Consider This from NPR - How Abortion Laws Around The World Compare To The U.S.

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

Some countries in Latin America are expanding abortion rights. Other countries, like Poland, have all but outlawed the procedure. Meanwhile, health officials in Canada have signaled Americans would be welcome to seek abortion services across the border if they cannot access care at home. All of that speaks to the reality that America's abortion debate is not happening in vacuum, and is being watched closely around the world.Mary Louise Kelly spoke about how abortion laws around the world compare to those in the U.S., with NPR correspondents Mara Liasson in Washington D.C., Philip Reeves in Brazil, and Rob Schmitz in Germany. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. If there comes a time soon when it is harder for Americans to access abortion care, they would be welcomed by Canada. I mean, I don't see why we would not. I mean, if people come here and need access, certainly that's a service that would be provided. That's what Karina Gould, Canada's Minister of Families,

Children and Social Development, told the CBC this month. But she added something striking. I will say that one of the concerning factors here is that there are many Canadian women who maybe don't live near a major city in Canada that will often access these services in the United States. So I'm very concerned about what this means, particularly for American women, but also for Canadian women. Now, we should note abortion is widely legal in Canada. But the fact remains, the U.S. Supreme Court could make it harder for Canadians to access. That speaks to the reality that America's abortion debate is not happening in a vacuum,

and that abortion laws vary widely around the world. In Poland, for instance. The country's right-wing government all but outlawed abortion several years ago. Then, last fall, massive protests broke out after the death of a woman whose doctors refused to abort a non-viable fetus. She died of septic shock. Here's what one protester told AFP, Agence France-Presse. I'm very afraid of what's happening. I have a daughter of mothering age, and I advise her against getting pregnant at the moment.

Now, Poland is something of an outlier compared to the rest of Europe, where abortion is widely legal. In Latin America, it's the opposite. Abortion is prohibited in most circumstances across much of the region. But in some places, that is changing. That's what it sounded like in Bogota, Colombia, just months ago, when abortion rights supporters

celebrated. The country's constitutional court had voted to legalize abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. That vote, seen as a victory for the pro-abortion rights green wave in Latin America. Here's what Mariana Ardila, managing attorney in Colombia for the group Women's Link Worldwide, told NPR. The victories of one country inspire other countries. We share strategies, we talk to each other, we learn from each other. Consider this. Globally, some governments are increasing access to abortion care, but there are other countries where things are moving in the opposite direction. The U.S. may soon be one of those places.

From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Wednesday, May 11th. It's Consider This from NPR. If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it's likely certain states will respond by outlawing abortion or passing new restrictions on it. Other states will head the opposite way, moving to make protections for abortion access stronger. And side note, it'll be up to states to do that. Because Democrats in Washington, D.C. do not have enough support from everyone in their own party to overcome a Republican filibuster on a bill that would codify abortion rights in federal law. A vote to do that failed on Wednesday afternoon. And so the patchwork of laws that would emerge state by state mirror what's been happening on the world stage, where you can find countries moving in both directions.

We wanted to talk about some of them and explore why the possibility that Roe could be struck down is generating so much attention beyond our borders. To do that, I spoke with three NPR colleagues, U.S. political correspondent Mara Liason, also Rob Schmitz in Berlin, and Philip Reeves in Rio de Janeiro. Welcome, you three. Happy to be here. Thank you. Phil, you start, because I gather in Brazil people are watching this really closely. What has been the reaction there to the U.S. debate? There is indeed a great deal of interest in this. There's an election in Brazil in five months' time. Jair Bolsonaro, the current president, is running for a second term. He's far right wing.

He's seen as an authoritarian in the making and he is a staunch opponent of abortion. The interest around this issue that's being generated in the US is something that he's harnessing. On this issue, many Brazilians agree with him. It's a criminal offense. Abortion is a criminal offense here in Brazil. It's only allowed in certain specific circumstances. For example, when a pregnancy is a result of rape or the mother's life's threatened. And polls suggest that most Brazilians want the law to stay that way. So throwing a spotlight at this time on this highly emotive, highly polarizing issue helps Bolsonaro at a time that he's trailing in the polls. And there's another thing. He's

already put two conservative judges on Brazil's Supreme Court. Campaigners for abortion rights say that if he wins the second term, he'll be able to appoint two more, making it harder for future governments to bring change. Putting conservative justices on the Supreme Court. This sounds very familiar to Americans watching. Rob Schmitz up in here. You cover Germany. But I actually want to start you next door in Poland, which you also cover, because Poland stands out in Europe

