Abortion Bans in GOP-Led States 'Violate Human Rights,' Says Amnesty

Amnesty International on Monday issued a report on the dire state of reproductive rights in the United States, where many Republican-controlled states have banned or restricted abortion in the last two years.

The 160-page report, based on interviews with affected people in those states, finds that the bans and restrictions "cause extensive harm" and "violate human rights," according to an Amnesty statement.

The bans and restrictions began after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, in June 2022, that the constitution doesn't grant a right to abortion, leaving it to states to decide on reproductive policy.

"Everybody everywhere must be free to exercise their bodily autonomy and make their own decisions about their reproductive health," Jasmeet Sidhu, a researcher at Amnesty International USA, said in the statement.

The report locates abortion access as a human right and argues that the restrictive state laws violate the U.S.' international obligations.

"[Countries] must guarantee immediate and unconditional treatment, without fear of criminal penalties or reprisals, of persons seeking emergency medical care—including if such care includes abortion or post-abortion care that is needed after an abortion," it says.

State-level abortion bans in the U.S. make it an outlier among Global North countries. In March, France's parliament voted 780-72 to enshrine the right to abortion into the country's constitution. Even Ireland, historically Catholic and socially conservative, voted overwhelmingly to legalize abortion in 2018.

The United Nations Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, which was established by the Human Rights Council, has written that "criminalization of termination of pregnancy is one of the most damaging ways of instrumentalizing and politicizing women's bodies and lives, subjecting them to risks to their lives or health in order to preserve their function as reproductive agents and depriving them of autonomy in decision-making about their own bodies."

The Amnesty report finds that the "devastating consequences" of Dobbs—a landmark ruling brought down 6-3 by the court's right-wing majority—have disproportionately impacted BIPOC, immigrant, low-income, and transgender people.

An unnamed Latina woman in Texas who was pregnant with twins learned at 12 weeks that one of them had a fatal condition in utero that could threaten the other's health. She had to travel out of state just to do what was required 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 told Amnesty.

D'Andra Willis of the Afiya Center, a reproductive justice nonprofit in North Texas led by Black women, told the humanitarian organization that demand for Black doulas had gone up because "people are being forced to give birth."

Taylor, another woman in Texas, identified only by her first name, said that when she got pregnant she had no better resource than "random" internet searches—she was too scared to speak to anyone including a doctor, for fear of facing jail time. Once she did have an abortion, she bled for weeks, but felt she couldn't ask anyone about it, and even had to lie to her doctor and say she'd had a miscarriage.

"I couldn't even be honest with my physician, so she couldn’t treat me effectively. Moving one sector [abortion access] out of the umbrella of healthcare is just wrong."

An unnamed mother in Mississippi also told a disturbing story about the way the new laws shape the relationship between patients and physicians. "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."

The mother and daughter ended up having to travel from Mississippi to Illinois to secure an abortion, spending more than $2,000 in total.

Fourteen states have total abortion bans, while eight other states restrict legal abortion to a gestational period of 18 weeks or less—stricter than the federal set by Roe v. Wade that was overturned by Dobbs—according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights nonprofit.

However, there has been hopeful news for reproductive rights advocates in the U.S.: public support for the right to abortion in all or most cases remains high, at about 63% nationally, and the pro-choice side has won in all six of the state-wide referenda on the issue since 2022, even in relatively conservative states such as Kansas, Kentucky, and Ohio.

About a dozen more states have referenda on abortion issues this year, which could not only boost abortion rights but also Democratic turnout. In Arizona, a key swing state in the presidential election, two-thirds of women voters support a pro-choice ballot measure, according to KFF, a health policy research nonprofit.

"While we work towards the longer-term goal of ensuring federal protections for the right to abortion, one important step people in some states can take this fall is to vote on ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights in their states," Sidhu of Amnesty said.