Providing Abortion Care in the Ocean Air

About 25% of the world’s population lives in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws. In some countries, women go to prison just for having an abortion, period.

Abortion access isn’t just about our reproductive health — it’s about our most basic human rights. The right to control our bodies, futures and lives. The right to decide if, when and with whom to start a family. These restrictive laws are robbing women of that right.

Rebecca Gomperts has been working for years to change that. After her travels around the world with Greenpeace, she witnessed women suffering without access to birth control, safe abortions and other reproductive health care. That’s why she started Women on Waves in 1999. “It all started when I was a ship’s doctor in countries where abortion was illegal,” she said. “I had seen a lot of women brought in because of illegal abortions. I could not observe that and just let it happen.”

Women on Waves operates by docking in international waters, 12 miles off the coast of nations where abortion is illegal. They can provide early medical abortions on the ship safely, professionally and legally under Dutch law, which applies on board the ship. “It’s about defying laws without breaking them,” Gomperts said.

They’ve traveled to Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Morocco to ensure women have access to the reproductive health care they need, without interference from anti-choice politicians and extremists.

“Nobody really knows what it means to have an unwanted pregnancy unless you are in this situation, and that is why no one can make a decision for anybody else,” Gomperts said.

The incredible work Women on Waves does inspired the 2014 film Vessel, which follows the ship as it sails to the countries where it’s needed most.

The response to the work Women on Waves has done and the lives they’ve changed across the world was so overwhelming, Rebecca Gomperts also started Women on Web, a service that helps women in these countries get the drugs they need to induce abortion at home.

“I am there to support the lives of women,” she said. “When women have unwanted pregnancies, it will end no matter what. This is an issue about social injustice.”

This International Women’s Day, we applaud Rebecca Gomperts for the vital work she does to ensure all women have access to the reproductive health care they need. Reproductive freedom is about the right to control our own lives, bodies and futures — and without access to abortion, we all suffer.