The right to abortion and the possible effects of the Dobbs decision on contemporary legal trends

As a remarkably delicate issue, termination of pregnancy remains even today, in the second decade of the 21st century, firmly in the public eye. Nevertheless, in terms of legal regulation of abortion, over the last 50 years, we have witnessed continuous liberalization of abortion legislation. This contemporary trend of liberalization has been manifested mainly in Europe, in which most countries have legalized abortion on demand in the second half of the 20th century while constitutional courts of a number of European countries have upheld the constitutionality of such liberalized laws. However, in the aftermath of the United States Supreme Court ruling from 24 June 2022 in the Dobbs case, whereby it overturned constitutional protection of the right to abortion, essentially delegating abortion-related regulation to federal states, the question arose of (im)possible effects of this decision on said contemporary legal trends on the global, European and national levels. With that in mind, this paper aims to analyze comparative legal solutions and recent constitutional court case law of individual states, as well as the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, in order to assess possible changes in contemporary legal trends regarding termination of pregnancy.