Forth stands with all women in the continued fight for health equality and bodily freedom.

While we fight to give women better access to healthcare, demand gender equality in medical research, and better support for women’s health issues, the United States Supreme Court's decision over abortion takes women’s rights back decades.

But this isn’t the only country that has recently banned abortion. In 2021, Poland introduced a near-total ban on abortion and just a few days ago, right-wing MPs rejected a bill to legalise abortion, making it one of the few European countries with extremely strict abortion laws. It wasn’t until 2019 that abortion was legalised in Northern Ireland. New Zealand didn’t decriminalise abortion until 2020, and in New South Wales, Australia it is still outlawed. There are many other countries across the globe with strict abortion legislation or that have outlawed it completely. Here in the UK, abortion is allowed but with restrictions, namely, if there is a risk to the life of the woman or to prevent grave permanent injury to a woman’s physical or mental health.

Ruling against abortion is ruling against a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.? According to data from the World Health Organisation (WHO), making abortion illegal has little to no impact on abortion rates. What it does impact is access to safe abortions, it impacts women’s health making it much riskier, more dangerous and less effective than legal abortions carried out by medical professionals.

It also doesn’t address the man’s responsibility in making the woman pregnant in the first place. There is no legislation telling men what to do with their bodies to stop unwanted pregnancies, no legislation demanding men have vasectomies until they are ready to start a family – all the responsibility is with the woman and only her human rights are impacted.

In the United States, there is no call for extra support for women who are unable to get an abortion. No call for free healthcare, free childcare, and extra financial support for the woman to raise their child. And no call for men to be responsible for the child they have helped to create. No call for men to financially support the woman they have made pregnant.

It is deeply saddening that across the world women are still fighting to own their own bodies and to make their own decisions relating to their bodies, and their lives. We stand with all women across the globe in the continued fight for health equality and bodily freedom.