Argentina has long denied women access to contraception, leading to high rates of unwanted pregnancies being aborted, and – since abortion is only allowed in the case of pregnancy as a result of rape – many of these terminations are illegal. In Nicaragua, a ban on abortion was introduced in 2006, overruling an 130-year-old policy allowing abortions in life-threatening circumstances.

Malta remains the only EU country to ban abortion with no provisions to save a woman’s life if pregnancy has put her in danger. In Africa, approximately 26,000 women die each year due to restrictive, unsafe abortions and in the US, from 2011-2013, 26 states passed over 111 pieces of legislation restricting abortion.

Laws prohibiting abortion do not even succeed in lowering abortion rates – in fact, the opposite is often true. The Guttmacher Institute found that, in Africa, where abortion is largely outlawed, 29 in every 1,000 women of childbearing age had undergone abortion yet, in Western Europe where abortion is chiefly legal, it drops to 12 in every 1,000 women.

By restricting women’s options, laws banning abortion often force them into dangerous, potentially lethal situations. Around 20 million abortions a year are performed by unskilled or untrained individuals in unhygienic or unsafe places. As a result, an estimated five million women a year are hospitalised due to abortion complications – with 68,000 deaths and millions more left with permanent health problems, according to the World Health Organisation.

It’s a figure that, unless countries like Northern Ireland modernise their legislation, will only get worse. Restrictions on reproductive rights – from abortion laws and connotations of Early Forced Marriage (EFM), which affects 15 million girls worldwide, to the effects of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which 130 million women worldwide have been subjected to – disproportionately harm women. Each experience is fraught with its own complexities: emotional upheavals, sadness, regret, relief and freedom. For some it’s followed by imprisonment or threats, often illness, sometimes death.

And even women who haven’t been directly affected by reproductive rights restrictions aren’t exempt from their repercussions. Because having choice is the most powerful thing we have – and until women are afforded the right of having autonomy over their own bodies, we can never achieve true gender equality. As Hillary Clinton said, “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” No-one, wherever they are, should be denied theirs.

Have we really made any progress? A look at reproductive rights around the world