for very tight abortion restrictions. Yeah, it does. First off, Poland, like Bolsonaro's Brazil, is very Catholic, and it's chipped away at its democratic institutions in recent years. The right-wing nationalist ruling party called Law and Justice has a symbiotic relationship with the Catholic Church, and their voting base are largely church-going rural Poles who are very much against abortion. In its seven years in power, the Law and Justice Party has dismantled the country's judiciary and stacked Poland's courts with party loyalists who bring this conservative Catholic right-wing agenda with them to the bench.

And with their help, the party has essentially banned abortion. The only scenario when a woman is able to have an abortion in Poland is if she can prove that she's been raped or if the birth will threaten her own life. Poland's constitutional tribunal court limited abortion to just these two scenarios in late 2020. And that prompted the largest protests in Poland and mostly urban Poland since those that led to the fall of communism decades ago. You know, it's so interesting, Mar Elias, and listening to this here in the States, because the US appears to be poised to strike down federal legal protection for abortion, while Joe Biden, who supports abortion rights, is in the White House, while his fellow Democrats, who largely support abortion rights, control Congress,

and while American public opinion is with them, a majority of Americans say they want Roe v. Wade to stand. How did we get here? Well, the simple answer is that we have a very large anti-abortion rights conservative majority on the Supreme Court. And the reason we have that is because we have a system in America where the candidate with the most votes doesn't always become the president. And five of the six conservative justices on the court were nominated by presidents who came into the White House without a majority of votes, Donald Trump and George W. Bush. And in several cases, these justices were confirmed by a majority of senators, but those senators represent a minority of voters because the Senate is also a

minoritarian institution, which gives an advantage to small population rural states. Just for example, right now we have a 50-50 Senate. The 50 Democrats represent 44 million more voters than the 50 Republicans. And our founders designed a system to protect minority party rights, but I don't think they could have imagined that it would get this out of whack. But you're right. Majority public opinion on abortion has been static in the United States for many decades. People support legal abortion with restrictions. The majority wants abortion to be safe, legal, and rare. Rob, back to Europe and broaden out from Poland, because Poland is quite different from Western Europe, where abortion is legal in most places. That's right. Abortion is legal across nearly all of Europe. Each country has a range of restrictions based on how many weeks of pregnancy before the termination is illegal. And several countries require waiting periods as well as parental consent in the case of pregnant minors.

But for nearly all of Europe, abortion remains legal. And there are only a handful of countries like Poland that have nearly banned it. Phil, what about the rest of Latin America? I mean, there has been movement in other countries to change laws to make abortion more accessible. Bring us up to speed on what is happening in Colombia, in Argentina, in Chile. Colombia's constitutional court this year legalized abortion within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. And in late 2020, Argentina's Congress voted to legalize in the first 14 weeks. And in Chile, which had a total ban on abortion until 2017, abortion rights are now included in a new draft constitution that's being drawn up by a People's Assembly. That document must be approved by a mandatory popular vote, so we don't know whether it will pass or not.

But these are radical changes. Many thousands of women's rights activists, the so-called Green Wave groups in Latin America, campaigned for years, even decades, to bring about these changes. But now I'm seeing some of them expressing concerns that these developments in the U.S. will inspire anti-abortion groups, which are already very strong in their countries, to try even harder to reverse them. Let me bring us back and land on the situation here in the U.S. Maura, where do you see this going with the midterms, with national elections

here coming up in just six months? I think where it might have the biggest effect is in Senate races. Swing state Republican Senate candidates are going to have new challenges. As long as Roe was the law of the land, they didn't have to say whether they were for or against all of these new laws that Republican state legislators are talking about. Some of them are trigger laws. They go into effect automatically. As soon as Roe is gone, some states will have no abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest, or health of the mother, life of the mother. There are other laws proposed that would ban IUDs, that would give embryos the rights at the moment of fertilization. So I think the next big debate in America is going to be about which party can be painted as the extremists on this issue, because majority of American voters favor a middle ground of legal abortion with restrictions.

And that's going to be the fight between the two parties. We've been speaking with NPR's Maura Liason in Washington, with Philip Reeves in Brazil, and Rob Schmitz in Germany. Thank you. You're welcomez in Germany. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.