TAIPEI — Ghost Island Media, a Taiwan podcast network, co-organized an event with ReproUncensored about abortion access and internet freedom, coinciding with RightsCon, a major four-day summit on human rights.

Held on the second floor of Red Room Rendezvous, an Aussie-owned bar and eatery, seats filled until nearly over 60 attendees, local and international, squeezed into the narrow space, which quickly became a standing room only. A table of vegan nibbles was on offer. Attendees sipped on free beers while listening to the panelists, some through interpreting devices. The interpreter spoke rapid-fire Mandarin simultaneously with the panelists, who all spoke in English.

It was the evening after a long day of RightsCon at the Taipei International Convention Center, located near the once-tallest building in the world, Taipei 101. (That same morning, Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app, delivered a talk.) Altogether the attendees of Red Room Rendezvous represented 19 different countries. A few parliamentary members were present — one had written the legislation that recognized same-sex marriage in Taiwan — as pointed out by Ghost Island co-founder and moderator Emily Wu, to the audience's cheers.

The evening's topic, “Abortion Access and Internet Freedom,” sounds as odd a mix as peanut butter and apples. Yet, as the evening went on, it became clear that this was a pressing issue.

Eight female and nonbinary panelists, representing different backgrounds from Taiwan, Cambodia, India, the Netherlands and the United States, spoke on how access to reliable, accurate and fact-based information about abortions is being censored online both by Big Tech (Google, Meta/Facebook and Instagram) and governments even before the high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decided to roll back Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Despite advanced medical technologies that mean chemical abortions are a fairly........

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