Abortion Lawfare: Global Battles

Political and legal battles over abortion take different shapes and directions in different countries within and across regions. At the same time abortion politics accross the globe are intertwined in myriad ways. There are tight alliances both on the side working to expand the rights and even more clearly among those aiming to restrict them. Not only is donor funding flowing across borders, the same issues and rhetorical strategies emerge in very different localities, and often the same actors are involved. With the Dobbs decision weakening abortion rights in the United States – but also with the developments in Latin America, the opportunity structures are shifting for actors world wide. In this roundtable, researchers from different regions will present findings from their work on abortion politics, bringing out similarities and differences between countries to enable us to understand what impacts abortion poltics in different circumstances, and how transnational pressures play into the domestic contexts, including the ever more heated abortion rights lawfare in the US. 

Participants: Satang Nabaneh (University of Dayton), Liv Tønnessen (LawTransform / CMI), Getnet Tadele (Addis Ababa University), Nicholas Orago (University of Nairobi), Jayna Kothari (Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bangalore) 

Moderator: Maya Unnithan (University of Sussex)