Ahead of International Women’s Day, loads of U.S. and international human rights groups, docs and lawyers have requested the United Nations to interfere on behalf of the tens of millions of girls within the U.S. who’ve been left with out get entry to to criminal abortion and essential kinds of reproductive well being care within the wake of final summer season’s huge U.S. Supreme Court choice in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“Eight months on from this catastrophic legal decision, it is now apparent that the consequences are even worse than feared,” states a letter signed by way of just about 200 rights and justice groups and particular person well being care suppliers and lawyers, which used to be first shared with The Guardian final week. “Women and girls in need of reproductive health care are being met with systematic refusals, huge financial burdens, stigma, fear of violence, and threats of criminalization. Thousands are being forced to remain pregnant against their will.”
Addressing the United Nations Working Group on Discrimination in opposition to Women and Girls and greater than a dozen UN officers that specialize in a variety of human rights, the letter’s authors write that just about 22 million ladies, ladies and gender-nonconforming individuals of reproductive age at the moment are dwelling in states the place abortion has been banned or is in different ways inaccessible.
The greater than 50-page letter – dense with devastating anecdotes from news articles and research and physician interviews – argues that the consequences of Dobbs and the ensuing state and native anti-abortion insurance policies have compromised Americans’ rights to lifestyles, well being, privateness, and liberty. The letter authors argue that the U.S. is violating quite a lot of human rights treaties it has signed.
“These human rights obligations include, but are not limited to, the rights to: life; health; privacy; liberty and security of person; to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief; equality and non-discrimination; and to seek, receive, and impart information,” the authors write. “The US has committed to respect and protect these rights; instead, it is infringing them through restrictions on abortion access.”
They ask the UN officers to make an legitimate seek advice from to the U.S. to witness those harms, to convene a digital stakeholder assembly with U.S. civil society, and to name for personal corporations to do so to offer protection to reproductive rights. They additionally name at the UN to invite the U.S. to conform to its tasks beneath world regulation.
“The Dobbs decision abandoned the constitutional right to abortion, violated U.S. legal obligations under treaties such as ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights], and exposed the fact that Roe was never enough,” stated Lauren Wranosky, analysis and program affiliate at Pregnancy Justice, one of the most signatories, in a statement.
“Many will continue to be jailed, convicted, and sentenced to prison for having abortions, experiencing pregnancy losses, or giving birth to healthy babies. This destroys families, inflicts trauma, and targets the most vulnerable by replacing healthcare with criminalization. We know this humanitarian crisis will only get worse, and we demand that the U.S. government join international peers as a leader in securing reproductive justice for all.”
As the authors notice, the top of federal abortion rights has ended in 13 states criminalizing the procedure (with Georgia successfully outlawing the process with its six-week ban); dozens of sanatorium closures across the nation; and greater trip occasions and delays for abortion care, even in eventualities when the being pregnant has turn out to be life-threatening. They write that the UN Human Rights Committee has already established that denial of abortion in different nations may cause struggling and quantity to torture.
And they pressure that within the U.S., racial minorities and marginalized groups disproportionately face well being and criminal harms on account of the insurance policies enacted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Dobbs is devastating for all people who can become pregnant, but it has had and will have an outsized impact on certain marginalized groups who already face documented discrimination within and outside the healthcare system,” the authors write. “This includes BIPOC women, people of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations, migrants, persons with disabilities, people who are low-income or living in poverty, children, and rural residents. These groups often have poorer health outcomes compared to other populations, Dobbs will worsen these disparities, since individuals who belong to these groups have fewer resources and face discrimination from the healthcare community.”