With quiet determination, in a hidden workshop in the strategic southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, Yevhen dons a welder’s helmet and lays a bead of molten metal to join lengths of construction girders.

He is building anti-tank barriers to help stop a Russian assault that could come at any moment against this cosmopolitan hub, renowned for its classical architecture and often deemed among the most “pro-Russian” cities in Ukraine.

In normal times, the 28-year-old welder and guitarist, with a hipster beard and indie band, would be thinking about his next live gig.

But as the multipronged Russian invasion moves ever closer to this Black Sea port, Yevhen is an example of how the brutality of Moscow’s war has changed minds here, and forged what residents describe as unprecedented, pro-Ukrainian unity.

Yevhen knows, because the native Russian speaker says his own views have changed, from being “neutral” on Russia to being ardently pro-Ukrainian. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Sunday that captured Russian military plans led him to expect Odessa to be bombed.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian civilians undergo basic military training at a volunteer center in a state education institution, before an expected Russian assault on Odessa, Ukraine, March 5, 2022. The civilian volunteers are trained by former, reservist, and veteran Ukrainian officers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that among his reasons for invading Ukraine is to “liberate” Russian speakers from “genocide” at the hands of Ukrainian-speaking “Nazis” – a claim widely scorned in this city, despite the preponderance of native Russian speakers.

“I am now pro-Ukrainian; I am afraid my country could be gone,” says Yevhen, during a pause in welding the tank barriers. He asked that he be referred to only by his first name, and requested it be spelled the Ukrainian way, not the typical Russian version, “Yevgeny.”

“Of course we will have victory, because we are together. People are the main power and support behind the army,” says Yevhen. “Ukrainians are the most united I have seen in my lifetime. Putin achieved this.”

Across Ukraine Monday, the 12th day of conflict, the fighting is raging. Russian artillery and airstrikes are leaving a semicircular arc of devastation from northwest of the capital, Kyiv, east and south along the borders of the Russian separatist regions of the Donbass, and then back west along the southern coast, from the Crimean Peninsula – seized by Russia and annexed in 2014 – toward Odessa.

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The United Nations reported that 1.5 million Ukrainians had left the country by Sunday, in the largest and swiftest cross-border exodus in Europe since World War II.

But Russian forces have faced unexpectedly strong resistance, seen their advancing columns stalled or destroyed, watched as aircraft and helicopters have been downed, and witnessed unarmed Ukrainian civilians confronting them head-on.

From fear to anger to resolve

That is no surprise in Odessa, where residents of this ancient city are doing all they can to prepare for an imminent onslaught – from organizing humanitarian aid and filling sandbags, to volunteering for military training and weaving camouflage nets.

Many say they have surprised themselves by the level of community and shared purpose they have created, under the threat of the Russian advance.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A decorative dragon watches over as Ukrainian volunteers turn the Odessa Food Market into a humanitarian hub, collecting and distributing aid for needy citizens and civil defense units, in Odessa, Ukraine, March 4, 2022.

“The first day, we were afraid. The next day we were angry, because our lives were broken by this one crazy man,” Mr. Putin, says Inga Kordynovska, a lawyer who, with a few friends, started the Humanitarian Volunteer Center in a hip food court in central Odessa.

“But on the third day, we said, ‘We will do something.’”

At the food court, posters on the walls still advertise the Oysters and Jazz Fest that was scheduled to last until Tuesday. But today, amid now-closed restaurants and under the gaze of a suspended decorative red dragon, some 90 volunteers are managing an ever-growing pile of donations – from bananas, bottled water, and medicine, to clothes, shoes, and toiletries – which are being sent to needy people and to civilian territorial defense units.

“When you are home, you think, ‘I am alone; we will lose.’ But when you come here, people think, ‘We can win. We are together,’” says Ms. Kordynovska, of the psychological dynamic at the center. It hums with constant activity and the steady arrival of donations.

“We give a new hope. We’re here. We’re alive. Spring is coming, and ... we have a new plan: Fight with Russia. Now we are brave; we are ready,” she says. “We understand that any day a bomb can fall here; it’s dangerous. That’s why these people are heroes.”

That sense of pro-Ukraine purpose has grown across the board, including among Russian speakers, says Ms. Kordynovska, whose own family has a bilingual heritage.

“Now I don’t know anybody who says, ‘We want to be Russian.’ They want to be alive, to be free people,” she says. “We see what Putin did with Crimea, and with Donbass; we see that people don’t have a good life. Young people hate Russia, and have no ambition to be with Russia.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian volunteers sort and package donations at the Odessa Food Market before they are distributed to people and civil defense units in expectation of a Russian military assault, in Odessa, Ukraine, March 4, 2022.

Impact of the uprising

Home today to more than 1 million people, Odessa began as an ancient Greek settlement and was founded in 1794 by Catherine the Great. It has been a strategic hub for centuries, for imperial Russia and later the Soviet Union.

Its multiethnic makeup did not spare it from Ukraine’s divisions over closer ties to Europe or to Russia, which erupted in November 2013.

Protesters in Kyiv demanded that the government of President Viktor Yanukovych reverse a decision – made under Russian pressure – not to join a pact with the European Union. Parliament had endorsed the pact.

In short order, Mr. Yanukovych was then toppled by the Maidan uprising in early 2014, and Russia annexed Crimea and supported pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian civilians weave camouflage netting by hand, surrounded by donated cloth and stretched fishing nets, to support Ukrainian armed forces against an expected Russian attack, in Odessa, Ukraine, March 5, 2022.

