DOMESTIC JURISPRUDENCE: 171 decisions from 45 countries:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Korea (South Korea), Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, U.K – Northern Ireland, United States, Zimbabwe.
Now in its 12th year online, “Abortion Law Decisions” is a word-searchable webpage which refers and links to 226 decisions from higher courts around the world. Modernized in 2025 by the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, the page remains as searchable as ever: Each entry still links to the official court decision issued by the court, case summaries, relevant scholarship and a brief indication of its subject matter. On the renovated site, however, the category titles now serve as a clickable Table of Contents like this:
REGIONAL JURISPRUDENCE: 43 decisions from:
African Regional Courts (the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Court of Appeals for East Africa, and the Court of Appeals for West Africa)
European Commission of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights
European Committee of Social Rights
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
INTERNATIONAL JURISPRUDENCE: 12 decisions from United Nations committees:
U.N. – Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
U.N.- Committee on the Rights of the Child
U.N. – Human Rights Committee
On the webpage, this Table of Contents is followed by the entire word-searchable collection of abortion law decisions. To keep abreast of future additions to this collection, feel free to subscribe to this REPROHEALTHLAW blog.
RELATED RESOURCES:
Latin America – Jurisprudencia section of RepoCLACAI – In 2023, the Latin American Consortium against Unsafe Abortion (CLACAI) incorporated the Spanish version of “Abortion Law Decisions” into its extensive repository of legal scholarship and resources for advocacy. This “Recursos Juridicos” database allows specific searches by theme, jurisdiction, and document type, within which the “Jurisprudencia” category also includes decisions by provincial and other lower courts.
African decisions and commentaries on reproductive and sexual rights are also online through Legal Grounds III: Reproductive and Sexual Rights in Sub-Saharan African Courts. This fully searchable site has been maintained since 2025 by the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Legal Grounds III Online. (Backup on sister site).
“Abortion Law Decisions” was originally based on the Table of Cases in the book, Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective: Cases and Controversies, ed. Rebecca J. Cook, Joanna N. Erdman and Bernard Dickens (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Available at University of Pennsylvania Press. Abstracts of chapters. Spanish edition available at FCE.
Compiled by: the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program reprohealth*law at utoronto.ca. See Program website for our Publications, Abortion Law Decisions and Research Resources and Curricula and Case Studies for Teaching.
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