Abortion and Reproductive Rights: We’re Hopelessly Divided

Thirteen states had already crafted anti-abortion statutes, dubbed “trigger laws,” just waiting for the Supreme Court to make the anticipated decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center (2022). The unprecedented leak of the majority opinion certainly gave anti-abortion advocates the green light they needed. As of the end of May, 2023, fourteen states have banned abortions outright: Alabama (no exceptions for rape or incest), Arkansas (no exceptions for rape or incest), Idaho (nearly all instances), Kentucky (no exceptions for rape or incest), Louisiana (no exceptions for rape or incest), Mississippi (except for rape, but not incest), Missouri (except for rape, but not incest), North Dakota (except for rape or incest), Oklahoma (no exceptions for rape or incest), South Dakota (no exceptions for rape or incest), Tennessee (no exceptions for rape or incest), Texas (no exceptions for rape or incest), West Virginia (except for rape or incest), and Wisconsin (no exceptions for rape or incest, being challenged). Georgia has a six-week ban in effect.

The Texas law was dubbed the “vigilante law,” which established a $10,000 court award, letting individual citizens sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion after the six-week mark—that included suing the doctor who performed the abortion down to the person who drove the patient to the clinic. The Supreme Court declined to temporarily block the Texas vigilante law. Other states have now embraced this idea: the Washington Post noted that at least thirty-five copycat laws have been introduced throughout America, not only for abortions but for a wide variety of polarizing issues—like book banning, gun control, and transgender athletics.

In six states—Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wyoming—bans imposed by state legislatures have been block by state courts. In five states—Nebraska, Arizona, Florida, Utah, and North Carolina—abortions are banned during the gestational period, from 12 to 20 weeks. In twenty-five states, abortions remain legal, and in twenty of those states, new legal or constitutional protections have been created. In 2024 ballot measures, five states added to their abortion rights protections and in two states, Arizona and Missouri, previous abortions bans had been lifted. At the same time, voters in three states (South Dakota, Nebraska, and Florida) rejected measures to enshrine abortion rights in their laws and constitutions.

Thanks to Dobbs, there is no national law regulating abortions. Congress is gridlocked on this issue: not enough votes to make this a national protection; not enough votes to severely restrict abortion access. Women living in abortion-restricted states have the difficult choice: carry the fetus to birth or leave the state, hoping to receive the care they need in states that offer abortion services. In 2023, over 171,000 women traveled from states that restricted abortions to states that permitted the procedure. More than 14,000 Texas women crossed over into New Mexico; 37,300 traveled from mostly southern and midwestern states to Illinois; and 12,000 traveled from Georgia or South Carolina to North Carolina. Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Woman’s Health, stated that “we’re having people travel hundreds or thousands of miles for a procedure that typically takes less than 10 minutes and can be done in a doctor’s office setting. Nobody does that for any other medical procedure.” An embolden 2025 Republican majority in the House of Representatives continues to talk about a nationwide law to regulate and restrict abortions.

In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that in over 96 percent of the 146 nations surveyed women were allowed to terminate their pregnancies in order to save their lives. Only six countries did not allow women to receive abortions under any circumstances (and since that 2015 report, Ireland, one of the six, has completely reversed its policy).

How Did They Do It? How Ireland, a predominantly Catholic country, repeal its pro-life amendments and allowed abortions nationwide.

Fifty countries (26 percent) only allow abortions to save the life of the mother; eighty-two countries (42 percent) allow abortions when the mother’s life is at risk as well as for at least one other specific reason (rape, incest, fetal impairment, or social or economic reasons). Fifty-eight countries (30 percent) allow abortions on request for any reason, although many of these countries set a certain point in the pregnancy, such as twenty weeks, as the cutoff point for an abortion. In September 2023, the Mexican Supreme Court decriminalized abortion nationwide, making abortions legal in all of the country’s thirty-two states; previously the procedure had been available in only twelve states. In a brief announcement accompanying the ruling, the Supreme Court stated that penalizing women who sought abortions was “unconstitutional” and “violates the human rights of women.”

In March 2024, France became the first country to protect the right to have an abortion explicitly protected in its constitution. The vote in the French Parliament was overwhelmingly in favor of the abortion rights protection. In 1975, France had decriminalized abortion, permitting the procedure for any reason through the fourteenth week of pregnancy, and now that protection was enshrined in its constitution. As the Washington Post noted, French “activist and politicians have been transparent that this is, above all, a response to what has been happening in the United States” since the overturning of Roe.

