In Depth

Victory in Honduras

On May 17, 2012, the Center for Reproductive Rights held a demonstration on the steps of the Honduran Congress. Our mission: to stop the government from passing a bill that will imprison women for using emergency contraception. Alejandra Cárdenas, Legal Adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean, had planned to personally hand-deliver 730,000 petitions to the Congress signed by activists in more than 80 countries in protest.

The response was completely unexpected.…

A Repugnant Attack—Defeated

With a unanimous decision yesterday by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, the Center for Reproductive Rights has won our legal challenge to strike down a ballot initiative that would have given every fertilized egg the full legal rights of a person.

We challenged this initiative as soon as it went on the ballot—arguing that this frontal assault on reproductive rights clearly violated the U.S. Constitution. The Oklahoma court agreed…

Time to Get Emergency Contraception Right

The rules on who can get emergency contraception without a prescription are confusing. They don’t need to be, and they shouldn’t be, not for a drug deemed safe by government experts.

A recent study, though, revealed that many pharmacies are denying the medication to women who meet the legal requirements and don’t need a prescription…

The Abortion Pill: Under Threat

The war against women is overrun with hostile combatants and legislative weapons of every form, and certain anti-choice measures naturally grab more spotlight than others.

An increasing majority of the public has voiced their anger and frustration with legislators pushing invasive ultrasound laws and special interest groups lobbying to impose their religious beliefs and choke off access to contraception…

The Real-Life Consequences of a Personhood Measure

Here we go again.

Anti-choice extremists in Oklahoma are shooting for the pinnacle of reproductive rights rollbacks—a personhood amendment to the state constitution that would send reproductive rights back to the very dark days before Roe v. Wade made it legal for women to seek abortions from licensed reproductive health care providers—and not through life-threatening, illegal means…

"Doonesbury" Takes On Ultrasound Laws

The much-loved political cartoon "Doonesbury" ran an entire week of comic strips focusing on mandatory ultrasound laws beginning on March 12, 2012. More than 60 newspapers refused to run “Doonesbury” cartoons even though they were simply trying to humanize the struggles of women under Texas’s demeaning law…

In North Dakota, A Fight for Access, A Fight for Common Sense

The women who come to the Red River Women’s Clinic, in Fargo, N.D., arrive with a range of reasons for choosing medication that induces abortion: “less traumatic,” “not as invasive,” “no needles,” “more personal,” and on.

The factors women consider in their choice of medication abortion are many, and their decision is steeped in common sense and personal understanding. The technological advances that made medication abortion possible have made a huge difference for more than one million American women. …

The Urgent Future of Roe v. Wade

As 2011 wound down, we reconciled a year of unprecedented attacks on reproductive rights in the U.S. against the Center’s seven huge court victories that beat back some of the most flagrant, demeaning laws recently passed. We felt a strong measure of momentum approaching the 39 ^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade—courts across the land had clearly demonstrated their disapproval of the latest schemes enacted by anti-choice legislators. …

They Took Away Reproductive Rights in Texas

Utterly disappointing news came out of Texas last week: A federal appeals court decided that women can't be trusted with decisions about their reproductive health and future.

In an unprecedented ruling, the court gave the green light to a law that forces doctors to show ultrasound images to women seeking an abortion, describe those images to them in detail, and to play the sound of the fetal heartbeat—whether the women want to receive this information or not. The decision brings Texas women closer to a reproductive rights landscape that is demeaning, discriminatory, and intrusive. …

Celebrating the Center’s 20th Anniversary—and a Mission Renewed

Twenty years ago, the Center for Reproductive Rights laid a new cornerstone in the construction of a better future for women worldwide.

In the same year that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey opened the door to the kind of all-out assault on women’s rights that we have been seeing with increasing frequency and ferocity seemingly every day, the Center took on its mission to advance and defend reproductive freedom across the globe…