Those divisions also flared in Odessa in May 2014, when some 46 pro-Russian activists and two pro-Maidan activists were killed during a pitched battle and a fire at the Trade Unions House. Russian officials frequently refer to the event as an example of why Ukrainian Russian speakers must be “saved.”

But if the number of Russian speakers here might have led the Kremlin to believe this city would support its current offensive, residents say, the sheer scale of the violence has ended that possibility – if it ever existed.

“We have seen peaceful people die. Our administration buildings have been bombed,” says Zhenya Mayor, a multilingual silk-screen artist who volunteers at the food market. “How can you be pro-Russian if your country is being bombed and destroyed?”

She says that, before the Russian invasion, her family was “a bit” pro-Russian – and still loves Russian culture – but they “now feel support for Ukraine because we are in hell.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian female volunteers cut donated fabric into cloth strips before they are woven into fishing nets and turned into camouflage netting for the Ukrainian armed forces, in Odessa, Ukraine, March 5, 2022.

Contrast with Russia

Videos from Russia helped inform her family, says Ms. Mayor.

“They are afraid of the truth,” she says, of tight-lipped Russians she has seen interviewed on TV in Russia.

“It’s a police state,” she adds. “They say, ‘We are with Putin, no comment,’ as in, ‘Putin my prince, my king, my czar.’ ... They are zombies.”

That is in stark contrast to Ukraine, Ms. Mayor says: “I feel proud to be Ukrainian. I feel the freedom that I can speak out. All day, I just believe in victory.”

That spirit is evident also at the Odessa Yacht Club, where scores of volunteers – men and women, and even children – dig up the beach and fill sandbags to protect municipal buildings and landmarks, forming human chains to load trucks. They had made more than 200,000 sandbags by the weekend.

“This is one face of the city. People are united,” Albert Kabakov, a professional sail racer and head of the yacht club, says of the volunteers. “I am sure, after the victory, our society will be completely different. We will have changes.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Along a Black Sea tourist beach, Ukrainian civilians form a human chain to load sandbags onto trucks for use in defensive positions in the historic port city of Odessa, Ukraine, March 5, 2022.

Among them will be a deeper divergence from a Russian mentality, he says.

“All of us here are Ukrainians, will speak Ukrainian, and definitely this will enhance our Ukrainian identity,” says Mr. Kabakov. “It became a shame for us to speak Russian. A lot of people are moving to speak Ukrainian.”

A few hundred yards down the beach, a smaller group of 20 or so fills sandbags in front of a line of boarded-up restaurants that in summer are frequented by tourists – including many Russians.

“Odessa was always known for its freedom,” says Olga, an interpreter who wears designer black leather gloves and makeup, as she ties up sandbags in the winter wind. “We never voted for war. ... But considering that enemies came to us, we will fight, and we will definitely win, because Odessa citizens are well known for being able to stand for themselves.”

And it is “not true” that Odessa is pro-Russian, she says.

“Native Odessans have a good phrase,” says Olga, who asked that only her first name be used. “Putin was thinking that, considering Odessa is speaking Russian, they want the Russian world. But this is not the fact. Odessa citizens just love to talk.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Women and children fill sandbags with Black Sea sand at the Odessa Yacht Club in Odessa, Ukraine, March 5, 2022. Russian forces invading Ukraine since Feb. 24 have frequently met fierce resistance, and these Ukrainians say filling sandbags is one way they can help deprive Russia of the prized Black Sea port.

... and a jar of pickles

Defiance is evident also in a small apartment packed with women and some men weaving camouflage netting from strips of cloth and fishing nets. It is one of nine such centers in Odessa, this one with 100 volunteers each day producing 200 square meters of netting.

“Everyone knows this is our most dangerous moment,” says Svetlana Meshkova, an English teacher who wears a lapel pin earned from previous volunteer work.

“Our people are very different from Russians. We ... want to be a free country,” says Ms. Meshkova, who cuts the nets to size in the cramped space. “Even for me, this is impressive,” she says, of the overflow of volunteers.

“Here we don’t let in any idea of surrender. Ukrainians don’t surrender,” says Ms. Meshkova. “Not everyone supported us. But today, after all these years, people can see the truth about Russia, and what our country is. No one wants to be citizens of Russia. We have changed, and are a lot stronger.”

Laughter and cheers erupt among those weaving the nets, when a woman reads out a news report – true or not, it is not clear – of a Ukrainian woman who downed a Russian drone in Kyiv by throwing a jar of pickles at it.

“I told you!” exclaims Ms. Meshkova. “Ukrainians are the best. They never give up.”

Dina Kraft

Anatoly Dumansky, a Ukrainian-born Israeli, flashes the sign for victory outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Tuesday. A veteran of the Israeli army, he had come to volunteer to join the fight against Russia.

Outside the black iron gates of the Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv, the days are punctuated by a parade of people who immigrated to Israel from Ukraine as children or teenagers. They are anxious for information about how they can volunteer to fight for a country they also see as home.

“For me, this is personal,” says Anatoly Dumansky, age 24, who identifies as both Ukrainian and Israeli. He immigrated here when he was 7 and still has family in Ukraine. “I haven’t slept for days. I’d rather be there than here with no way to help.”

In a post on social media (that was later removed), the Ukrainian Embassy had called on those who wanted to “defend the sovereignty of Ukraine” to contact them about volunteering to fight.

