Questions around abortion rights have been making headlines throughout the Covid pandemic—headlines about the ‘heartbeat bill’ in Texas, the death of a young pregnant woman in Poland, and continued attempts by the DUP to block access to abortion services in Northern Ireland, to name but a few.

As health systems worldwide faced increased strain, new barriers appeared to abortion access, even in countries where abortion is generally accessible. In the Netherlands, a court rejected a plea for abortion pills to be made available without a physical visit to a clinic. In Romania, the decision to suspend all non-emergency services hindered both public and private abortion services. Italy, unlike other European countries, did not expand access to medical abortions: Italian law only permits medical abortions until the seventh week of pregnancy, with a three-day hospitalisation required in most regions—space and resources many hospitals simply could not afford to give up.

The pandemic also exacerbated existing gaps in access: border closures and other travel disruptions, as well loss of income or childcare assistance, made abortion services harder, if not impossible, to access for many, while conditions like arbitrary gestational limits, mandatory waiting times, or evaluations from several clinicians made things worse. For those arranging miles of travel back and forth from abortion clinics, navigating childcare arrangements, or saving money to finance a private procedure, disruptions could prove a matter of safety or danger—life or death.

These obstacles, as always, disproportionately affect poor people, disabled people, people facing domestic abuse situations, and people with unstable immigration statuses. The Lilith Fund, an organisation which provides financial support to those accessing abortion services in the US, found that in 2019 68% of their clients were people of colour, 45% were uninsured, and 42% were unemployed.

More worryingly, on top of restrictions some deemed ‘unavoidable’ consequences of a pandemic, there are also clear and concerted efforts taking place in several countries to intentionally limit access to reproductive rights. Back in October 2020, then-President Donald Trump cosponsored the anti-abortion ‘Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family’, which was signed by the leaders of 34 countries including Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Egypt, and Uganda.

The declaration, filled with references to ‘the strength of the family’, affirmed ‘that there is no international right to abortion, nor any international obligation on the part of States to finance or facilitate abortion’. It came in the same month that Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal further impeded access to abortion in the country, banning it other than in cases of rape or incest, or when pregnancy threatens a mother’s health or life, despite the country already having one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws.

According to Marge Berer, Co-ordinator of the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion, these challenges to abortion access never occur within a vacuum, but are ‘a consequence of some right-wing governments, who have ridden the anti-abortion bandwagon to get support from right-wing political parties, religious groups and individuals.’

In plenty of places, attacks on abortion rights, where they exist, have been part of broader sustained attacks on human rights and minority groups. This turn is informing the campaigns of those campaigning for office, too: Chile’s far-right presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, as noted in the the Intercept, is ‘running on a pledge to prohibit abortion, eliminate the Ministry of Women and Gender Equity, withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council, and expand prison construction.’

Joe Biden has since removed the US from the Geneva Consensus Declaration, but the attack on reproductive rights in America remains strong. The landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which has affirmed the constitutional right to abortion in the United States since 1973, is now under threat of being overturned after almost fifty years. This week, the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—a case which, if passed, would ban abortion in the state of Mississippi after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

This comes just two months after the Supreme Court did not intervene to stop Texas passing its deeply regressive legislation S.B. 8, also known as the ‘Heartbeat Bill’, which prohibits abortion after only six weeks’ gestation. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out back in 2019, six weeks’ gestation means your period being just two weeks late.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the Guttmacher Institute has highlighted 26 states including Georgia, South Carolina, and Ohio that would likely ban abortion entirely. Outside the US, too, the international ramifications of Roe v. Wade falling would be significant—so much so that UN special rapporteur on the right to health Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng filed a brief to the Supreme Court calling on them to uphold the right to abortion or risk undermining international human rights law.

Backing this fight is vital; so are the continued fights for abortion rights in other parts of the world. In the UK, coverage of abortion rights, like many other issues, often focuses on countries with geographical or political proximity, failing to take into account the global picture of the fight for reproductive justice.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, 92 percent of the region’s women of reproductive age live in the 43 countries with restrictive abortion laws. While the abortion rate is roughly the same throughout the world, abortion is riskier in Sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region: 77 percent of abortions there are unsafe, as opposed to a global average of 45 percent. In Latin America, too, the last decade has been a tumultuous time for abortion rights activism, despite several important victories: the majority of women still lack access to legal abortion, with the Guttmacher Institute finding that every year 2.7 million women South American women have unsafe abortions.

Attacks on abortion rights cannot be taken lightly, but Berer is keen to point ot that there remains cause for hope. Argentina and Mexico, for example, have seen landmark wins for abortion rights during 2021, which Latin American activists are hoping will spread across the region. In Europe, telemedicine for medical abortion in countries such as Germany and Spain could spell the future of safe abortion access.

With the authoritarian Right gaining political ground, there are few places where those who rely on abortion rights can feel complacent. Thankfully, activists are more motivated than ever.