Voices: ‘Reverberating damage’: The sinister global impact of overturning Roe v Wade is just beginning

Women’s health advocates have been pushing the east African nation of Malawi to reform its abortion laws for years. Currently, the procedure is only available to women whose pregnancy threatens their life, and in a nation of 20 million, an estimated 12,000 women a year die from illegal abortions.

New proposed rule changes are advancing, despite setbacks and stiff resistance. But following the reversal of Roe v Wade on another continent, new abortion legislation heading to parliament could be imperilled. Malawi receives an average of $180m per year in US aid. And the government and lawmakers may decide that liberalising abortion laws could risk alienating their patron in the future.

“We hope to see legislation going to parliament,” says Sarah Shaw, advocacy director at MSI Reproductive Choices, a London-based organisation that provides women’s health services across the world. “We are concerned that the Roe v Wade ruling is going to affect the passage of the bill because the Malawi government does receive quite a bit of its budget from the US.”

The decades-long battle to grant American women safe access to abortion suffered a major defeat last month when the United States Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 decision that protected the right to have an abortion under constitutional privacy measures.

That an unelected body of religiously and ideologically motivated jurists stripped away the rights of US women is bad enough, and a giant step backwards for North American society. But the reversal will also have a global impact, emboldening zealots worldwide who seek to deny women access to healthcare and control over their own bodies.

“The majority’s decision will not only wreak untold harm on women and families in the US, it could have reverberating damage around the world, rolling back hard-won advances in other nations and emboldening anti-choice movements,” Laleh Ispahani, co-director of Open Society, said in a press release.

The US has often, over the decades, been seen as a trendsetter on touchy social issues, including the rights of women and minorities. Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnes Callamard warned that overturning Roe v Wade would “set a terrible example that other governments and anti-rights groups could seize upon around the world in a bid to deny the rights of women, girls and other people who can become pregnant”.

US influence has lagged in recent years, and its image as a society to aspire to has been severely damaged by its rampant gunplay and unpredictable politics. But it is cold, hard cash, and the willingness to spend it, that really gives the US an outsize influence on the issue of abortion.

America is a major provider of foreign aid, as well as being the source of funding for extremist groups with reactionary social agendas, including those seeking to restrict the rights of women, LGBT+ communities and immigrants.

Abortion rights advocates are alarmed by what the overturning of Roe could mean for countries that are dependent on US assistance. Those developing nations are constantly trying to remain in Washington’s good graces, and they are undoubtedly attempting to read the tea leaves of US policy in order to remain recipients of its largesse.

Malawi’s abortion laws date back 160 years, and punish those who obtain abortions with up to 14 years in prison. A study by the US-based Guttmacher Institute found that more than 140,000 underground abortions take place in Malawi each year, resulting in the deaths of 12,000 mothers. Among them was a 14-year-old who died after taking a herbal medicine to terminate her pregnancy.

Despite efforts to at least allow abortion in cases of rape or incest, far-right extremist groups have refused even to allow new laws to be brought up in parliament.

The June ruling on Roe will likely energise such abortion-rights opponents worldwide, giving them a political and financial shot in the arm. These groups have already begun approaching their supporters and asking for more money, fundraising off the euphoria created within the far right by the overturning of Roe v Wade.

The US has a long tradition of charitable giving, and when it comes to abortion rights, that is a double-edged sword. Many of the anti-abortion movements around the world are bankrolled by the coffers of far-right and religious American groups with self-described “pro-family” agendas that include opposition to abortion rights and to the rights of LGBT+ communities.

Shaw describes a coalescing of anti-abortion groups into a transnational movement. CitizenGO, an ultra-conservative Spanish advocacy group opposed to abortion, initially received funding from Americans as well as from a Russian oligarch. It has now expanded to African nations such as Kenya, where it has been accused of spreading lies about abortion and the LGBT+ community.

“They’re all coming together. They’re all funded from the same places. They’re all using the same playbook,” says Shaw.

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It may still be too early to see the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision worldwide, and even its consequences in the US remain somewhat unclear as the White House and abortion rights advocates mobilise. But based on what happened with the global gag rule, which barred recipients of US aid worldwide from providing access to abortion, the so-called Dobbs ruling will have an impact.

The realities of 2022 are also not the same as those of 1973. Back then, surgical abortion was the only way to terminate a pregnancy. Now, medical abortion, considered safe and effective in the first 10 weeks of a pregnancy, is becoming more and more popular. Its discretion and potential accessibility makes it far more difficult for abortion rights foes to combat. Even as anti-choice groups may be energised worldwide, the reversal of Roe v Wade could spur advocates to further embed abortion rights in national laws.

Abortion rights advocates have somewhat gotten used to the topsy turvy nature of US abortion policy since the imposition of the global gag rule, which is restored or removed depending on whether a right-wing or a moderate president sits in the White House. But what also concerns Shaw is the symbolism of Roe v Wade’s demise, especially if the US Congress fails to pass legislation that would enshrine abortion rights nationwide. Outlawing abortion throughout much of the US could help stigmatise the procedure even further for women and girls burdened with an unwanted pregnancy.

“What we worry about is the chilling effect on political norms and social norms,” she says. “That’s the piece that’s going to have an impact. That sets us back.”