When abortion is a crime, women suffer—along with their families and communities. But advocates for women’s health and rights around the world are increasingly successful at breaking down the laws and other barriers that keep women from accessing safe abortion.

In recent years, international bodies like the United Nations and various world leaders have started calling on governments to fulfill women’s sexual and reproductive rights—including the right to safe abortion. And a global movement, facilitated by easy information exchange via social media and other digital technologies, is allowing advocates from far-flung places to identify common goals, combine their voices and inspire each other with new approaches to activism.

“Few people realize that women actually go to jail in countries where abortion is illegal,” says Ipas Senior Policy Advisor Gillian Kane. “It’s a connection people don’t make.”

Indeed, where abortion is illegal women not only resort to unsafe abortions and risk death or injury as a result, but they can be prosecuted for their actions and sent to jail. Raising public awareness of the tragic consequences of criminal abortion laws is therefore a primary goal in the movement for safe, legal abortion.

What follows is a sampling of the real-world impact of criminal abortion laws and the promising work advocates around the world are engaged in right now.

Where everyone finds safe, respectful health care

September 28th, 2016

February 28th, 2018

September 28^th, 2016

February 28^th, 2018