Over the past 10 years, more than a dozen countries have made it easier to get abortions, and women from Mexico to Ireland have mounted court challenges to get access to the procedure.
The trend contrasts sharply with the United States, where this week South Dakota’s governor signed legislation that would ban most abortions in the state, launching a bitter new battle that activists seem ready to take to the Supreme Court.
Abortion is far less divisive in the rest of the world.
Most European countries have legalized abortion, with limits, for years and the issue rarely makes news. Many Latin American countries ban abortion or severely limit it. In the Middle East, Islamic law forbids abortion, although most countries allow it if the mother’s life is endangered. Asia is a mixed bag, with the procedure banned in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, but common in China and India.
Nevertheless, the question is not entirely settled: Court cases in Mexico, Poland, Colombia, and Ireland have sought to broaden access to abortion.
On the other side, there are new Vatican-backed efforts to call into question Italy’s liberal abortion law, and women’s rights activists say they fear a new tightening of Poland’s law, already one of Europe’s strictest. …