Women Deliver applauds President Obama’s announcement that the US will end the “HIV Travel Ban,” which has barred entry to the US for HIV-positive visitors and immigrants since 1987. Until this historic announcement, the US was one of only 7 countries with laws that ban entry of people with HIV. Read President Obama’s remarks.

The BBC published a story on maternal mortality is which they say: “The US spends more money on mothers’ health than any other nation in the world, yet women in America are more likely to die during childbirth than they are in most other developed countries, according to the OECD and WHO. The BBC’s Laura [...]

Below is the speech delivered by Imane Khachani, MD, Msc, from the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights for the High-Level Meeting at the International Parliamentarians’ Conference on the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action.

Dr Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of UNFPA, Mr Bert Koenders, Minister for Development and Cooperation of the Netherlands, Mr Tedros [...]

This weekend, the NY Times published a story about a bill that has been introduced in the Philippines to increase contraceptive use. In the Philippines, birth control and related health services have long been available to those who can afford to pay for them through the private medical system, but 70 percent of [...]

The New York Times reports that Sheldon J. Segal, who led the scientific team that developed Norplant, the first significant advance in birth control since the pill, and who also developed other long-acting contraceptives, died at his home in Woods Hole, Mass., on Saturday. He was 83.
Population Council has created a tribute to Segal [...]

This blog-post was originally published at Conversations for a Better World, a shared blog on population gender and health.
Women around the world have had to struggle for decades, for centuries, to achieve equal rights and to achieve the human rights every man and woman deserves. And while the struggle has resulted in many positive steps [...]

Increased contraceptive use has led to fewer abortions worldwide, but deaths from unsafe abortion remain a severe problem, killing 70,000 women a year, according to a major global survey from the Guttmacher Institute.
The report, “Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress,” states that almost all unsafe abortions were in less developed countries with restrictive abortion [...]

Today is Blog Action Day! It’s an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. This year the focus of the day is Climate Change. As we mentioned last week, [...]

More than two million infants and women die worldwide each year from childbirth complications, outnumbering child deaths from malaria and HIV/AIDS, according to a new study released at the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) world congress.
Over 2,000 gynecologists, obstetricians and other health workers from around the world came together this week for the FIGO 19th [...]

Tens of thousands of Indian women and girls are dying during pregnancy and childbirth, despite government programs guaranteeing free obstetric health care, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a newly released report.
The report, No Tally of the Anguish, describes the harrowing conditions that lead to devastating maternal mortality in India. Despite national commitments to decrease incidents [...]