Vol VII, Issue 3 Date of Publication: July 23, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20529/IJME.2022.038

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Abortion laws in the United States: Turning the calendar back 50 years?

Ruth Macklin
Abstract:
Just as nations around the world have begun to revise their laws that restrict women’s access to safe, legal abortions, the United States is moving rapidly in the opposite direction. The past few years have seen several countries in Latin America enact new legislation; these include Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia as well as Chile [1], which formerly had an absolute ban that prohibited abortion even to save the life of the pregnant woman. In Africa, Tunisia, Zambia, South Africa, and other countries have loosened their restrictions on abortion [2]. In the US, despite nearly 50 years of having a constitutionally protected right to abortion, women now face an array of current and pending restrictions in about half of the fifty states. A case before the Supreme Court promises to upend that constitutional right. Recent developments leading up to the Court’s decision promise to reverse a half century of women’s right to abortion in the United States. When hard-won rights such as this are overturned, it not only requires an explanation; it also calls for a look at what other well-established structures are at risk in a liberal democracy.


Copyright and license
©Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2022: Open Access and Distributed under the Creative Commons license ( CC BY-NC-ND 4.0),
which permits only non-commercial and non-modified sharing in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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