Sources: Kimberly Kindy and Alice Crites, “Texas Abortion Law Created a Vigilante Loophole: Both Parties Are Rushing to Take Advantage,” Washington Post, February 2, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/22/texas-abortion-law-vigilante-loophole-supreme-court/; “Tracking the States Where Abortion is Now Banned,” New York Times, May 26, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html; Allison McCann and Amy Schoenfeld Walker, “How Ballot Measures Will Change Abortion Access,” New York Times, November 6, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/elections/abortion-ballot-results-laws-election.html; Molly Cook Escobar, Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Allison McCann, Scott Reinhard, and Helmuth Rosales, “171,000 Traveled for Abortions Last Year. See Where They Went,” New York Times, June 13, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/13/us/abortion-state-laws-ban-travel.html; Angelina E. Theodorou and Aleksandra Sandstrom, “How Abortion is Regulated Around the World,” Pew Research Center, October 6, 2015, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/10/06/how-abortion-is-regulated-around-the-world/; Simon Romero and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, “Mexico’s Supreme Court Decriminalizes Abortion Nationwide,” New York Times, September 6, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/world/americas/mexico-abortion-decriminalize-supreme-court.html; Karla Adam, “France Becomes First Country to Explicitly Enshrine Abortion Rights in Constitution,” Washington Post, March 4, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/04/france-abortion-constitution/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert.

Child Well-Being: We’re Number 36

In 1988, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) created a research center to support its advocacy of children worldwide. Its Office of Research-Innocenti, based in Florence, Italy, has compiled annual Report Cards on the status of children and their well-being in advanced countries.

For the Sixteenth Report Card (2020), out of thirty-eight countries examined, the United States came in thirty-sixth, ahead of only Bulgaria and Chile. Using data from the OECD, the World Bank, Global Burden of Disease Study, World Health Organization, PISA, and other data measurements, the Report Card focuses on three overall dimensions: mental well-being (both positive and negative aspects of a child’s mental well-being—life satisfaction and suicide rates); physical health (rates of overweight and child mortality); and skills (academic proficiency and social skills, such as making friends easily).

Source: “Worlds of Influence: Understand What Shapes Child Well-Being in Rich Countries,” Innocenti Report Card 16, UNICEF, 2020; written by Anna Gromada, Gwyther Rees, and Yekaterina Chzhen, https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/Report-Card-16-Worlds-of-Influence-child-wellbeing.pdf.

Highest Infant and Maternal Mortality Rates: We’re Number 1

The Commonwealth Fund, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the OECD, reports that “the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries.” Further, there is an overrepresentation of obstetrician-gynecologists in the maternity workforce, a shortage of midwives, and the US lacks comprehensive post-partum support.

Women in the United States experience more late maternal deaths than women in other high-income countries. In the US, 52 percent of all maternal deaths come after delivery or postpartum while 17 percent of deaths occur on the day of delivery. Roosa Tikkanen and her colleagues at the Commonwealth Fund note during the first week of postpartum that “severe bleeding, high blood pressure, and infection are the most common contributors to maternal deaths, while cardiomyopathy is the leading cause of late deaths.”

As in many cases of health and welfare, there is a racial component to maternal mortality. Research conducted by Marian F. MacDorman and her colleagues concludes that Black women are more than three times as likely to die during pregnancy or postpartum than white women. Linda Villarosa, in Under the Skin, makes a sweeping and powerful assessment of the systematic assault on Black American’s bodies, the racial disparities, the neglect, the inbred biases, and the social racisms that African Americans endure, no matter their social or economic status.

Sources: Roosa Tikkanen, Munira Z. Gunja, Molly Fitzgerald, and Laurie Zephyrin, “Maternal Mortality and Maternity Care in the United States Compared to 10 Other Developed Countries,” Commonwealth Fund, Issue Brief, November 18, 2020, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/nov/maternal-mortality-maternity-care-us-compared-10-countries; Marian F. MacDorman, et al., “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Maternal Mortality in the United States Using Enhanced Vital Records, 2016,2017,” American Journal of Public Health, September 2021, https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306375; Linda Villarosa, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America (New York: Anchor, 2023).

