The Myth That America’s Abortion Laws Are More Permissive Than Europe’s

Stripping millions of American women of their constitutional right to decide whether to bear a child has potentially serious consequences for the political party that made it happen. Hoping to blunt the possible repercussions, Republicans have been arguing that the Mississippi abortion ban at the center of the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade is a moderate law, in line with global standards, and that it is abortion-rights advocates who are taking an extreme position.

Republican Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi made this assertion in 2021 ahead of oral arguments in . “Mississippi will still have a law on the books in which 39 countries, 39 out of. This position was echoed by the right-wing majority in , which presented the U.S. as an outlier for its permissive abortion laws. Since the ruling, conservative outlets and have “who criticized the United States for the decision have laws that are … comparable to the Mississippi law,” “many European states have stricter abortion laws than the U.S,” and that the “not extreme compared to many European abortion laws.”