Around the world, many governments have been moving toward easier access to abortion, with more than 50 countries liberalizing their laws in the past three decades.
By contrast, a recent Supreme Court brief filed by abortion providers said that overruling Roe puts “the United States in the company of countries like Poland and Nicaragua as one of only a few countries moving toward greater restrictions on legal access to abortion in the past 20 years.”
Opponents of abortion point to different statistics. In a legislative finding justifying the Mississippi law at issue in Friday’s ruling, its drafters said that the American approach, which required states to allow abortions until about 23 weeks of pregnancy, was an outlier.
“The United States is one of only seven nations in the world that permits nontherapeutic or elective abortion-on-demand after the 20th week of gestation,” the finding said. “In fact, fully 75 percent of all nations do not permit abortion after 12 weeks’ gestation, except (in most instances) to save the life and to preserve the physical health of the mother.”
Twelve weeks is a common nominal limit in other nations, legal experts said, though the social context is usually quite different. There are generally few obstacles to obtaining abortions abroad, and public insurance is commonplace.
In a Supreme Court brief, officials in Mississippi focused on the nation’s adversaries. “The United States finds itself in the company of China and North Korea as some of the only countries that permit elective abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation,” the brief said.
Lawyers for the abortion providers challenging the Mississippi law said that the nation’s closest peers have adopted limits similar to those in Roe.
“In countries with legal traditions and democratic values most comparable to the United States, such as Great Britain and Canada, abortion is legal until at least viability,” they wrote. “And many countries that have limits earlier in pregnancy continue to permit abortion for broad social and health reasons after that point, functionally allowing abortion later in pregnancy.”
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