“I know what a gun is and how to shoot,” says Mr. Dumansky, who served as an infantryman in the Israeli army. “I think people who know what they are doing should help.”

Most of those showing up are, like Mr. Dumansky, veterans of the Israel Defense Forces. But not all are Ukrainian Israelis. One is a 72-year-old Druze man, a retired IDF captain who drove hours from his village in northern Israel to sign up, declaring, “I want to fight. I’m a soldier!” Another is a former U.S. paratrooper from Atlanta, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The original call to “join the defense of Ukraine, Europe, and the world” came from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in besieged Kyiv. On Thursday he said 16,000 foreigners had come to help rebuff the invading Russian army.

Her parents are proud

Among those already on the ground in Ukraine is Diana, a 21-year-old from Rishon Letzion, a Tel Aviv suburb.

Diana, who prefers to be identified only by her first name, arrived Thursday together with her Ukrainian-born boyfriend and six other Israeli friends. Right away, she says, they were posted to a Ukrainian army camp and given uniforms and supplies.

Diana herself was born in Moscow and immigrated to Israel with her family when she was 7. She says she’s ashamed of “the hate that comes from Russia, my motherland, toward Ukraine.”

“What motivated me to come to Ukraine and help are the horrors that I saw in the field,” she says. “The fact that children and the sick are bombed by the Russians. ... I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t come here and give any help that I can provide.”

Diana is a medic and wants to put her skills to use. Her parents, she says – even her father who has been a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin – are proud of her, although deeply worried. “They understand why we are here and they know that this is important,” she says.

There are no numbers available on how many people from Israel have gone to Ukraine to fight. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Embassy declined to comment on the issue, citing its sensitivity.

On Thursday, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson said foreign fighters in Ukraine would be prosecuted as criminals should they be caught by Russian troops, claiming they would not be protected by any rights provisioned under international humanitarian law as prisoners of war. But according to Sari Bashi, an international human rights lawyer, volunteers who join the Ukrainian army, even if they do not hold dual Ukrainian citizenship, are entitled to POW protections as long as they are not compensated as mercenaries.

He can’t bear to tell his wife

Among those who came to the embassy in Tel Aviv Wednesday was a 45-year-old Ukrainian Israeli named Slava. He only offered his first name.

At dawn that morning he had taken his passport out of his bedroom while his wife was still in bed, half-asleep, and then set off on the 90-minute drive from the port city of Haifa, where they live with their son. He did not dare tell her where he was going, or why.

His mother lives in his hometown near Kharkiv, the city in eastern Ukraine that has seen some of the worst fighting in the war. “She’s under missile fire right now, reaching only with difficulty the hallway of her building for shelter,” he says.

“We know what wars are – we have had them here with missiles falling. But here we have proper shelters, even a safe room in your home. But there? There’s nothing like that there.

“And here [in Israel] there are not tanks on the streets. But look at Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million people, and suddenly from all sides there are tanks. I feel like I’m dreaming this. It can’t be real.”

Dina Kraft

Ivanna Mereulova, a 32-year-old Russian woman living in Israel, has been holding a vigil outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv. She says she will come every day until the war ends.

Slava says he’s not deterred by the idea that the Ukrainian army might eventually be unraveled by the fighting and forced into guerrilla style militias. He served in the IDF, but declines to say what unit.

“Wherever we are needed, we will go,” he says.

After waiting about two hours for a meeting inside the embassy, he emerges, a smile on his face. He was flying out later that day, he says.

Will he now tell his wife and go to her to say goodbye in person?

“No, no,” he says, shaking his head. “If I do that, I’d never be able to go.”

Ukrainian frustration with Israel

Gestures of Israeli solidarity with the people of Ukraine have reached Mr. Zelenskyy, specifically a photo of a group of Jewish men praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, wrapped in the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag.

“That picture amazed me,” said the Ukrainian president, who is Jewish. “I say all credit to the people who did that. They prayed [for us].”

But Mr. Zelenskyy has had different words for Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has come under fire both domestically and abroad for not being more outspoken in his condemnation of Russia.

Mr. Bennett has voiced support for the Ukrainians, sent humanitarian aid, and said Israel would be willing to mediate between Ukraine and Russia. On Saturday he flew to Moscow for a three-hour meeting with President Putin before continuing on to Berlin to brief German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, all the while maintaining contact with Mr. Zelenskyy.

Earlier, Israel declined a U.S. request to cosponsor an anti-Russian resolution at the U.N. Security Council, before days later joining in the General Assembly’s overwhelming but more symbolic condemnation.

Israel finds itself in a delicate diplomatic position because of Russia’s dominant presence in Syria where Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group that is an avowed enemy of Israel, is seen as posing a threat. Israel relies on Russia to look the other way when it uses Syrian airspace to carry out strikes against Iranian proxy forces stationed there.

“I spoke to the prime minister of Israel,” Mr. Zelenskyy said Thursday. “And I’m telling you candidly, and this might sound a little insulting, but I do think I have to say it: Our relations are not bad, not bad at all.

“But relations are tested at times like these, at the hardest moments, when help and support are needed. And I don’t feel that he [Mr. Bennett] is wrapped in our flag.”

New friends

In line outside the embassy trying to get more information about volunteering is the former paratrooper from Atlanta, who asks that his name not be used. The 35-year-old U.S. veteran has thick, muscular arms and a shaved head. His military specialty was sharpshooter.

