The possibility of the US overturning decades of abortion rights, which surfaced this week in a leaked draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, sent shockwaves through many Latin American countries, where many feminist organizations have long looked to the US as a model of greater reproductive rights and freedoms.

In recent years, however, that paradigm has been turned on its head. Similar to how certain US states have erected additional hurdles to abortion access through different restrictions, several Latin American nations have taken the opposite tack, with an increasing number of countries liberalizing such laws.

Laura Gil, a doctor and abortion rights campaigner in Bogota, Colombia, has seen directly how things have changed. “I recall meeting with health experts in the United States, and they would look at us with admiration for our efforts to improve reproductive rights for years. It’s now the other way around “she stated

When word of the leak came on Monday, the doctor was in Florida for one of those meetings. Her American colleagues were mocked, she said. “They come from a culture where abortion is legal, while abortion was formerly illegal but is now legal,” she explained.

Gil was in the vanguard of a long-running public movement in Colombia to legalize abortion.

Colombia’s decision follows similar recent legislation in Mexico and Argentina, where abortion rights activists hailed their triumphs as part of the “green wave” — the movement’s preferred hue. Argentina’s Senate decided in December 2020 to allow abortion up to 14 weeks, becoming Argentina the largest Latin American country to do so at the time.

Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously decided in September that punishing abortion is unconstitutional, a ruling that is anticipated to set precedent for the legal status of abortion across the country, despite the fact that various states have taken varied approaches to implementation.

Ecuador recently made a first step toward liberalizing its rules by allowing abortion for pregnancies that resulted from rape up to 12 weeks after years of judicial fights.