This article is part of a larger series titled The End Of Roe. Head here to read more.

Globally, abortion rights and access have broadly expanded in the 50 years since the Supreme Courts decision in Roe v. Wade made the practice legal in the United States. But a small number of countries have moved in the opposite direction, especially in the last decade, seeking to outlaw abortions, harden existing bans, or enacting new restrictions.

These nations countries like Brazil, El Salvador, Hungary, India, Nicaragua and Poland share one major commonality: They are almost exclusively countries that experts consider backsliding democracies, in which abortion access is one of many rights under threat.

Now, the United States itself now widely considered a democracy in decline is about to join them.

Later this month, the Supreme Court is expected to fully overturn Roe v. Wade , the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. A decision that follows the contours of the draft opinion that leaked in early May would have dire consequences for reproductive rights, likely making abortion illegal or heavily restricted in nearly half of all states .

Much as in those other nations, the attack on abortion rights is not occurring in a political vacuum: It is on the brink of success thanks to the same dynamics causing the United States own democratic backsliding.

Roe is under threat thanks to a conservative political project that has made a mission of targeting the basic individual rights democracies by definition protect, and because the countrys increasingly undemocratic political system has disproportionately advantaged political minority rule and fueled its radicalization. Roes demise is inseparable from the larger democratic crisis facing the country: It is yet another perilous sign for the future of not just reproductive freedoms but of American democracy as a whole.

This does not track with what democracies do, said Sophia Jordn Wallace, a University of Washington political scientist who has studied the relationship between abortion rights and democracy. Democracies have been expanding access to abortion, and accepting that this is part of health care and part of people having control over their own bodies and health. Its really alarming.