He immigrated to Israel earlier this year, hoping to join the Israeli army, but was rejected because of his age.

After he befriended Mr. Dumansky outside the embassy, the two decided to travel to Ukraine together. Wanting to be prepared for their arrival there, and uncertain what equipment and gear the Ukrainian army would be able to provide, they set out together to go shopping.

First they bought boots, gloves, and neck warmers, as well as shirts for layering in the cold. Later they headed out to a military supply store in hopes of finding body armor.

The American says he sees the Russian invasion of Ukraine as nothing less than evil. His motivation for volunteering and contributing his military know-how is simple.

“When you have a chance to stand up to a bully in the world,” he says, “you take it.”

Damaris Abarca is a Chilean chess master who has been honing her strategy with knights and bishops since she was a child. She has won four national championships since 2010, emerging as one of the top players in Latin America.

Today, the 30-something is determined to transfer her skills from the chessboard to another complicated arena – politics. She sits at the center of a historic effort in Chile to ease the country’s strict abortion laws.

The leap between the worlds of rooks and reproductive rights isn’t all that far, according to the first female president of the Chilean Chess Federation. She once cited the queen, or “la dama” in Spanish, in an opinion piece to justify Chilean women’s right to choose, which had been taken away during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. “She is the most powerful player ... able to move freely across the board,” Ms. Abarca wrote.

Now Chile, which currently criminalizes abortion except in three strict cases, could legalize the procedure in all circumstances in the first trimester – and Ms. Abarca could be a major player in that change. The Olympic chess competitor and mother of one sits on a constituent assembly rewriting Chile’s Constitution. The assembly is composed of equal representation of men and women and could ultimately enshrine reproductive rights in the charter.

FERNANDO RAMÍREZ/COURTESY OF DAMARIS ABARCA’S PRESS TEAM

Chess champion Damaris Abarca sits on a constituent assembly in Chile that is rewriting the constitution and may enshrine reproductive rights in the charter.

“Many women [in the constitutional assembly] share feminist proposals, one being sexual and reproductive rights to pave the way for legal abortion,” says Ms. Abarca, a leader in the assembly’s fundamental rights committee.

Chile’s possible loosening of abortion restrictions mirrors a trend in much of the rest of the world. While people in the United States are preoccupied with the prospect of the Supreme Court rolling back access to abortions that American women secured in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, many countries are liberalizing their abortion laws. 

Over the past three decades, 60 countries have loosened restrictions, while three have tightened abortion access – Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Poland – according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. 

“They’re expanding rights when [the U.S. is] retracting them,” says Jamie Manson, president of the U.S.-based Catholics for Choice.

The varied actions on abortion around the world are also sharpening a deeper debate: Can you have women’s rights without reproductive rights? For the most part, gains in reproductive rights have broadly been interpreted as part of the slow march toward women’s equality globally. They’re often mentioned alongside initiatives to increase labor force participation, close gender pay gaps, boost educational opportunities, and curb violence against women. But now the U.S. in particular could send a different message about whether abortion and women’s equality go hand in hand.

As the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization nears in June, which could uphold a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks, abortion opponents argue that women don’t need the procedure as much as they did during the push for reproductive rights in the 1960s and 1970s. That’s because they have made so many other gains since then – from access to contraception to advances in the workplace. 

But as feminists across the world look on, they say reproductive rights are not just central to women’s rights – they go beyond them. From Latin America to Eastern Europe, reproductive rights are framed as more than just a feminist cause: They are a class and social justice issue as well. Among activists in Chile and Poland, in fact, they are seen as an essential part of transitions to more democratic societies. 

A half-century after the Roe decision, abortion has largely remained out of reach for women in Latin America. But in the past 10 years, it has been a core issue of feminist movements in the region.

In 2015, thousands of women marched to denounce gender violence across Latin America as part of the internet-born movement #NiUnaMenos, which merged with demands for abortion rights. Millions of women donned green scarves, which have since become an international symbol of the global fight for reproductive rights.

FERNANDO VERGARA/AP

Anti-abortion activists protest outside the Constitutional Court in Bogotá, Colombia, as justices weighed a landmark case in February.

The legal landscape in Latin America has shifted significantly in the past two years. In February, the Constitutional Court of Colombia voted to decriminalize abortion up to 24 weeks. In 2020, Argentina fully legalized abortion in the first 14 weeks, after Uruguay in 2012. Last year, the Mexican Supreme Court decriminalized the procedure in a landmark decision after Mexico City and various states had passed legislation allowing abortion in the first trimester. Now Chile could move in a direction that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.

In 1973, the same year Roe was decided, Pinochet staged a bloody coup in Chile – putting the country on the opposite track as the U.S. The conservative dictator’s new constitution, in 1980, laid the foundation for making abortion illegal. It remained banned in all cases until 2017.

On the surface, women in Chile seemed to make important gains without having reproductive rights. The country elected its first woman as president, Michelle Bachelet, in 2006. She was elected again in 2014.

But for Maria Antonieta Saa, who fought as a feminist under the Pinochet regime, Ms. Bachelet’s election did not represent how far women had gone. Instead, it symbolized just the beginning of a push for equality in a country where divorce was only legalized in 2004. It was under Ms. Bachelet’s tenure that access to abortion was finally granted in three cases: the rape of a woman, if the mother’s health were at risk, or if a fetus wouldn’t survive.

