Dear Readers,

As we ring in the New Year, we cannot thank you enough for your support and your interest in ASAP’s work, particularly in our new blog and social media sites. We’ve planned some very exciting themes for this upcoming year, and hope that you will join us and contribute to our discussions.

But before we share these topics with you, we’d like to share news of our success in 2012.

As you know, we started this blog, and our pages on Facebook and Twitter in late May when we also launched the International Campaign on Women’s Rights to Safe Abortion, along with other international organizations.

Since then, we’ve used these spaces to bring to you the latest abortion related news, facts on safe and unsafe abortion in Asia, as well as blogs, feature articles, and debates on reproductive rights and feminism. Thanks to your interest, we have had a total of 6443 visits on our blog, 226 followers on Facebook, and 408 followers on Twitter in 2012.  We also had some fun occupying social media on Sept. 28, alongside so many other organizations and activists to organize and moderate our own Tweetathon.

We also plotted the supporters of the International Campaign on a crowdsourcing map, which you can access online through this link: https://campaignendorsements.crowdmap.com/.

We begin 2013 with the hope that we will continue to strengthen our relationship with you through our use of new media. We also invite to write to us at discussions.asap@gmail.com with ideas for blogposts, and contributions.

Tell us what you think, what you see and how you think we can make a difference together. We look forward to hearing your voice on our blog, and invite short comments, or posts about 500-600 words whichever you are able to send. Here are the first five of our upcoming topics.

  1. January – Abortion Stigma, Shame and Reproductive Rights
  2. February — Violence Against Women
  3. March – Abortion in Main Stream Media
  4. April – How Can Men Participate and Contribute to this battle for women’s Reproductive Rights
  5. May – Abortion and Religion.

We will also bring to you interesting news, interviews and media clips from the events like the second International Women’s Health and Unsafe Abortion Conference (IWAC) in January, International Campaigns like One Billion Rising in February, and International Days like Women’s Day in March.

Here’s hoping we can make 2013 a great year for women around Asia and the world.

Cheers!
Suchitra Dalvie
Shilpa Shroff
Shweta Krishnan