The European Abortion Policies Atlas 2025 is a comprehensive mapping of abortion laws, policies, and access across 49 countries and territories in Europe. It serves as a critical tool for policymakers, healthcare professionals, and civil society to track progress and hold governments accountable for upholding sexual and reproductive rights.
Key Findings
The Atlas scores countries across four key criteria: Legal Status, Access, Clinical Care and Service Delivery, and Information.
- Top performers: Sweden (94.6%), France (85.2%) lead the region with strong legal protections that fully decriminalise abortion, wide service availability, national health coverage, government-led online information and countering misinformation.
- Lowest performers: Andorra, Malta and Poland remain at the bottom of the ranking, with abortion largely criminalised with strict penalties, access and clinical care highly restricted or unavailable, and a lack of governmental information.
- Legal status: While 48 countries allow abortion on some grounds, only one country guarantees the full freedom to access abortion. Nine countries still regulate abortion in their criminal codes, exposing patients and providers to potential penalties.
- Access barriers: Abortion is available on request in 43 countries, but only 8 countries impose no mandatory barriers such as waiting periods, compulsory counselling, or third-party authorisation.
- Health coverage and service delivery: Just 23 countries cover abortion under national health insurance, 11 countries do not provide medical abortion (non-surgical), and only 5 countries allow abortion care via telemedicine.
- Information & protection: While 22 governments provide reliable online information on abortion services, only 7 countries offer legal protection against harassment around clinics.
Recommendations
The Atlas urges policymakers to:
- Modernise abortion laws to decriminalise it and remove it from penal codes.
- Ensure coverage under national health systems, treating abortion like any other essential medical service.
- Remove unnecessary obstacles, including waiting periods, third-party authorisations, and medically unwarranted procedures.
- Provide accurate government information and counter disinformation.
- Conduct additional research on key barriers, such as stigma, geographical discrepancies, cost, refusal of care, and burden of travel.
Download(s)
Topics