Women’s Rights Are Not Alright: Restrictions on Reproductive Rights as a Gateway to Democratic Backsliding

By adopting a gender-based institutionalist approach, this paper analyzes the processes by which state and non-state actors advance policy regulations that impact reproductive rights. The research focuses on the Unites States and Romanian cases, developing a comparative framework to identify the underlying causes enabling this gendered backsliding. In the US, half a century of advocacy by the pro-life movement led to the adoption of a broad spectrum of measures, ranging from restricting to criminalizing access to reproductive rights (heartbeat bills, fetal personhood laws). The Romanian experience provides both a window into past non-democratic experiments, with anti-abortion legislation, as well as a glimpse into current diffuse advocacy attempts to undermine women’s reproductive rights, associated with an incipient illiberal national trend. In both instances, we consider the role and impact of several categories of actors – right-wing conservative political parties, anti-abortion and pro-family advocacy groups, and religious institutions – in shaping a policy cycle with neo-patriarchal valences that subverts the rights of women, limiting their autonomy and sanctioning their choices.