Childcare and Early Childhood Education: We’re Number 28

As part of the “Build Back Better” plan the Biden administration described the childcare provisions as “the largest investment in childcare in the nation’s history,” a $425 billion package including universal and free kindergarten, expanded child tax credits, and a wage boost for caregivers. But the effort was stalled in Congress. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky) berated the childcare provisions as a “toddler takeover.” The Democrats, McConnell insisted in a floor speech, “want to ram though a radical, reckless, multi-trillion-dollar taxing and spending spree between now and Christmas. And a huge part of their bill would completely upend childcare and pre-K as they exist for families across America.” The legislation was stalled and ultimately died.

In April 2023, President Joe Biden tried again, bypassing Congress and signing an executive order directing federal agencies to make childcare cheaper and more accessible. Biden noted that “almost every federal agency will collectively take over fifty actions to provide more peace of mind for families and dignity for care workers.” Biden emphasized that this executive order, limited to the action of the federal agencies, wouldn’t require any new spending. “It’s about making sure taxpayers get the best value for the investments they’ve already made.” Executive agencies would lower co-pays for services, ensure that Medicare and Medicaid dollars could go further, improve care for veterans and Native Americans. This executive order was certainly helpful, but these provisions are a far cry from his earlier, unrealized commitment for $225 billion to cover childcare for low-income parents and another $200 billion for universal preschool education. Despite the efforts of the Biden administration and the signing of the executive order, a comprehensive federal childcare program is still not a reality.

During the pandemic, Congress set aside $24 billion in stimulus money for childcare. It helped keep many childcare facilities afloat. Yet during the first two years of the pandemic one-tenth (20,000) of all childcare centers folded. When the federal money ran out in September 2023, the Century Fund estimated that 70,000 childcare programs would close, affecting 3.2 million children, and causing a $10.6 billion loss to the US economy.

For single parents in the United States, the childcare costs as a percentage of their net income are the highest among all the OECD countries. For single parents in the United States, up to 50 percent of their income goes to childcare; for New Zealand single mothers it is 14 percent, for mothers in the United Kingdom, it is 8 percent; for German single parents, the percentage of childcare costs is 1 percent.

Sources: Floor statement of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, December 7, 2021, https://www.republicanleader.senate.gov/newsroom/remarks/democrats-toddler-takeover-huge-childcare-inflation-and-discrimination-against-religion; Michael D. Shear, “Biden Signs Executive Order That Aims to Make Childcare Cheaper,” New York Times, April 18, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/us/politics/biden-executive-order-child-care.html; Abha Bhattarai, “Childcare is About to Get More Expensive, As Federal Funds Dry Up,” Washington Post, September 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/05/child-care-cliff-day-care/.

Personal Time Off: We Have Far Less Vacation Time

American workers have far less vacation time than do their counterparts in OECD countries. In a 2024 study, New View Strategies found that 81 percent of Americans had four weeks or less in paid time off, and on average American workers took just thirteen days of vacation. By contrast, 70 percent of European workers receive four weeks or more of paid time off and took an average of twenty-one days of vacation. Americans also took fewer sick days, nine compared to thirteen for Europeans. But for Americans, there is more feelings of guilt for taking time away from work. When taking more than a week off, 41 percent of Americans feel guilty; just 28 percent of Europeans feel some pangs of guilt.

The United States is also the only OECD country that does not provide a statutory minimal annual leave policy for employees. In most European countries, workers are entitled to twenty days of leave per year. When public holidays are included, that figure increases to thirty to thirty-five days a year of vacation time. The United Kingdom has a statutory minimum of twenty-eight days annual leave, along with eight public holidays. Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, and Sweden provide twenty-five days. The US has ten public holidays and zero days of federally mandated days of paid leave.

Sources: Kerry (Rosvold) Peters, “Vacation Guilt: Americans vs. Europe PTO,” New View Strategies, June 22, 2022, https://getyournewview.com/vacation-guilt-america-vs-europe-pto/; Kerry (Rosvold) Peters, “Vacation Guilt: Americans vs. Europe PTO,” New View Strategies, June 22, 2022, https://getyournewview.com/vacation-guilt-america-vs-europe-pto/.