The Weekly Spotlight: The Anti-Abortion Movement Is Changing the Rules in Plain Sight

The anti-abortion movement does not always start by announcing a ban.

Sometimes it starts with a new definition. A benefits rule. A court case. A “religious freedom” argument. A Victorian law dragged back into use because apparently the 1800s did not do enough damage the first time around.

That is the pattern running through this week’s news.

From Spain to the US, conservative politicians, far-right parties and Christian-right legal groups are using different tactics to push the same idea: that embryos should have more legal protection, while women should have less control over their own pregnancies.

They do not need to win everything at once. They just need to keep moving the line.

Spain’s Conservatives Are Trying Out Foetal Personhood

In Madrid, the conservative People’s Party has passed a law that counts an embryo as another member of the family when deciding eligibility for some public benefits.

The regional government says this is about supporting pregnant women and larger families.

Of course it does.

But this is not simply extra help during pregnancy. The law formally treats the “conceived but unborn” as a separate member of the family. That language matters, because once politicians give embryos a separate legal status, anti-abortion campaigners will argue that those supposed rights should compete with the rights of the pregnant woman.

Spain’s national People’s Party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has already promised to introduce a similar law across the country if he reaches government. The far-right Vox party supports the Madrid measure but, predictably, says it does not go far enough.

This is how anti-abortion politics gets normalised. Not always with a huge public fight over a ban, but through technical-sounding rules that quietly change how pregnancy is understood in law.

Supporting families means affordable childcare, secure housing, properly funded healthcare and decent maternity care. It does not mean slipping foetal-personhood language into the benefits system and hoping nobody notices.

Madrid is also resisting the creation of a legally required register of doctors who refuse to provide abortions, despite a court ordering the process to begin.

Abortion is legal in Spain. But legal rights mean very little when public services make them almost impossible to use.

The US Right Is Reaching for a Law from 1873

In the US, the anti-abortion movement is once again looking for a way to impose national restrictions without winning a vote in Congress.

The latest route is the Comstock Act, a law passed in 1873 to restrict the mailing of material considered “obscene”.

Christian-right organisations and Project 2025 figures have pushed for it to be used against abortion pills. A broad interpretation could block mifepristone and abortion-related equipment from being sent through the post, including to states where abortion remains legal.

That could create something close to a national abortion ban through the back door.

The fight over mifepristone has never just been about one drug. Medication abortion allows people to access care earlier, more privately and without always having to travel to a clinic. In states with bans, pills sent through the post have become a lifeline.

That is exactly why the anti-abortion movement wants to stop them.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian-right legal organisation involved in the campaign that helped overturn Roe v Wade, is representing Louisiana in litigation over the postal distribution of mifepristone.

Different case. Different court. Same network. Same goal.

Idaho Voters Are Getting a Chance to Fight Back

There was also some genuinely good news this week.

Idaho voters will decide in November whether to overturn one of the harshest abortion bans in the US after campaigners collected more than 100,000 signatures to put reproductive freedom on the ballot.

Idaho bans abortion throughout pregnancy and has no broad exception to protect a woman’s health. Doctors have left the state because they fear prosecution for treating pregnancy complications, while the state has also criminalised helping some minors travel for abortion care.

The proposed measure would protect abortion until viability, as well as contraception and fertility treatment.

This matters because when voters are given a direct say on abortion rights, anti-abortion politicians often lose.

Since Roe was overturned, reproductive-rights campaigners have won most statewide abortion ballots. The movement has spent decades capturing courts and legislatures. Ballot measures give voters a chance to go around those institutions and say clearly: no, you do not get to make these decisions for us.

Idaho will be another major test.

Britain’s Anti-Rights Networks Are Not Operating Alone

Here in Britain, Amnesty International UK sparked a huge row after publishing and then temporarily withdrawing a report mapping groups working against abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and other equality protections.

Amnesty said the report had not completed its normal internal review process. That controversy should not stop serious scrutiny of the organisations campaigning against abortion rights in Britain.

Christian Concern, the Christian Institute, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and internationally connected legal groups use litigation, lobbying, media appearances and “free speech” campaigns to oppose abortion access and safe-access zones.

They are not all the same, and research needs to be accurate. But neither should we pretend these campaigns happen in isolation.

Some of these groups have links to politicians, donors and international organisations. Many use the language of religious freedom, parental rights or free speech to make attacks on abortion access sound more reasonable than they are.

Not every Christian is part of the Christian right. That should not need saying, but here we are.

Christian nationalism is a political project. It uses religion to justify restricting abortion, LGBTQ+ equality and bodily autonomy. And it is increasingly connected across borders.

The Pattern Is the Point

In Spain, embryos are being written into benefits law.

In the US, Christian-right lawyers are reviving a law from 1873 to attack abortion pills.

In Idaho, voters are organising to take power back from anti-abortion politicians.

In Britain, there is a growing fight over how we identify and expose the organisations coordinating this backlash.

These are not separate stories.

The anti-abortion movement works through political parties, courts, legal groups, churches, donors and media campaigns. It changes the language first, builds the legal arguments second and then acts shocked when anyone points out where it is heading.

That is why we track the networks, not just the headlines.

By the time someone openly demands that a right should be taken away, the groundwork has usually been happening for years. That’s how Roe v Wade got overturned. It is a lesson for us all.