A leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion suggested Monday that a majority of justices may soon fully overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion access nationwide.
If the court indeed issues that opinion, as is expected in the coming weeks, it would cement the United States’ status as a global outlier on abortion rights: Since 1994, 59 countries have expanded abortion rights by either legalizing or decriminalizing it, The New York Times reported last year, citing numbers from the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global legal advocacy nonprofit.
Only three nations — Poland, Nicaragua and El Salvador — have meaningfully curtailed abortion rights over the same span, according to the center’s figures, while Honduras last year added its existing full ban on abortion to its constitution.
New limits on abortion rights, as The New York Times’ Max Fisher reported, have occurred almost entirely in countries experts consider “backsliding democracies” thanks to broader erosions of democratic rights and protections. That is currently the case for the United States.
