Skip to content
Center for Reproductive Rights
Center for Reproductive Rights

Primary Menu

  • About
    • Overview
    • The Center’s Impact
    • Center Leadership & Staff
    • Annual Reports
    • Corporate Engagement
    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
    • Careers
    • Contact Us
  • Work
    • Overview
    • Litigation
    • Legal Policy and Advocacy
    • Resources & Research
    • Recent Case Highlights
    • Landmark Cases
    • Cases Archive
    • World’s Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
  • Issues
    • Overview
    • Abortion
    • Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
    • Assisted Reproduction
    • Contraception
    • Humanitarian Settings
    • Maternal Health
    • COVID-19
  • Regions
    • Overview
    • Global Advocacy
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America and the Caribbean
    • United States
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Stories
    • Events
    • Center in the Spotlight
    • Press Releases
    • Statements
    • Press Room
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Resources & Research
    • U.S. Abortion Rights: Resources
    • Maps
    • World Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
    • Repro Red Flags: Agency Watch
  • Act
    • Overview
    • Give
    • Act
    • Learn
  • Donate
    • Become a Monthly Donor
    • Make a Donor Advised Fund Gift
    • Leave a Legacy Gift
    • Donate Gifts of Stock
    • Give a Gift in Honor
    • Attend an Event
    • Employee Matching Gifts
    • Mail a Check
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
Donate
icon-hamburger icon-magnifying-glass Donate
icon-magnifying-glass-teal

Center Responds to Report from U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights

Center for Reproductive Rights - Center for Reproductive Rights - search logo
search Close Close icon
Center for Reproductive Rights -
Menu Close Menu Close icon
Donate

Primary Menu

  • About
    • Overview
    • The Center’s Impact
    • Center Leadership & Staff
    • Annual Reports
    • Corporate Engagement
    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
    • Careers
    • Contact Us
  • Work
    • Overview
    • Litigation
    • Legal Policy and Advocacy
    • Resources & Research
    • Recent Case Highlights
    • Landmark Cases
    • Cases Archive
    • World’s Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
  • Issues
    • Overview
    • Abortion
    • Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
    • Assisted Reproduction
    • Contraception
    • Humanitarian Settings
    • Maternal Health
    • COVID-19
  • Regions
    • Overview
    • Global Advocacy
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America and the Caribbean
    • United States
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Stories
    • Events
    • Center in the Spotlight
    • Press Releases
    • Statements
    • Press Room
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Resources & Research
    • U.S. Abortion Rights: Resources
    • Maps
    • World Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
    • Repro Red Flags: Agency Watch
  • Act
    • Overview
    • Give
    • Act
    • Learn
  • Donate
    • Become a Monthly Donor
    • Make a Donor Advised Fund Gift
    • Leave a Legacy Gift
    • Donate Gifts of Stock
    • Give a Gift in Honor
    • Attend an Event
    • Employee Matching Gifts
    • Mail a Check
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn

Related Content

Issues:

Abortion

Work:

Engaging Policymakers

Type:

News, Story

Follow the Center

Donate Now

Join Now

07.30.2020

Engaging Policymakers Abortion News

Center Responds to Report from U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights

Justin Goldberg

Share

  • facebook
  • Twitter
  • linkedin
  • Email id

The Center for Reproductive Rights has issued its official response to the Trump administration’s latest attempt to remove reproductive rights from the global human rights framework through its Commission on Unalienable Rights.

The Center’s response, issued July 29, expresses “deep concern that the Commission is being used by the administration as subterfuge for rolling back rights protections in the U.S. and globally for women, LGBTQI people, and other marginalized and vulnerable communities, and to further the administration’s ongoing effort to erase sexual and reproductive health and rights from the global human rights discourse.”

The draft report released July 16 by the State Department’s controversial Commission on Unalienable Rights rejects the consensus of international human rights experts that reproductive rights are human rights and elevates certain human rights over others—despite the fact that a core tenet of the human rights framework rejects any such hierarchy of rights.

Crucially, the Commission asserts: “Foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure, from the founders’ point of view, are property rights and religious liberty.”

The report deceptively calls abortion a “contestable political preference” and speaks of “conflicting interpretations of human rights claims.” It puts abortion and same-sex marriage in the category of “divisive social and political controversies” rather than rights that have been well-established internationally and affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. And it ominously warns against any so-called “prodigious expansion” of human rights.

Such a pick-and-choose approach to human rights flies in the face of decades of progress in the codification of human rights throughout the world. Nonetheless, the administration has made it clear that it intends for this document to guide U.S. foreign policy for the foreseeable future.

As Risa Kaufman, Director, U.S. Human Rights at the Center, points out, “The report ignores international consensus that reproductive rights are human rights through a brazen and dangerous discrediting of binding human rights treaties and their mandate to codify human rights under widely recognized rules of international law.”

For example, the protections enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—a treaty ratified by the U.S.—are understood to include, as part of the “right to life,” the right to survive pregnancy and access comprehensive reproductive health care.

