New book: Accessing Abortion: Global and Comparative Perspectives

June 10, 2026:

New book: Accessing Abortion: Global and Comparative Perspectives

Congratulations to Professors Rachel Rebouché, Mindy Jane Roseman and all chapter contributors to their new, co-edited book, Accessing Abortion: Global and Comparative Perspectives, published by NYU Press in February 2026. Rachel Rebouché is the G. Rollie White Chair at The University of Texas School of Law, and Mindy Jane Roseman is Director of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights at Yale Law School. We are pleased to circulate the editors’ abstract and their Table of Contents:

Rachel Rebouché and Mindy Jane Roseman, eds. Accessing Abortion: Global and Comparative Perspectives (New York University Press, 2026). Publisher’s book page.

In many countries, barriers to abortion access—legal, cultural, or practical—have been dismantled in places as diverse as Mexico, Kenya, Thailand, and Ireland . Yet, in a few countries—the United States and Poland to name two—obstacles to abortion abound. Why? Why do some countries find abortion access a publicly polarizing issue and others a relatively uncontroversial health and family decision? Why has abortion access been a rallying point for progressive political organizing and, in others, the site of democratic backsliding?

In Accessing Abortion, expert academics and lawyers look to countries that have passed permissive abortion laws to make visible how legislation both settled and stirred conflict in politically-divided environments. By comparing the process of enacting laws in these countries, the volume spotlights current social mobilization for and against abortion rights. At the same time, the volume assesses how these varied and comparative national developments unfolded in an international and transnational context where the floor of what countries can do is set by international human rights norms. Ultimately, this collection aims to show how law and public policy functions to facilitate both permissive and restrictive abortion law reform, and how that reform then changes the delivery of abortion services. Providing a sustained comparative analysis of the costs and benefits of legislating and/or judicializing abortion rights across the globe, Accessing Abortion assesses what is missing from contemporary conversations on reproductive justice.

ACCESSING ABORTION: GLOBAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Rachel Rebouché and Mindy Jane Roseman

  • PART I: TRENDS AND FRAMINGS
  1. Rights After Disenchantment: Abortion Law Reform in Colombia
    Isabel Cristina Jaramillo Sierra
  2. Dobbs’s Ripples in Europe? Recent Trends in European Abortion Law
    Neil Datta
  3. Post-Dobbs: Insights from African Abortion Laws and Practice
    Satang Nabaneh
  4. Abortion Law in the United Kingdom: A Functional Comparative Analysis
    Elizabeth Chloe Romanis
  5. Prefiguring Abortion Freedom con los Manos
    Mariana Prandini Assis
  6. Toward Demedicalization of Abortion Under Law
    Patty Skuster

    PART II: CASE STUDIES FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

  7. State Abortion Laws in the United States
    Cynthia Soohoo
  8. A Socio-Legal Analysis of Abortion in Romania: From Inspiring The Handmaid’s Tale to Post-Dobbs Developments
    Elena Brodeală
  9. Human Rights in the Irish Abortion Movement
    Christine Ryan
  10. Threads of Change: Legal Reforms and Narratives Beyond Dobbs
    Dipika Jain
  11. “We Don’t Need an Abortion Law” in Canada: Making Sense of a Feminist Faith
    Joanna N. Erdman

Epilogue
Rachel Rebouché and Mindy Jane Roseman

Index and Acknowledgments
___________
Compiled by: the Coordinator of International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, reprohealth*law at utoronto.ca.   See Program website for our Publications,  Research resources, and Reprohealthlaw Commentaries Series.  TO JOIN THE REPROHEALTHLAW BLOG: enter your email address in the upper right corner of this blog, then check your email to confirm the subscription.

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