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Comment by Tech-Noir | Hacker News Reader

> The "legal in the EU" part distracts from the true injustice of this kind of activity being criminalized.

It also creates unnecessary confusion since it implies an American was jailed in Europe for something that's legal in Europe. For the reason you give - countries have different laws - there's no reason to mention Europe otherwise.

> You can be convicted in most EU states [...] for getting an abortion.

I'd love to know where you got this from.

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Sorry, that sentence was structured poorly and it's too late to edit my comment. Let me split it in two:

1> In most EU states, some speech which is protected in the USA is illegal (e.g. pro-nazi statements which are understandably forbidden in certain countries).

2> Another example of something legal in the USA is abortion, while some countries in Europe are more restrictive (Malta 100%, Andorra, Italy, Ireland and Poland almost so, usw).

Ah okay. I thought at first you may have meant something illegal in the USA, but not Europe, but that didn't really make sense. Although, the first Google result for "convicted for having an abortion" is this sad case:

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/appeal-indiana-woman-convicted-ha...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purvi_Patel

Copyright depends more on common legal framework across many nations due to trade. Hence it makes sense to speak of the EU in this case. Abortion and free speech is far more country specific. It has little to do with EU which is about trade primarily.

Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_Republic_of_Ir...

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