The world’s leading power has long caused misunderstanding among its allies when it comes to the death penalty and firearms – the US Supreme Court confirmed the right of every American to go out armed from his home.

Since Friday, and a spectacular about-face from the same high court, the United States is now also breaking on abortion. The constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, guaranteed nationwide for decades, no longer exists.

“It’s a big step back”: the comment is from the British Prime Minister. Boris Johnson, despite his past closeness to Donald Trump, the craftsman of the conservative anchor of the American Supreme Court, unequivocally condemned a decision that “will have massive repercussions in the world”.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted to him, in French and English, to assure American women of his “solidarity”, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced a “horrible” decision.

The Supreme Court’s decision should only find favor with leaders such as far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who again on Thursday denounced the voluntary termination of pregnancy of an 11-year-old child, pregnant after rape.

An exception

Concluding Friday with a brief and somber speech at the White House, Joe Biden lamented that the United States is becoming an “exception” among developed countries. The 79-year-old Democrat, who regularly proclaims that America, “the greatest nation in the world”, must lead the way for all democracies, is traveling to Germany on Saturday to meet his G7 counterparts.

As if on purpose, it will happen in a country that has just abolished Nazi-era abortion laws. The text restricted information about abortions and led to the convictions of gynecologists. The Netherlands on Tuesday abolished the five-day reflection period to be respected before carrying out an abortion. France had at the beginning of the year extended to fourteen weeks against twelve previously the legal deadline for an abortion.

Elsewhere in Europe, very Catholic Ireland enshrined the right to abortion in a referendum in 2018. But a country like Poland, for example, has gradually restricted this right, until it only authorizes abortion in cases of rape and incest, or if the life or health of the mother is in danger. Again on Thursday, Polish MPs rejected a proposed citizens’ initiative to liberalize this scheme. South America, on the contrary, has joined the global liberalization movement.

Mexico, Colombia, and Chile have taken decisions to protect the right of women to terminate pregnancies. In 2020, Argentina legalized abortion after a huge mobilization of women. On Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured that Washington would remain “totally committed” to “promoting reproductive health rights around the world”. After the Supreme Court’s decision, the United States broke with a judgment that had made it one of the first countries to legalize abortion – in 1973, two years before France.

It was also the Western country where this right was probably the most extensive, existing as long as the fetus is not viable, around 22 weeks of pregnancy, according to a 1992 case law. Elsewhere in the world, the limit is usually set at the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, around 12 weeks. In reality, however, concrete access to abortion was already very mixed in the United States, relatively easy in progressive states like California, but very complicated in the conservative South.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, recalled in a statement Friday that more than 50 countries that had restrictive laws have relaxed their abortion laws in the past 25 years. “Today’s decision moves the United States away from this progressive trend”, she regretted, and deals “a terrible blow (…) to women’s human rights and gender equality.”