By Tarah Demant, National Director of Programs at Amnesty International USA
After learning her fetus was not viable, a woman in Missouri was denied an abortion in her state.
A mother of three in Georgia couldn’t afford another child and was forced to travel hundreds of miles to obtain an abortion in another state.
Another woman in Ohio was criminally charged after she had a miscarriage.
These harrowing stories are just a few examples of how abortion bans are violating the human rights of people throughout the U.S.
But there are so many more stories:
A woman in Texas, pregnant with twins, learned that one fetus had a fatal condition that threatened the viability of the other fetus. She was forced to travel out of the state for an abortion to save the viable fetus. “This was the most traumatizing experience of my life and one that was made so much worse, unnecessarily, because of these illogical and dangerous laws,” she said of her situation.
A teen in Mississippi, after being raped, was told she couldn’t get an abortion, even though the abortion ban in Mississippi has an “exception” that allows for abortion in cases of rape. Her mother drove her more than seven hours to another state to obtain an abortion.
“It was the ugliest feeling having to explain to the doctor that [my teenage daughter] was raped, and then him having to tell you he can’t do anything to help.”
-Mother of Mississippi teen who was raped
After another young girl, age 12, was raped, her family didn’t have the resources to travel out of Mississippi to get an abortion. The child, in 7th grade, is now a mother.
Tell your state legislators to protect the right to abortion in your state!
The government must protect the right to abortion, not interfere with it
All pregnancies are different, and people need abortions for all types of reasons. Like all healthcare decisions, the decision to get an abortion is personal. More than that, access to abortion is a human right. All pregnant people — no matter who they are, where they live, or what their personal circumstances are — must be able to access abortion care without interference from the government. Yet the current landscape pregnant people face in the U.S. is nothing short of a human rights crisis.
Since the fall of Roe v. Wade over two years ago, abortions are now totally, or near-totally banned in 22 states across the country. These barriers and bans create a reality where an individual’s access to abortion care depends on where they live and what resources they have, with many people –-especially those from marginalized communities who already face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination — not being able to access it at all. This is not how human rights are supposed to work.
Influenced by an increasingly powerful anti-rights movement, the U.S. is failing in its obligation to protect the human right of pregnant people to have an abortion. It is alarming to see our country so out of step with the rest of the world, where there has been an overwhelming trend towards the liberalization of abortion laws as abortion is more widely recognized as a normal part of healthcare. As most nations expand reproductive rights, overturning Roe has put the U.S. among the ranks of a small group of only three other countries that have tightened abortion laws since 1994.
This November, voters in some states can protect access to abortion
The only way to stop this dangerous and discriminatory human rights failure and to ensure all people in the U.S. can access their human right to abortion without the interference of politicians is with full federal protections of the right to abortion. In the meantime, voters living in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota, will have the opportunity to vote “yes” to constitutionally protect the right to abortion in their state.
These ballot initiatives in states across the country provide a rare opportunity for voters to directly support an issue that is important to them. Abortion saves lives, abortion is healthcare, abortion is normal, and abortion is a human right. It’s our right, and the government has the obligation to protect that right, not to take it away.
What’s more, bans on abortion are not the will of the American people. Polling shows that most Americans support the right to abortion and oppose abortion bans.
And abortion bans impact more than the people who directly need abortion care. Abortion providers in states with bans are scared to help patients desperate for their services for fear of being arrested.
The U.S. has a long way to go to ensuring all people have the true freedom to make decisions about their own bodies, but come November, voters in some states will have the chance to make sure that this human right will be accessible to more Americans.