For Ms. Saa, who served as a mayor and congresswoman, access to abortion is not just about women’s rights but about the transition of Chile away from autocratic rule. “[Prohibiting] abortion in Chile is anti-democratic;
it comes from an authoritarianism that has cost the lives of women,” she says.

Momentum might be on her side. In December Chileans chose a new president, Gabriel Boric, a young leftist who campaigned on a feminist platform, over a conservative who wanted to return to a full ban on abortion. Mr. Boric has already named a female-majority Cabinet: Fourteen of his 24 ministers are women, many of whom sported green scarves at the Cabinet unveiling.

FERNANDO VERGARA/AP

An abortion-rights activist with the message “My body, my decision” attends a rally outside the Constitutional Court in Bogotá, Colombia, which in February decriminalized abortion up to 24 weeks.

The issue remains divisive. In November, a bill to decriminalize abortion was dismissed in the Chilean Congress. In an Ipsos poll ahead of that decision, 73% of people in the country said they generally supported abortion – 41% approving of it in all cases and 32% under certain circumstances. 

But like in the U.S., surveys don’t always capture the nuance of people’s views. Natalia Borquez is a dental surgeon in Santiago who has worked hard to secure her financial independence. She describes herself as a feminist who cares about reducing gender pay gaps and fighting violence against women. She’d like to show her support at the March 8 International Women’s Day marches, but she expects the green scarves will be omnipresent, and she supports the three-rule exception on abortion. “Unfortunately in Chile, if you’re a feminist, you need to be in favor of abortion,” she says. “If not, you’re not a feminist,” she says.

Her views on the issue are not rooted in religion. She does not identify as Roman Catholic. Instead they are informed by her experience as a survivor of sexual assault by a priest when she was a child, she says. A major reason that Ms. Borquez, traditionally conservative, gave her vote to Mr. Boric was because she didn’t want to return to an outright ban on abortion. “I agree with the three exceptions, so maybe I sound like I’m contradicting myself when I say life comes first. But, maybe it is because I am a sexual abuse survivor, and I can understand that a person who has been raped does not want to mother a rapist’s child,” she says.

Ms. Abarca, the chess player, believes that the new constitution, which will replace Pinochet’s 1980 charter, can reconcile increasing reproductive liberties – enshrining abortion as a fundamental right – while continuing to protect “the life to be born.” “None of us [feminists] believes that life is not valuable,” she says.

The assembly’s proposals consider all people as “the owners of their reproductive and sexual rights,” which includes the right to “make informed decisions over their body.” This, the feminist drafters believe, should be “guaranteed by the state without any discrimination.” They argue this will have the biggest impact on poor women – those who can’t access abortion elsewhere when it’s made illegal. 

The World Health Organization estimates that 75% of abortions performed in Latin America are unsafe. 

Rhetoric around poverty and the ability to afford access to abortions represent a pivot point between American attitudes on the issue and one other part of the world – Europe. It’s the reason views first diverged in the two regions in the late 19th century, according to Anna Peterson, an associate professor of history at Luther College in Iowa. It’s why the debate looks so different on opposite sides of the Atlantic today.

On paper, the U.S. is generally more permissive on reproductive rights than most countries: Abortion is allowed in some states to viability of the fetus, or about 23 to 24 weeks. Only about a dozen countries, including China and North Korea, allow abortions on demand that late. Cutoffs in Europe are usually in the first trimester, although broad exceptions are granted.

And access on the Continent is far more inclusive than it is in the U.S. In many European countries abortion is not only legal and uncontroversial but also funded by the state.

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS/AP

GOP state Sen. Kristina Roegner (at podium) discusses an anti-abortion bill last September that she is co-sponsoring in Ohio that would ban all abortions should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.

Europeans moved decades ago to embed abortion services into health care systems, while the American medical community, influenced by a religious right, didn’t embrace it in mainstream medicine. That gave rise to the abortion clinic model that has made reproductive services the center of so much protest and violence.

“The free-standing clinics have just made abortion providers sitting ducks,” says Carole Joffe, professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

And that has put feminist movements on different paths as well. In the 1960s, leading up to Roe v. Wade, it was possible to be part of American women’s movements without publicly staking a position on abortion, says Kelsy Kretschmer, an associate sociology professor at Oregon State University who has studied early feminist groups. “There was a period of ‘Maybe we can just agree to disagree. Maybe this issue won’t be that important in five years,’” she says.

But that became untenable leading up to and after Roe. Today, as the ruling in the Dobbs case nears, “pro-life feminism,” one that seeks to appeal to younger generations who care not just about limiting abortion but about broadening women’s equality, has once again gained space in the American feminist movement. Their ideas are shared by a group of elected officials who have pushed laws to restrict abortion access in many states. The fight against Roe is led by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, rallying around the slogan “Empower Women. Promote Life.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOY BENNETT

“Abortion becomes an option on the table when something’s gone wrong. And it’s a really, really hard decision in many cases. And I think that when we make it a really simplistic, moral choice, we show tremendous disrespect and naiveté for the situations that people are in every day.” – Joy Bennett, an Ohio woman who used to oppose abortion but now supports it in some circumstances

Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life, says her organization, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this spring, has spent three decades providing young activists with what she calls “pro-woman answers to pro-choice questions.” “This awareness of this injustice against women has resulted in a new wave of pro-life feminists who refuse to choose between women and children or feeling forced to sacrifice either their education and career plans or their families,” she writes in an email. 

