Every country, both in the global south and north, will have a different answer to this. In general, women and girls will face significant restrictions in safe and timely access to essential sexual and reproductive health services, in particular timely abortion care, post-abortion care and emergency anticonception. Such restrictions disproportionately affect persons belonging to marginalised groups, including women living in poverty, women with disabilities, women belonging to ethnocultural minorities (e.g. Roma women), migrants, stateless women, adolescents and women at risk of domestic and sexual violence.
Quarantine affects the access to contraceptives for women worldwide: Contraceptives are threatening to become scarcer and scarcer. This is due to different factors. For example, large NGOs as well as contraceptive manufacturers warn that the supply chains of various contraceptive products are severely disrupted. China, the world's second-largest exporter of pharmaceuticals, has closed several drug production plants, which in turn has caused delays in Indian plants producing generic drugs, including anticonception. The demand for long-term contraceptives (such as the coil or the implant) will increase. For example, after Trump took office as president of the US, the demand for coils increased as women feared that access to other contraception would become more difficult. As governments around the world are severely restricting the mobility of their citizens, the use of contraceptives will also decline. Particularly women who depend on public transport to travel, or who are currently without income, may find it difficult to get anticonception prescriptions and buy anticonception. What's more, family planning clinics might be temporarily closed. The reduced access to contraceptives comes on top of the already existing needs of women. 214 million women in the Global South who want to use contraceptives already had no access to it before the crisis. Their numbers are increasing. Are women's sexual and reproductive rights under even more pressure because of the coronacrisis?20/4/2020
All over the world, we see sudden and drastic restrictions on democratic freedoms. Our movements are monitored increasingly. Public meetings are prohibited; the state of emergency is announced; legislative debates are postponed and, in certain countries, the operation of parliaments is suspended or their oversight role is severely curtailed in favour of the executive branch. All over the world, governments are ramping up digital surveillance. In Europe for example, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán granted himself dictatorial powers to ignore laws indefinitely and to suspend elections and referendums. In Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an emergency decree preventing the parliament from meeting, in what newspaper Haaretz called a 'corona-coup'. Experts are already pointing to the increasing pressure on the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls everywhere in the world. |