2026 has already been a busy year for Women on Web’s Digital Rights Program as we celebrate our first anniversary!
In this issue:
⚖️ Strategic Litigation: Spain case reaches the European Court of Human Rights
🛡️ Building Digital Resilience: Introducing The A-Line to keep abortion online
🌐 Exposing Censorship: New report maps global censorship of Women on Web
🤖 Understanding New Pathways to Care: How abortion seekers are using AI
📱Coming Soon: A new censorship-resistant Women on Web app
Censorship in Spain: Women on Web Files the Case Before the European Court of Human Rights
In June 2026, six years after our website was blocked by the Spanish authorities, we filed a case before the European Court of Human Rights, with Women’s Link acting as our legal representatives.
Although the Supreme Court of Spain ruled in our favor in 2022 and suggested that the website should be partially unblocked, the website remains blocked because partial unblocking is technically impossible to implement.
“The Women on Web case will test whether the European Court of Human Rights recognizes the digital censorship of reproductive rights information as the fundamental rights violation that it is, and whether technical obstacles can permanently excuse a country from complying with its own judicial decisions.” — Women’s Link Worldwide
Read more about our litigation here.
We’ve Launched The A-Line to Keep Abortion Online
In response to the growing and increasingly sophisticated digital threats facing abortion activists and organizations, Women on Web launched The A-Line in partnership with our friends at eQualitie.
Through The A-Line, abortion activists and providers facing online threats can access secure website hosting, infrastructure, and protection. The A-Line also helps organizations restore suspended social media accounts and recover removed content.
As a project of Women on Web—and a love letter from our Digital Rights Program to the movement—The A-Line builds on two decades of experience overcoming digital censorship and suppression while providing abortion information and care worldwide.
Request support via https://the-a-line.org/portal/
If you’re a technologist, researcher, or organization interested in collaborating, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at a-line@womenonweb.org.
New OONI Report: Global Censorship of Women on Web
This year, Women on Web partnered with the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) to publish a new report documenting the censorship of Women on Web websites.
The report, Abortion Access Denied: Investigating the Global Censorship of Women on Web, analyzes OONI network measurement data collected between November 2025 and April 2026 and documents how our websites are censored around the world.
Our previous report with OONI in 2019 documented website blockages in three countries: Türkiye, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia. The new report documents evidence of growing censorship globally, with blockages found in in Iran, Türkiye, the Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Kuwait, Poland, Kenya, Pakistan, and Georgia.
Read the full report here: https://ooni.org/post/2026-women-on-web-blocked/
Artificial Intelligence + Abortion Access Research
Women on Web recently published new research exploring how abortion seekers are increasingly using ChatGPT to access abortion information and services online.
In the past year ChatGPT has emerged as a new referral channel to our online abortion pill service. In 2024, we received only 431 clicks to their site from the chatbot. In 2025, those numbers increased dramatically to 8,623 clicks.
We are encouraged to see that care seekers in restrictive settings are finding new ways to reach us.
However, we’ve seen new digital pathways open up and then later contract (such as various forms of social media), and there are growing concerns about privacy, misinformation and the potential for censorship within AI chatbot responses.
Moving forward, we’ll continue studying how people use AI throughout their abortion journey and navigate an increasingly AI-driven health information landscape.
Read the full article here: https://srh.bmj.com/content/early/2026/04/29/bmjsrh-2026-203297
What’s Next
Over the coming months, Women on Web will continue to expand The A-Line, build the global knowledge base on AI and abortion access, and launch a new censorship-resistant Women on Web app in partnership with ASL19.
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