With reproductive choice, we can determine our own futures. This Choice Week, join us to #StandForChoice.
Choice Week runs from Monday 25th September - Friday 29th September and is all about the transformative power of reproductive choice. September 26 is World Contraception Day 2023 and September 28 is International Safe Abortion Day 2023. It's a time of reflection, learning and action. It's a moment to be bold.
World Contraception Day was launched with the vision that everyone who wants access to contraception can get it, by raising awareness of contraceptive options. International Safe Abortion Day was launched to campaign for global abortion rights, so that no abortion is unsafe and everyone has access to this essential healthcare.
We bring these days together under Choice Week, to celebrate the transformative power of reproductive choice, inviting pro-choice people everywhere to #StandForChoice on social media.
Read more about choice below, and take our three actions to support reproductive choice for everyone who needs it:
Scroll on to learn all about global reproductive choice.
Join the conversation on social media and tell the world why you #StandForChoice. Our social media toolkit is here to help.
Support someone to access life-changing contraception or abortion care by donating to global reproductive healthcare access.
Reproductive choice means the power to decide if or when to become pregnant, with access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, including contraception and abortion care.
A world of opportunities opens when women and girls have choice. Reproductive choice protects health and saves lives. Choice supports access to education, it enables women to lead, and it helps build a more equal world for everyone.
When you give someone reproductive choice, you give them the power to determine their own future – and that benefits everyone.
Last year, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, removing the right to abortion in the United States. The decision sent shockwaves around the world and showed both the importance and fragility of these hard-won rights.
This year – in the same week as Choice Week – anti-choice protestors will gather outside abortion clinics globally, including in the UK, US, Mexico and Australia, to harass and intimidate those providing and accessing abortion care. These events are a reminder that reproductive choice can never be taken for granted.
Despite these attacks, it’s clear that globally, progress is winning. As of 2022, over the past two of decades, only four countries have rolled back abortion rights while 59 countries have expanded them.
Countries like Ethiopia, Nepal, Cambodia, and several countries across Latin America have seen the data and made the evidence-based decision to expand abortion access. When Nepal made abortion legal, they saw a staggering 72% decrease in maternal deaths from unsafe abortion.
The progress we're seeing may not be fast enough, but it's happening. With more individuals, organisations and leaders deciding to #StandForChoice, more progress can be made and more lives can be saved.
Time and again we've seen that abortion restrictions don’t prevent abortion, they just make them less safe. It’s the health, lives and futures of women and girls—particularly those who are the most marginalised—that bear the brunt.
And it doesn’t stop with abortion. Anti-choice groups are capitalising on Roe v Wade to erode people’s access to contraception too. We know first-hand the importance of giving people autonomy over their reproductive health and the ability to decide if, or when, they would like to become pregnant.
But the overturning of Roe V Wade has galvanised the global pro-choice community. It's time to double down efforts to protect choice: building awareness of reproductive rights, challenging abortion stigma and barriers preventing access, and funding reproductive healthcare. Learn more about the global impacts of Roe V Wade and how you can protect choice.
We asked young women in Ghana: what are your dreams for the future? Where do you want to be in ten years?
These young women are future journalists, lawyers, business owners, and mothers. They each have a dream, a goal, a future path that they want to choose.
Watch them candidly share their hopes for the future and why reproductive choice is helping them get there.
MSI providers are nurses, midwives, and doctors working around the world to make reproductive choice possible.
In many of the countries where we work, reproductive healthcare is still taboo. Some providers hide their work from their families, and many face opposition and stigma every day for giving women access to the reproductive health services they want. They bravely step out every day, to give women and girls control over their futures.
This short video features a few of MSI's amazing providers sharing why they provide.
Working for more than 45 years as an abortion provider across the world, we know a thing or two about what’s needed to protect and advance abortion access. We’re working closely with governments, decision-makers, and partners to dismantle barriers and expand access.
Abortion is a safe and common medical procedure—nearly 1 in 3 pregnancies end in abortion worldwide. Yet there’s still plenty of misinformation, often driven by stigma and anti-choice groups. Everyone has a part to play to normalise abortion and communicate about it in a way that helps end the stigma — especially our leaders, media, and people with a platform. Find out how.
Abortion is essential healthcare and, like any other type of healthcare, it needs long-term funding. Especially for poor and marginalised communities who are the hardest hit by abortion restrictions. Your support can help.
