ArticleSexual and reproductive health matters2025
Global progress in abortion law reform: a comparative legal analysis since the International Conference on Population and Development (1994-2023).
Article in Sexual and reproductive health matters, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Medical Termination of Pregnancy and the Persistent Challenges in India.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2026Article
- From systems that harm to systems that heal: ending HIV requires confronting gender-based violence across the life course.AIDS (London, England) · 2026Article
- Beyond decriminalization: exploring the legalization of abortion globally.Frontiers in reproductive health · 2026Article
- Rethinking abortion law reform in Malawi: a multi-method study.Sexual and reproductive health matters · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
As 2024 marked the 30th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development, which recognised unsafe abortion as a human rights and public health imperative, it is an apt time to assess global progress on abortion law reform. By mapping changes to abortion laws for 199 nations and semi-autonomous territories from 1994 to 2023 and coupling this with population data, this article demonstrates that the past three decades have been marked by an overwhelming trend towards the liberalisation of abortion laws across all regions, resulting in over 825 million women of reproductive age living under expanded grounds for legal abortion. Notably, a potential sea change has occurred in abortion law reform in the past five years, with countries increasingly liberalising their laws to permit abortion on request instead of adopting more incremental approaches. More countries have reformed their laws to permit abortion on request in the past five years than in the 25 preceding years. Yet, significant disparities continue to exist across regions. Countries banning abortion altogether or narrowly permitting abortion when the pregnant person's life is at risk are concentrated in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including in resource-scarce contexts where abortion seekers are doubly disadvantaged by restrictive laws and limited access to healthcare, including post-abortion care. It is critical that law and policymakers and public health authorities recognise that restrictive abortion laws are out of step with global norms and support progress towards the liberalisation of abortion laws, particularly towards permitting abortion on request.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.