Noting this month marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark case on the issue of abortion, writer and advocate Mandy Van Deven writes in a GlobalPost commentary that the decision “provided a framework for sexual and reproductive rights used by advocates from San Francisco to Santiago, and the past year yielded significant progress on abortion rights in Latin America.” She says “[t]he region has some of the most restrictive laws against abortion in the world,” and describes some countries’ laws. Van Deven details several rulings in 2012, specifically in Costa Rica and Uruguay, that could help to pave the way for legalizing abortion in some cases. “As America observes four decades of the right to safe and legal abortion, access to this fundamental right remains elusive for most Latin American women. Yet, recent achievements lead me to believe we will see more successes in the region during 2013,” she concludes (1/20).