Kaufman explains the real purpose of the Commission: “From its inception, advocates have been deeply concerned that the Commission, whose chair and members have well-known and extreme positions opposing reproductive rights and LGBTQI rights, is subterfuge for rolling back rights protections in the U.S. and globally for women, LGBTQI people, and other marginalized and vulnerable communities. A federal lawsuit challenges the legitimacy of the Commission itself as being established and operated in violation of federal law.”

The lawsuit filed by a coalition of rights groups asserts that the Commission violates the law because its membership is not “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented,” unnecessarily duplicates an existing government bureau, and lacks required transparency. The Center has filed an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit.

The Commission’s report furthers the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign of retrogression in human rights. The administration has adopted a significantly expanded Global Gag Rule, which prohibits foreign NGOs that receive any U.S. funding from providing information, referrals, or services for legal abortion or to advocate for access to abortion care. It withdrew from the World Health Organization and cut funding to the U.N. agency that works to advance family planning. It led a joint U.N. statement opposing U.N. policies promoting reproductive health and rights. And it has gutted reporting on reproductive rights from the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

At home in the U.S., the administration has repeatedly undermined affordable access to the full range of reproductive health care—from quality prenatal and pregnancy care to abortion care—disregarding extraordinary harm to people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQI people, immigrants, and people who are low-income or living in poverty. It has implemented new Title X regulations prohibiting federal funds for health care providers offering information about abortion; expanded provisions for employers to opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate; implemented cruel immigrant detention policies that pose acute dangers, including for pregnant people; and rolled backed critical nondiscrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act, to name just a few of its assaults on human rights.

As the Center’s response states: “Reproductive freedom lies at the heart of the promise of human dignity, self-determination, and equality embodied in both the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Read the Center’s July 29 response to the Commission’s report here. 

Public comments on the Commission’s draft report are being accepted until July 30.

  • Download Attachment

Related Posts

Complaint: Medical Students for Choice vs. Wright

Abortion,United States, Accountability Bodies,Engaging Policymakers

Testimony of the Center for Reproductive Rights on the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson Proposal

The Center for Reproductive Rights respectfully submits the following testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance in strong opposition...

Abortion, Legal Restrictions, Other Barriers, Contraception, Legal Restrictions, Funding for Reproductive Healthcare, Other Financial Barriers, Right to Care, Maternal Health,United States,Engaging Policymakers

June Medical Services v. Gee: Petition for Attorney’s Fees

Abortion, Legal Restrictions,United States,In the Courts, Engaging Policymakers, In the States (USA)

Sign up for email updates.

The most up-to-date news on reproductive rights, delivered straight to you.

Footer Menu

  • Careers
  • Privacy Policy
  • Gift Acceptance Policy
  • Contact Us

Center for Reproductive Rights
© (1992-2024)

Use of this site signifies agreement with our disclaimer and privacy policy.

Better Business Bureau Charity Watch Top Rated Center for Reproductive Rights
This site uses necessary, analytics and social media cookies to improve your experience and deliver targeted advertising. Click "Options" or click here to learn more and customize your cookie settings, otherwise please click "Accept" to proceed.
OPTIONSACCEPT
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
CookieDurationDescription
_ga2 yearsThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gat_UA-6619340-11 minuteNo description
_gid1 dayThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
_parsely_session30 minutesThis cookie is used to track the behavior of a user within the current session.
HotJar: _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress30 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjFirstSeen30 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjid1 yearThis cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.
HotJar: _hjIncludedInPageviewSample2 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjIncludedInSessionSample2 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjTLDTestsessionNo description
SSCVER1 year 24 daysThe domain of this cookie is owned by Nielsen. The cookie is used for online advertising by creating user profile based on their preferences.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
CookieDurationDescription
_fbp3 monthsThis cookie is set by Facebook to deliver advertisement when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising after visiting this website.
fr3 monthsThe cookie is set by Facebook to show relevant advertisments to the users and measure and improve the advertisements. The cookie also tracks the behavior of the user across the web on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.
IDE1 year 24 daysUsed by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
IMRID1 year 24 daysThe domain of this cookie is owned by Nielsen. The cookie is used for storing the start and end of the user session for nielsen statistics. It helps in consumer profiling for online advertising.
personalization_id2 yearsThis cookie is set by twitter.com. It is used integrate the sharing features of this social media. It also stores information about how the user uses the website for tracking and targeting.
TDID1 yearThe cookie is set by CloudFare service to store a unique ID to identify a returning users device which then is used for targeted advertising.
test_cookie15 minutesThis cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
CookieDurationDescription
adEdition1 dayNo description
akaas_MSNBC10 daysNo description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional1 yearThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others1 yearNo description
geoEdition1 dayNo description
next-i18next1 yearNo description
SAVE & ACCEPT
Powered by CookieYes Logo
Scroll Up