The Center for Reproductive Rights and its partners are continuing to work in countries across five continents to advance reproductive rights and access and hold governments accountable for their obligations.

Here are highlights of the Center’s work in 2024.

Global

Global Advocacy

Engaging with global policymakers at the UN

The Center’s engagement in prominent United Nations (UN) spaces is key in helping to protect and advance global policy standards on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) issues.

At this year’s UN General Assembly (UNGA) session, Center leaders met with global policymakers to discuss the need to include SRHR in international commitments. At the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) session, the Center joined representatives from UN Member States, UN entities, and civil society organizations to examine issues impacting gender equality and the rights of women and girls. Read more about UNGA and CSW.

The UN General Assembly session, held at UN headquarters in New York, is the largest gathering of government leaders each year.

Africa

Africa

Affirming the right to respectful maternal health care in Kenya

In a significant victory, the Court of Appeal of Kenya affirmed the right to respectful maternal health care in the Center’s case on behalf of Josephine Majani—a pregnant woman who was denied quality maternal care, physically and verbally abused by hospital staff, and left to deliver her baby on the hospital floor.  Read more. 

Advancing adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights

The Center played a major role in promoting adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights (ASRHR) at the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child session in October. Participation included an implementation hearing about the Center’s case protecting pregnant schoolgirls in Tanzania and an oral statement on ASRHR. Read more. 

To involve adolescents in SRHR discussions, the Center and its partners invited youth advocate Brian Kumakech, 15, to speak before the East African Legislative Assembly in Rwanda. Brian called on lawmakers to include boys in SRHR discussions and improve access to services in rural areas. Read more.

More highlights: See the Africa team’s 2024 year-end newsletter here.

Asia

Asia

Securing UN Recommendations on reproductive rights in Asia

The Center has long advocated for legal reform in India, and in July, the UN Human Rights Committee recommended that India address barriers to safe abortion access, eradicate forced sterilization practices, and provide access to reproductive health education and services. Read more. 

Following advocacy by the Center and its partners, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women recommended that Turkmenistan liberalize its abortion laws and policies to ensure access to care. The country has the world’s lowest gestational limit for abortion on request: five weeks. Read more.

Improving reproductive health services for Rohingya refugees

At Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh—one of the world’s largest refugee settlements—the Center and its partners are working to improve the delivery of reproductive and maternal health services and protect reproductive rights for Rohingya women and girls.

The program provides training to refugee women and girls about their health-related rights and to health service providers and humanitarian policymakers on rights and SRHR. Read more.

Europe

Europe

Progress on reproductive rights in the European Union

The Center played a pivotal role in advocating for SRHR at the European Union during the 2019-2024 political cycle, which resulted in laws and policies increasing access to contraception, maternal health care, and abortion services; reducing gender-based violence; and enhancing gender equality. Read more.

Latin America & the Caribbean

Latin America and the Caribbean

Challenging Honduras’s abortion ban at the UN Human Rights Committee 

After a sexual assault, Fausia, an Indigenous Honduras woman and human rights defender, was denied emergency contraception and abortion care—because of the State’s total abortion ban—and was forced to remain pregnant and give birth against her will.

The Center and its partner presented Fausia’s case before the UN Human Rights Committee in April, challenging the ban and arguing that Honduras violated Fausia’s human rights by imposing pregnancy and forced motherhood on her. Read more. 

United States

United States

Protecting Traditional Midwifery Care 

Native Hawaiian midwives will be able to temporarily resume pregnancy and birth care in their communities thanks to a July state court ruling. The Center’s case challenges a midwifery restriction law that had prevented pregnant Hawaiians from using traditional midwives. Read more.

Fighting abortion bans and building rights in the states

The Center has long been a leader in litigating in state courts to defend and build abortion rights. During 2024, the Center continued to vigorously fight abortion bans in state courts throughout the country.

In North Dakota, abortion is legal again—thanks to a state court ruling declaring North Dakota’s near-total abortion ban unconstitutional. The September ruling makes abortion legal in the state for the first time since the ban took effect in April 2023. Read more.

After Arizona voters approved an amendment to their state constitution to protect the right to abortion, the Center and its partners challenged the state’s 15-week abortion ban in a lawsuit filed in December. Read more. 

Representing Women Denied Abortion Care Despite Dangerous Pregnancy Complications 

The Center continued its efforts to clarify medical exceptions to state abortion bans in Texas, Idaho, Tennessee and other states. Clients include dozens of women denied abortion care—despite the risks to their health, lives and future fertility—and doctors prevented from providing medically necessary care.

High-profile cases such as Cox v. Texas and Zurawski v. State of Texas—as well as the documentary film on the Zurawski case—helped raise awareness nationwide about the ongoing harm of extreme abortion bans. Read more.

The 2024 Election: State Abortion Protections, Threats of a Trump Presidency 

State protections are especially critical in light of Donald Trump’s election as president—which poses grave threats to reproductive rights, access to health care, and gender equality. The Center “will vigorously oppose any and all attempts to roll back progress,” said Center president and CEO Nancy Northup. “We will scrutinize every action of the White House and federal agencies. . . and work to stop harmful policies from going into effect.” Read more.