Abortion Restrictions: Not Just An American Issue
While the media spotlight has been focused on the possible overturn of Roe v. Wade in the U.S., the U.K. also has restrictions on abortion that pro-choice advocates may find surprising.
LONDON — With abortion issues under constant coverage in the American media, many here believe that the U.S. is the only country putting restrictions on women’s right to choose. This is not the case.
Abortion laws and rights are constantly in the news, featured on both right-wing and left-wing websites, as well as in global news, typically criticizing U.S. laws rather than agreeing with them.
After last month’s leak of a possible court ruling in a Mississippi abortion case that would overturn Roe v. Wade, a court decision that ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects a pregnant woman’s freedom to choose to have an abortion without heavy government restriction, international media has been in a frenzy trying to cover the case.
The British media had particularly harsh words to say about the developing case in Mississippi and what it would mean for women in the United States. One article in the The Guardian refers to the overturning as “the grim culmination of a crusade by zealots … risking the health, happiness, and lives of women.”
This bitter diction used in the U.K. media to describe U.S. law is not uncommon and is fairly typical response to American policy within the media here.
With the U.K. media’s constant negative analysis of U.S. abortion restrictions, it came as a surprise that the U.K. has some of its own shocking limits on women’s bodies.
In the U.K., the Abortion Act, an act banning outdated punishments for those looking to terminate a pregnancy, was not passed until 1967, only five years before Roe v. Wade. However, this legislation was made to protect the doctor performing the abortion if they believe the abortion follows the law’s specific restrictions, not the woman receiving it.
Abortions here can be done during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy after approval from two doctors who agree that the case meets the legal criteria. Some of the criteria for legal abortion in the U.K. include physical health risks to the fetus or mother and mental health risks to the fetus or mother if the pregnancy continued.
In the U.K., 1 in 3 women will have an abortion by the time they are 45.
With such high rates of abortion in the U.K., it comes as a surprise that legislators have tried many times to make them less accessible, especially when it has been proven that restricting access to abortions does not decrease the number of abortions.
In Ireland, abortion restrictions have caused women of limited economic means to resort to unsafe abortion practices and wealthy women to travel to more lenient countries to access an abortion.
In the U.S., abortion rates have actually declined in states that do not have heavy restrictions or limit access to them. From the years 2011 to 2017, 57 percent of the lowered abortion rates in the U.S. were from the 18 states that did not make changes to abortion regulation.
According to Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based pro-choice research organization, abortion rates are almost exactly the same in countries where it is completely legal and countries where it is heavily prohibited.
Additionally, data published in The Lancet Global Health at the Guttmacher Institute supports that of the 121 million unintended pregnancies per year, 61 percent end in abortion.
Overall, it has been proven that putting restrictions on who can have an abortion, and making abortions less accessible, does not stop women from getting an abortion globally.
One London-based group has resorted to creating feminist murals around the city to express their disdain for the U.K. government’s anti-feminist regulations.
Activist group Feminist Collages London has created murals around the city of London in support of their mission statement of “opposing the white supremacist patriarchal system & denouncing domestic abuse, sexual violence, sexism and any oppression affecting women and gender minorities every day.”
When choosing murals, “usually a slogan will aim to raise awareness on feminist rights (e.g. abortion rights, violence against),” said Kerrie Draghi, a young member of the group.
Some of the murals around the city include “Trans men and nonbinary people have abortions too,” “Abortion is healthcare,” and “Abortion restrictions don’t lower rates.”
According to the Feminist Collages London Instagram, “Keeping abortion safe, legal, and accessible saves lives. Maintaining control over female bodies does not.”
The murals with messages supporting abortion rights show that one issue can affect more than one different place around the world, and that abortion access is not just a U.S. issue, but a U.K. issue too.
Feminist Collages London is just one branch of a worldwide feminist collage movement. The global movement started in August 2019 with the Paris branch, Collages Féminicides.
With the widespread reach of the Feminist Collages movement, the subgroups tend to touch on global issues as well as issues within their cities.
This shows that even though media coverage typically covers abortion restrictions in the U.S., it is a prevalent issue in other countries around the world, specifically in the U.K.
