Using Human Rights Strategies to Protect and Ensure Reproductive Rights in the U.S.

Women have human rights to reproductive autonomy and to safe, accessible and affordable reproductive health care.  The U.S. has an international legal and moral obligation to respect, protect and ensure the human rights of all people within its borders. 

In the context of reproductive autonomy and health, these human rights include: the right to control the number and spacing of children, the right to privacy, the right to access health care, the right to education and information about sexual and reproductive health, the right to non-discrimination, and the right to be free from cruel inhuman and degrading treatment.

The Center's U.S. Legal Program is committed to ending the violation of these fundamental rights in the United States.  Our U.S. human rights work includes advocacy before United Nations Human Rights Bodies and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.  We use human rights fact-finding reports to document and expose human rights abuses within the United States.  We also incorporate human rights standards in our litigation and policy work in U.S. courts and legislatures.

Our recent human rights work in the U.S. has focused on:

• Ensuring that women and girls have access to safe and affordable reproductive health care and combating discrimination in reproductive health care access;
• Ensuring that women and girls are provided with the information necessary to protect their reproductive health and to make meaningful reproductive choices;
• Ensuring that women are treated with dignity and respect when accessing reproductive health services and throughout pregnancy and labor; and
• Ending the harassment of reproductive health and abortion providers who are  targeted because of their role in defending and assisting women in exercising their human right to reproductive health care and their constitutional right to abortion.