Such conversations don’t exist in much of Europe. Ms. Manson of Catholics for Choice recalls a recent panel talk in Germany she took part in on transgender rights. At one point, she delved into abortion because the two are intimately connected, she says. “And these Europeans are like, ‘Why are you going on about [abortion]?’” It’s not that anti-abortion sentiment, religious or moral, doesn’t exist in Europe. But abortion is not a wedge issue – and is seen as a topic that goes well beyond a woman’s choice.

“It is not only an issue of gender equality, but also an issue of class equality,” says Dr. Peterson. “By tying abortion to a much larger
issue that affects all classes, races, and genders, I think a greater swath of Western European populations see themselves as having a stake in abortion access.” 

And that’s why the moves in Poland have caused such ripples across the Continent.

On a cold, grim January evening, candles and lights flicker in windows across Poland – in support of a woman, Agnieszka T., who had died the night before. She was a young mother of three in her 30s, pregnant with twins. She fell ill, and her family took her to a hospital in her local town of Częstochowa.

The heartbeat of one of the fetuses had stopped. But doctors wouldn’t perform an abortion. While an investigation is underway, her family blames a court ruling that went into effect last year that outlawed abortion in the case of fetal deformation. Since those cases accounted for nearly all legal abortions performed in Poland, it effectively ushered in a full ban in the country at the heart of the European Union. 

CZAREK SOKOLOWSKI/AP

Women’s rights activists protest against Poland’s strict anti-abortion law outside a court in Warsaw in January.

The Constitutional Tribunal ruling last year sparked some of the biggest protests in the country since the fall of communism. Marta Lempart, who organized the demonstrations and co-founded the Polish Women’s Strike, says the conservative ruling party’s move to rein in abortion has backfired in this deeply Catholic country.

In 1973, when Poland was under communist rule, women had freer access to abortion in the country than almost anywhere else in the world. These rights were not so much a mark of women’s advancement, however, but a pragmatic tool. Working women boosted the labor force. Women in the Soviet Union would get abortions whether legal or not, so Soviet officials decided it was better to have them done safely.

In fact, during the communist era, the feminist movement was portrayed as the creation of a corrupt West. “Crèches [child care centers], the issue of combining work and motherhood, maternity leave – all these things were available to Polish women under socialism,” says Katarzyna Wężyk, a Polish journalist and author of “Abortion Is,” which gives voice to women who had an abortion.

After the fall of communism, political elites and the Catholic Church penned a “compromise law” in 1993 restricting abortion to cases of rape, saving a woman’s life, or if the fetus had a severe diagnosis. 

“Polish feminism was born in battles over the anti-abortion law,” says Ms. Wężyk.

Still, for years the compromise law was accepted by the majority of society – even after Poland joined the EU in 2004. Abortion was stigmatized, including by liberal media. In 2015, the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) won power, appealing to conservatives, especially in the Polish countryside, as well as people disillusioned with the economy. PiS has cracked down on democracy – and put ultra-Catholic values at the center of its vision of the state.

MACIEJ LUCZNIEWSKI/NURPHOTO/REUTERS

Participants in a National March of Life and Family express support for Poland's anti-abortion law in Warsaw in September 2021.

But now opinions are shifting on abortion, even among some PiS supporters. In a November 2021 poll, some 64% of Poles said they supported abortion under certain conditions, up from 52% a year earlier. 

The main opposition party, Civic Platform, once stood against liberalization of abortion laws, but in protest of PiS has joined the fight to legalize it in the first trimester. Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska, a former PiS education official who has now joined Civic Platform, believes in liberalizing the country’s abortion law but also supports a broad array of reproductive rights. She doesn’t want to return to the 1980s when abortion was used as a form of contraception.

“There are no full rights for women without access to abortion,” she says. “But this right should go together with the right to sex education, availability of contraceptives, the day-after pill, and various social support measures when a woman wants to have a child.”

Last summer, the EU challenged PiS by passing a resolution stating that interferences with abortion access by any member state “constitute breaches of human rights.”

Ms. Lempart says this framework is part of an awakening in Polish society. “When communism fell, we built our democracy based on free media, free judiciary, free elections. But we never paid any attention to human rights,” she says. “We’ve never acknowledged that this is important; we’ve never put any safety measures around this. That’s why it was easy for this government to destroy it.”

But she warns that sudden restrictions on abortion could happen anywhere. 

No one knows that better than Joy Bennett. She was born into an evangelical family and as a child used to picket outside abortion clinics. This fall she found herself gathering signatures for a referendum to overturn a municipal ban on abortion that her City Council in Mason, Ohio, passed. 

It’s the kind of policy that has increasingly been adopted across Southern and Midwestern states in recent years. About 30 restrictions on abortion have been put in place in Ohio in the past 10 years alone, according to Pro-Choice Ohio. And the state is a testing ground for a divided America. About half of U.S. states are preparing laws that would ban or severely restrict abortion statewide if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned. 

Ms. Bennett’s views on abortion evolved slowly – at college as her worldview expanded but especially after she and her husband had a baby diagnosed with congenital heart defects at birth who died at age 8. Later, she took a job in family advocacy at the children’s hospital in Cincinnati, where she became aware of many people’s experiences.

