Global Expansions in Abortion Access

Our 2024 fall Buffett Symposium, Abortion Access Today: Global Insights and Comparisons, convened leading strategists, researchers, medical practitioners, and human rights advocates from Colombia, Ireland, Kenya, Poland, and the U.S. to discuss abortion access around the world.

The second panel of this daylong program focused on global expansions in abortion access. Five dozen countries have liberalized their abortion laws in recent decades, representing notable victories of activists in nearly every continent. The panelists who joined us to discuss their strategies and the variations in access that remain were:

• Catalina Martinez, Vice President of the Latin America & the Caribbean unit of the Center for Reproductive Rights

• Evelyne Opondo, Director of the International Center for Research on Women's Africa offices

• Camilla Fitzsimons, Associate Professor of Adult and Community Education at Maynooth University in Ireland and author of Repealed: Ireland's Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights

• Moderator Sarah Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Instruction at the Northwestern University Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences' Program in Global Health Studies

Key Takeaways

• Persistent advocacy efforts can expand abortion access, even in traditionally conservative contexts. Ireland’s thirty-five-year campaign, led by unrelenting feminist advocates, resulted in the 2018 referendum outcome in favor of abortion access. In Colombia, as the country emerged from a long-running civil war, and civil and political rights were being strengthened, social mobilization, combined with a lawsuit at the Constitutional Court, proved effective in overcoming abortion access restrictions, with a 2022 Constitutional Court ruling protecting abortion access.

• National progress on abortion access can be undermined by the foreign aid policies of donor countries. In 2013, the Kenyan government created guidelines for the provision of safe abortion services. However, they retracted these guidelines almost immediately, following concerns about U.S. foreign assistance. Although the global gag rule was not in effect that year, there were fears that Kenyan health programs would lose funding if their representatives were to attend meetings about these guidelines. As a result, safe abortion remained difficult for Kenyan women to access; according to one report, seven women and girls in Kenya die each day from unsafe abortions. In 2019, the Kenyan High Court ruled that the withdrawal of the guidelines had been illegal and arbitrary.

• Tailoring messages to different audiences can unlock wider support for abortion access. In Colombia, advocates developed distinct narratives targeting various sectors of society. They emphasized personal autonomy in some instances, framed abortion access as a public health and social justice issue in others, and for lawmakers, presented it as a matter for health care regulations rather than the penal code. Their strategy also included engaging 200 cultural influencers, such as musicians, to speak out about abortion rights in ways that resonated with them, amplifying the advocacy. This varied approach helped to broaden support by addressing different concerns and perspectives.

• Building diverse, intersectional coalitions can strengthen abortion rights movements. Successful campaigns involved collaboration across different sectors of society, including reaching out to non-traditional allies such as progressive religious groups, and addressing the intersections of abortion access with race, class, and geography. In Ireland, during the 2018 referendum to expand abortion access, 20,000 volunteers were involved in door-to-door canvassing, demonstrating the importance of broad-based community mobilization to effect change.

⁠Read the symposium synthesis report produced by Foreign Policy >>⁠