International Abortion Groups Weigh Gains and Losses from 2021

By | January 6, 2022

WASHINGTON, D.C. January 7 (C-Fam) As the international abortion lobby looks ahead to a new year overshadowed by the forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision, its leading organizations are also reflecting on the events of 2021.

MSI Reproductive Choices, formerly known as Marie Stopes International, published a 2021 roundup warning that the highest court in the U.S. is poised to deliver “the most significant rollback of abortion rights in a generation.”

“Abortion access hangs in the balance in the US,” declared fellow global abortion giant International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

Both organizations hailed the liberalization of abortion laws and policies in several countries, including Argentina, Benin, Mexico, Nepal, San Marino, and South Korea.  They also expressed concern about pro-life advances in El Salvador, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.

MSI expressed satisfaction over “continued innovations in abortion care delivery,” particularly at-home abortions through pills delivered by mail.  The use of telemedicine to expand abortion access was a priority of abortion advocates prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the virus provided the impetus for temporary measures relaxing telemedicine abortion restrictions in several countries.  Activists are now campaigning for those changes to be made permanent.

Both MSI and IPPF characterized the past year as a patchwork of gains and losses at the national level.  This indirectly points to the ongoing achievement of the global pro-life movement in blocking attempts to create an internationally recognized human right to abortion.  While abortion groups insist that such a right exists, it remains a hollow assertion: longstanding global consensus holds that abortion laws are to be determined by national governments, and the legal changes held up by abortion groups as their greatest wins were all done at the national or subnational level.

Despite an onslaught of pressure from pro-abortion civil society groups, as well as a growing pile of nonbinding instructions from UN human rights experts to liberalize their abortion laws, the decision to do so or not remains with national governments.  The status quo remains in effect.

Nevertheless, some countries’ national laws and policies have an outsized impact on the international abortion debate, and none more so than the U.S.  The inauguration of President Joe Biden in January of 2021 was followed quickly by the reversal of many of former President Donald Trump’s pro-life foreign policies, most notably the expanded Mexico City Policy blocking funding to foreign-based abortion groups like MSI and IPPF.  However, this policy change could be just as quickly rescinded by an incoming Republican president.

International abortion groups are therefore calling on Democrat lawmakers to enact laws permanently repealing the Mexico City Policy as well as repealing the Helms Amendment to the foreign assistance act, which blocks U.S. foreign aid from directly funding abortions.

While the pending Supreme Court decision does not directly impact U.S. foreign policy, IPPF and MSI fear it will have ripple effects beyond U.S. borders.  If the court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion on demand the law of the land, MSI expressed fear that “the impact could reverberate around the world, further emboldening an active anti-choice and anti-gender movement” that continues to achieve victories at the national level around the world.

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