There is no legally binding international treaty that establishes abortion as a human right. Yet governments around the world are increasingly told they are violating international law if they refuse to legalize or expand abortion. How did a right that nations never negotiated become one that international institutions now claim governments are obligated to uphold?

The answer lies in a deliberate, decadeslong campaign to transform abortion from a contested moral and political question into an alleged human right. Through ideologically driven multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and allied scholars, abortion has been steadily reframed: first as “safe, legal, and rare,” then as a matter of “reproductive rights,” later as part of “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” and now as an alleged human right protected under international law.