4000 Years for Choice

·October 1, 2015
·Curated Content

Foods of various kinds have been historically used to prevent conception and to induce abortion. 4000 Years For Choice celebrates the practices of abortion and contraception as positive, historical acts through visual art. Visit the website for more. These posters were earlier published as our Food Corner for December 2014. We curate videos and images based on our monthly…

Infographic titled, "Banning abortions endangers women's health." Other data given: "222 million women in the developing world have an unmet need for modern contraception"; "47,000 women die yearly...millions more are injured"; "86% abortions take place in the developing world where most abortion laws are highly restrictive."

Why the Absence of Safe Abortion in the Post-2015 SDGs Matters

·September 1, 2015
·Kristin Francoeur

The eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) have been rightly criticised because they were too narrow, failed to address the underlying root causes of poverty and gender equality, and have not taken a holistic approach to development. They were considered targets for poor countries to achieve (with funding from wealthier nations) rather than something all…

Notes On Body and Sexuality From The Abortion Discourse

·June 1, 2015
·Surabhi Srivastava and Kristin Francoeur

Rebecca Traister, in her recent article for the New Republic, titled Let's Just Say It: Women Matter More Than Fetuses Do, puts it bluntly: abortions are about women, not foetuses. We'll go one step further, be more explicit and posit that abortions are about women being able to assert control over their body and sexuality.…

A woman from Sri Lanka holding up a placard which has information on why abortion should be legal

Between the Nation State and a Hard Place

·May 15, 2015
·Sarah Soysa

Cultural norms and religion no doubt affect the way we perceive the world. They shape one’s behaviour, habits and practices, and values and ethics. They also dictate how we perceive women in relation to the traditional family. In most countries, including those in South Asia like Sri Lanka, nationalism shapes the discourse on family, gender…

A poster for abortion rights in Nepal, showing a woman sitting with her legs pulled close to her chest. There is abortion-related information written beside her in hindi.

Safe Abortion In Nepal

·April 10, 2014
·Curated Content

Whenever I represent Nepal as a youth delegate in any conference or workshop, I always share the great achievement Nepal’s government made in women’s health, i.e. legalising abortion. For many years, women in Nepal had experienced strictest abortion laws in the world.

A diagram of the female reproductive organs against a blue backdrop

Everything You Didn’t Know You Wanted To Know About Abortion

·April 10, 2014
·Curated Content

Founded in 2007, the Museum for Contraception and Abortion, in Vienna, Austria, is the world's most thorough collection of the different methods and objects humans have used to prevent the birth of other humans.

In Plainspeak publishes two issues with a theme every month.
A cross-cutting theme across all forthcoming issues in 2021 is how we can expand safe, inclusive sexuality-affirming spaces.

THIS ISSUE:

June – Representation and Sexuality, I Issue – June 15, 2021
Drawing from the oft-discussed conundrum ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’ we ask: How might we be truly and meaningfully seen and heard, especially if we do not find accurate or adequate representation in mainstream discourse? Representation is a broad term – it might mean political legitimacy of our gender identity and sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and so on, inclusivity in decision-making processes, highlighting narratives of identities and communities which are marginalised, and portraying sexuality openly and authentically. Our lived experience as well as what we are told by way of religious and/or moral tenets, popular culture, and even advertising, shape the way we look at and interact with our socio-cultural-political milieu. And, while representation may influence how we perceive things, we are not passive consumers of it – we can bring to it a critical eye, point to what’s missing, and if we don’t like what’s on offer we can demand or create other representations. In the June issue of In Plainspeak we explore how representation (and even misrepresentation, or none at all!) may affirm or violate our sexual rights and the assertion of our individual and collective identity.

July – Sexuality and Self-care
People in caring roles, people like us, activists, human rights defenders, home care providers, health care personnel, amongst many other care-givers, tend to work tirelessly. Immersed as we are in the immediate demands of care-provision, we often have very little time and energy to take care of ourselves. Public health emergencies like the current COVID-19 (and HIV and AIDS forty years ago, and still counting) and socio-political, human-made and natural disasters add to our already heavy burden. For those of us who work on fraught issues of sexuality and sexual rights, with the very nature of our work looked askance at, self-care can seem like an indulgence, a frivolity, especially given the current capitalisation of the ‘wellness industry’ (an oxymoron, to begin with). However, self-care, in its truest sense, is not a commodity, but a radical act rooted in the politics of inter-connectedness. If in doing the work that we do, we flounder in eddies of tiredness, hopelessness, dejection or apathy and consequently have nothing joyful left to offer to ourselves or to another, what’s the point? What’s the Point of Revolution, if We Can’t Dance? ask Jane Barry and Jelena Djordjevic in their 2008 book on sustaining the wellbeing of women human rights activists.
What is it that we do for ourselves to keep going, to take care of ourselves, to practice intentional self-care? Exercise? Meditate? Get enough sleep? Reach out to our friends? Practice saying ‘no’? Build solidarity with others? Enjoy the pleasures that our body gives us? What else? The July issue of In Plainspeak dares us to dance, to transmute dejection to delight, and to tell our stories of how in caring for ourselves we expand the possibilities of caring for others and realising our vision of a world where all people enjoy their rights.

For future issue themes, click here.

Would you like to contribute? Send an email to blogeditor@tarshi.net with your idea. Do take a look at our submission guidelines!

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