“Abortion becomes an option on the table when something’s gone wrong. And it’s a really, really hard decision in many cases. And I think that when we make it a really simplistic, moral choice, we show tremendous disrespect and naiveté for the situations that people are in every day,” says the mother, whose faith was tested again when she was pregnant with a fourth child diagnosed in utero with a heart defect. “When I shared my story [in Mason], I said when I sat in that room with the doctors and my husband, the last thing that I should have to think and wonder is, ‘What would the City Council think?’” 

That public political divide, she says, fails to capture the nuance of human experience like her own. According to Pew’s most recent polling, 59% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 39% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. And yet, views are malleable when it comes to individual lives. A new study published in Science Advances shows that more than half of Americans opposed to abortion would help a loved one who needed one.

Ms. Bennett is a testament to the gains women have made over her lifetime: A busy working mother, she’s now running for office in Ohio state elections. In her mind, those advances don’t mean women need less access to abortion. “I would love to see abortion happening much less often,” says Ms. Bennett, who also understands the faith perspective. “I am pro-woman, and I am also pro-family and pro-baby.

“But the data shows that since Roe v. Wade was brought in, the number of abortions in our country has dropped by a significant percentage. ... So I look at that and go, ‘OK, improving our access to contraceptives and birth control works to reduce the number of abortions; improving our access to health care and to child care and destigmatizing having a baby whether you’re married or not, all of those things have worked to reduce the number of abortions. This is how you do it.”

Sometimes, slow roasted and caramelized veggies can beat out the hamburger. Especially when a side of climate action is added to the menu.

This, at least, is what researchers at the World Resources Institute found in a newly released study that explores how different messages about global warming affect what people order for lunch and dinner.  

Researchers were particularly interested in what – and whether – wording on a menu might nudge eaters toward plant-based options, which have a lower carbon footprint than animal proteins. What they found is that not only do climate messages work to encourage plant-based picks, but some phrases made diners almost twice as likely to go for the veggies.  

This result adds to a growing body of research not only about the impact of our food choices, but about how to inspire climate-friendly behavior changes. And once again, researchers say, tapping into people’s desire to do good seems to be the most effective way to spark action. 

“What we found was that it’s persuasive to see a climate-friendly message when you’re choosing what to eat from a menu,” says Edwina Hughes, head of the Cool Food Pledge at the World Resources Institute. But the language had to be inclusive, she says, with no burger shaming allowed. 

“It’s about people choosing and feeling involved and activated,” she says. “We’ve seen that language and terminology and framing that alienates meat eaters can be really unhelpful.”

A “big tent” that includes carnivores

The findings connect to a growing body of research that is, in many ways, shifting the way activists and scholars talk about climate change. Out are the arguments about whether climate change exists, or about just how brutalized the world will find itself from sea level rise, increased heat waves, and newly powerful storms. (Finger wagging about your neighbor’s SUV or gas stove is also generally unhelpful, experts say.) 

What’s far more effective, say a growing collection of scholars and activists, are climate conversations grounded in empowerment, hope, and belonging. 

“How we talk about the options available to people can have a big impact on how willing they are to take advantage of those options,” says Ed Maibach, who directs the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. “In short, words matter, a lot.”

In this new World Resources Institute study, the most effective climate message was a statement telling diners they could have a big impact by taking a small action; in particular, that “swapping just one meat dish for a plant-based one saves greenhouse gas emissions that are equivalent to the energy used to charge your phone for two years.” Another successful message was this: “90% of Americans are making the change to eat less meat. Join this growing movement and choose plant-based dishes that have less impact on the climate and are kinder to the planet.” 

Ann Hermes/Staff/File

A server brings plates to tables during the dinner hour at Blackbird Kitchen on Main Street in Bozeman, Montana. Studies have found that descriptions such as “slow-cooked,” “simmered,” and “caramelized” make plants sound tastier – as does the category “field grown,” as opposed to “meat-free.”

Dr. Maibach says he calls the type of messaging in the World Resources Institute menu study “elephant food – because it’s attractive to our emotions and our sense of self, and therefore draws us in.” 

Other words, he said, can be “elephant repellants.” Researchers have found that classifying items as “vegetarian” or “vegan” tends to push diners toward meat, for instance. Other studies have found that descriptions such as “slow-cooked,” “simmered,” and “caramelized” make plants sound tastier – as does the category “field grown,” as opposed to “meat-free.”

Ms. Hughes describes this as making a “big tent” for climate action, allowing people from different backgrounds and perspectives – carnivores included – to feel part of something important. 

“It has to come from their own hearts”

That’s part of the potential of climate-related food choices, says Toby Park, principal adviser and head of energy, environment, and sustainability work at the United Kingdom-based Behavioural Insights Team policy group and author of “A Menu for Change,” a detailed 2020 report about why and how people make choices about food.

There are complicated cultural and identity markers involved with what we eat – just look at the panicked reaction to false rumors that President Joe Biden would restrict Americans’ access to hamburgers. But people are also able to make simple changes. 

“Being an environmentally conscious citizen can be exhausting,” Mr. Park says. “We need to worry about the plastic we’re using, how much energy we use at home, what car we drive (or how to give up our car entirely), flying less (oh, and do carbon offsets even work?), and now what we eat, too. But if you were to focus on just one thing, food would be a very good candidate.”

That’s because food consumption counts for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in most developed countries, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. One recent study published in the journal Nature Food found that the entire food production system, including farm machinery and food transport and other variables, accounted for some 35% of the world’s emissions – with most coming from meat production.

