Roe v Wade isn’t just about the US. Here are the effects around the world

Fifty years ago, when the landmark Roe v Wade ruling protected a woman’s right to abortion under the US Constitution, it heralded a new era of reproductive rights advocacy across the globe. Now that it has been struck down by America’s Supreme Court, the shockwaves are again being felt worldwide.

Some countries, such as Israel and France, have already moved to improve access to abortion after condemning the ruling. But experts warn the shift in the US could roll back the gains achieved by abortion advocates and trigger a wave of restrictions around the world as pro-life proponents rally around their win. The World Health Organisation called the court’s decision a “setback that will cost lives” because it will drive more women and girls to the unsafe abortions that already carry a heavy toll around the world.

Here’s a look at how global abortion access has been shifting in recent years:

The big picture

Abortion laws vary wildly, but even some countries with bans (such as Egypt) allow exceptions when the mother’s life is in danger and, sometimes, in the case of rape. According to advocacy group the Centre for Reproductive Rights, which tracks access, about 20 countries including Iraq, Malta and the Philippines still have total bans in place – and often hefty jail terms for both doctors and mothers. Many countries allow abortions for broader heath and socioeconomic reasons, say, because the mother cannot care for a child or the pregnancy will have a damaging impact on her mental health. And about 70 countries, including Australia, allow abortion on request. Of course, even in countries where abortion has been decriminalised, laws differ on how far along a pregnancy can go before a termination is no longer allowed, and few have enshrined a constitutional right to abortion.

Where abortion access is expanding

Days after Roe v Wade fell, Israel moved to loosen its own abortion regulation. (The country’s health minister said the US Supreme Court had set back women’s rights by “100 years”.) Israel’s new policy, approved on June 27 by a large parliamentary majority, grants access to abortion pills through Israel’s universal healthcare system and throws out the old requirement to appear before a special committee for approval.

In France, a majority of politicians now say they will back a bill enshrining the right to abortion in the Constitution, not just in law.

Though some conservative politicians in New Zealand have celebrated the end of Roe v Wade, the country’s opposition has since ruled out pushing to restrict abortion access again, after it was decriminalised in 2020.

Last year, abortion was also decriminalised in South Korea and Thailand, and access expanded in India, while the small European republic of San Marino voted to remove its own ban via referendum – abortion will be legal on request from next year.

In Mexico, long-standing state abortion bans were largely struck down last year when its Supreme Court ruled criminal penalties for abortion were unconstitutional.

Ireland overturned its ban in 2019, following the high-profile death of a woman denied an abortion in hospital. (An unborn fetus had previously had the same right to life as its mother under the country’s 8th Constitutional Amendment of 1983.)

A new wave of abortion rights advocacy has also been sweeping through South America, where many abortions are still illegal and, consequently, unsafe. Earlier this year, Colombia followed Argentina (the homeland of Pope Francis) in legalising terminations. And in Chile, which had banned it outright up until 2017, abortion rights have been included in a new draft Constitution that will be put to a popular vote.

Parts of Africa, where women also frequently die from unsafe abortions, have now decriminalised it too, and nations such as South Africa, Tunisia and Zambia have fairly liberal access today.

Where laws are tightening

The US now stands among just a handful of countries that have since the 1990s wound back abortion access. In the days since the Supreme Court gave power back to the states, abortions have become illegal in at least eight of them (save for in life-threatening cases).

In broadly liberal Europe, Poland has long been an outlier on reproductive rights – for nearly three decades abortion has only been allowed to save the mother’s life or in the case of rape or fetal abnormalities. But when the hard-right Law and Justice party came to power in 2015, it moved to tighten the laws even further. The mostly-Catholic country removed the fetal abnormality exception – the kind most commonly used – in 2020. Last year, massive protests broke out following the death of a woman whose doctors refused to abort a non-viable fetus. She died of septic shock.

Abortion is legal in Italy, but experts say access is increasingly restrictive in a country where the pro-life movement has been energised by similar culture wars in the US.

While some parts of South America are softening laws, Brazil remains about as strict on abortion as Poland. In 2016, its highest court made a non-binding decision that abortion shouldn’t be a crime in the first three months of pregnancy, just as the hard-right Brazilian government pushed through a bill toughening restrictions. Like former US president Donald Trump, President Jair Bolsonaro has since been stacking his Supreme Tribunal’s bench with conservative justices to block any further attempts to legalise abortion, and experts say he will be galvanised by the fall of Roe v Wade. Since Brazil banned abortion pills as well as surgical procedures, many women have been forced to turn to the black market.

In 1998, El Salvador removed all exceptions from its abortion ban, a move now regularly challenged by international human rights groups as childbirth remains a leading cause of death for women and girls there. Some women have even been jailed for decades for suffering miscarriages.

An analysis by the Guttmacher research institute found that abortion rates are commonly higher in countries restricting access.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.