The Weekly Spotlight: The Anti-Abortion Movement Is Coming for Contraception Too

There is a pattern here, and we are calling it out.

This week, reproductive rights news has been full of the same old anti-abortion playbook: spread stigma, muddy the facts, pretend healthcare is dangerous, and then act shocked when people demand easier access to basic reproductive care.

The latest target? The morning-after pill.

Emergency contraception works best the sooner it is taken. Yet access still depends on whether your local pharmacy is open, whether you can travel, whether you can pay, and whether you are forced into a conversation at a counter when what you need is safe, effective, time-sensitive healthcare.

The College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare is calling for emergency contraception to be made available beyond pharmacies — in places like supermarkets, shops and petrol stations — because it is time-sensitive healthcare. A YouGov poll commissioned by the College found that 43% of people in the UK think it would be difficult to access emergency contraception on a Sunday, while 64% think it would be difficult after 10pm. The same poll found 61% support making oral emergency contraception available to buy in shops and other retailers. This is common sense.

Anyone who has ever had to run around London on a Sunday trying to find an open pharmacy knows why this matters. It is panic on a bus. It is Google Maps with 3% battery. It is being made to explain your private life to a stranger when what you need is healthcare.

So yes: we want the morning-after pill sold like paracetamol.

And of course, anti-abortion groups are already furious. Because this is about control.

Emergency contraception does not create a “sex-obsessed” culture. It helps people avoid an unwanted pregnancy. Nobody’s reproductive choices should depend on opening hours, geography, money, embarrassment or luck.

That is why we campaign for reproductive freedom in practice, not just in principle. Rights mean very little if people cannot actually use them.

The anti-abortion movement knows this. That is why it keeps blurring the line between contraception and abortion. Once contraception is framed as suspicious, selfish or morally dangerous, it becomes easier to restrict. The goal is not just to stop abortion. It is to narrow the conditions that allow reproductive freedom to exist at all.

We see the same strategy in how later abortion is talked about.

Ms. Magazine reported this week on the myths and realities around later abortion, showing how anti-abortion campaigners weaponise stigma while ignoring the real reasons people need care later in pregnancy. Most abortions happen earlier, but bans, delays, travel, cost, late discovery, health complications and devastating medical diagnoses can all push people later.

Anti-abortion campaigners love to weaponise later abortion because it is one of the most stigmatised and least understood parts of reproductive healthcare. They rely on discomfort and silence. They rely on people not knowing the real stories: young people who did not realise they were pregnant, people with complex health conditions, families receiving devastating medical news and patients blocked by laws designed to make access harder.

We will not let them define the debate.

Later abortion patients deserve facts, compassion and care – not stigma, cruelty and political point-scoring.

Here in Britain, we have already seen what organised campaigning can do.

As Cosmopolitan UK put it this week: “They’re loud and have a lot of money” – the far right want your abortion rights. After more than ten years of campaigning, MPs finally backed a vital change to abortion law so women in England and Wales are no longer criminalised for ending their own pregnancies.

That win happened because campaigners, abortion providers, legal experts, journalists and thousands of people who refused to stay quiet kept pushing.

The same anti-abortion and far-right networks trying to drag Britain backwards are well-funded, organised and determined. While we campaign to push women out of Victorian criminal law, they are already trying to drag contraception, later abortion and reproductive healthcare into the moral panic machine.

So no, we are not neutral about this.

We want emergency contraception to be easy to access. We want abortion treated as healthcare, not a criminal matter. We want later abortion patients treated with dignity. And we will keep exposing the far-right and anti-abortion networks trying to roll back our rights.

The anti-abortion movement is not just coming for abortion. It is coming for the conditions that make reproductive freedom possible.

And we are not going to let them.