Atul Jain, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who co-wrote that study, says his researchers found that meat production was responsible for 57% of agricultural emissions, compared with 29% from plant-based foods. (The remaining 14% is from agricultural products we don’t eat, such as cotton and tobacco.) 

Still, Dr. Jain isn’t insisting people change their diets. He says he knows better than to do that.

“It has to come from their own hearts,” he says. “I believe in education – educating the younger generation who are concerned about climate change about what their contributions are in terms of their carbon footprints.”

Justitia/Basic Books

Jacob Mchangama is the author of "Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media."

From efforts to ban books to demands for increased monitoring of social media platforms, free speech is under scrutiny. Instead of joining the calls to limit speech, Jacob Mchangama, a lawyer and the executive director of the Danish think tank Justitia, takes the opposite approach. In his book “Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media,” he calls on history’s greatest philosophers and activists – from John Stuart Mill to Ida B. Wells to Mahatma Gandhi – to serve as chief witnesses in his defense of free speech today. He recently spoke with the Monitor. 

What first ignited your passion for free speech?

I was born in secular, liberal Denmark where ... I took free speech for granted. It was like breathing air. Then the cartoon affair – when a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad – made Denmark the epicenter of a global battle of values over the relationship between free speech and religion, and also forced a lot of people in Denmark to rethink, what does free speech mean? Is it just an empty, abstract principle that we can use in a tribalist manner? Or, does it really matter? And that’s why I wanted to look at contemporary-era [free speech] issues through the prism of history because that allows you to get a more detached view of current affairs than if you are caught in the Twitter narrative. 

What new challenges has social media presented?

We’re in a process of migrating from the analog city to the digital city. That means the institutions we built, which sustained us for a long time, are not necessarily as relevant and legitimate in our minds as they used to be. We’ve seen a plummeting of trust in traditional media, institutions, and politicians. And I think social media has contributed to that. But I think it would be dangerously misguided to say we need to then abolish or roll back free speech. 

What lessons can we take from history on how, and how not, to counteract disinformation and hate speech?

First of all, we have to be aware that what counts as disinformation, hate speech, or other types of harmful speech is likely to change. If you were living in the 17th century, you would look upon deists or atheists as [advocating] the worst kind of disinformation. Many people would think that it was perfectly legitimate to persecute such ideas because no society could stand that allowed such attacks on its foundation. Today, we look at such ideas as pretty uncontroversial. Open democracies have to be very, very careful about limiting free speech. [It can be] intuitively attractive to want to limit free speech because you say, “Well, if free speech facilitates concrete harms against our democracies, against minorities, against our institutions, against truth itself, we should limit it.” But [even though] free speech may sometimes facilitate harms, [it] does not necessarily follow that restrictions on free speech are an efficient method of countering [them] or that the benefits of limiting certain kinds of speech will outweigh the harms. 

What values help a society to prioritize a free speech culture?

I think we have to look back at what went before, and how hard it was for free speech to become a fundamental value. We need a culture of free speech, which ultimately means that we have to be tolerant as human beings. Not that we should enforce tolerance by limiting speech, but we have to accept that in diverse societies, people are going to have diverse opinions and that’s not necessarily a threat. In many ways, it’s a bonus. But sometimes people will have diverse opinions that you really, really disagree with. That’s a cost of living in a free and equal society, and it’s a cost that is worth bearing.

Italian Financial Police officers walk by a superyacht belonging to an oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the port of San Remo, Italy, March 5. European governments are moving against Russian oligarchs to pressure President Vladimir Putin to back down on his war in Ukraine.

Nearly two weeks after Russia’s military invaded Ukraine, it is struggling to take and hold any major city. Its soldiers have suffered high casualties while the army’s supply logistics appear weak. It has resorted to indiscriminate bombing of civilians and may rely on Syrian fighters for door-to-door urban combat. Although Russia’s massive forces may eventually claim victory, some experts point to a possible cause for this faulty performance: the country’s culture of corruption.

“If the leadership is corrupt, then it is no wonder that the Russian army is at war with its capabilities,” Jānis Sārts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, told Latvian Television. “I find it difficult to imagine how they would be able to capture the whole of Ukraine.”

In contrast, Ukraine has adopted many anti-corruption reforms in recent years, especially under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The drive for clean governance and rule of law, while still far from complete, may account for much of the fighting spirit of Ukrainians and their forces.

In addition, Western countries are waking up to their tolerance for dirty wealth from Russia’s elite and the need to cut off that flow as a way to punish the regime of President Vladimir Putin. The watchdog group Transparency International found current and former Russian officials had 28,000 properties in 85 countries from 2008 to 2020.

“We’re coming for your ill-begotten gains,” President Joe Biden warned in last week’s State of the Union address. Both the United Kingdom and European Union have begun the difficult task of tracking corrupt money from Russians, especially in real estate. Even the financial havens of Switzerland and Monaco have joined this transatlantic effort.

Mr. Putin’s need to maintain corruption in Russia may be one reason for the war. On Feb. 24, the starting date of the invasion, imprisoned Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny said at a court hearing, “This war between Russia and Ukraine was unleashed to cover up the theft from Russian citizens and divert their attention from problems that exist inside the country.”

In large part, the war in Ukraine is a battle between Russia’s system of corrupt governance and the West’s system of accountable and transparent governance. For the West, the war is a strong reminder of what more should be done on the homefront against corruption. For Russia’s foot soldiers in Ukraine, the war up to now is a reminder of how far their country has to go.