Maeve Higgins: If US abortion rights keep slipping, dark days are coming

In 2018, Ireland finally voted to legalise terminations. Before that condoms, divorce and abortion were illegal and shameful

Two pro-choice demonstrators are surrounded by anti-abortion demonstrators outside the US Supreme Court on November 1. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

I am a woman in America who can bear children, and this means there are powerful people coming for me, with detailed and strategic plans to control my body. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? It is dramatic, more so because it’s a straight-up fact.

In 2021, state legislatures enacted more abortion restrictions than in any previous year, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy body dedicated to advancing reproductive rights. Last month’s decision by the US Supreme Court to refuse to block a Texas law all but banning abortion signals the court could well be on the way to overturn Roe v Wade, and soon.