Abortion bans violate human rights, Amnesty International says in new report

For nearly 50 years in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court asserted that the U.S. Constitution protected the right to access abortion under Roe v. Wade. But on June 24, 2022, the Dobbs decision changed that and allowed states to make their own laws about who can have access to abortion care, and under what circumstances. 

Since then, 14 states have banned abortion, and six states have introduced a gestational limit between six to 12 weeks, according to KFF. As Salon has reported, the consequences are harrowing. Medical school graduates are avoiding states with abortion bans exacerbating the maternal healthcare crisis. Pregnant women are being forced to cross state lines to terminate nonviable pregnancies. This week, Amnesty International USA released a report detailing how the aftermath of Dobbs is a “human rights crisis.”

“These types of bans and policies can impact a variety of human rights,” Jasmeet Sidhu, a senior researcher with Amnesty International USA, told Salon in a phone interview. “Including the right to life, the right to access healthcare, the right to privacy in some situations where abortion is being criminalized, and the right to be free from torture and other degrading treatment,” 

The report centered on the stories of patients and medical providers. From interviewing people in states with the strictest laws to researching court cases and media reports, Amnesty researchers found that abortion restrictions have led to a terrifying landscape for pregnant people in America. 

“It was incredibly horrifying as a woman and a mother as well of two girls to learn about some of the circumstances in which people have been placed because of these restrictions,” Sidhu told Salon, adding that it was hard to hear from doctors about how they’re being forced to turn away patients and provide evidence-based care. “As we detailed in the report, there are less and less doctors that want to go to states where they're going to be criminalized for providing abortion care.”

In the report, Amnesty says that by failing to ensure that abortion care is accessible and affordable, the United States is “failing to comply with international human rights laws and standards to ensure pregnant individuals have equal access to abortion information services.” 

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Specifically, forcing a pregnant person to carry an unwanted pregnancy is a human rights violation. 

In one story in the report, a Black 12-year-old named Kim (whose name had been changed for privacy purposes), was raped in Mississippi. Once her mother found out she was pregnant, she filed a complaint with the police department. While there is technically an exception to Mississippi’s abortion ban — which restricts all abortions, except in cases of rape or incest or the save the life of the pregnant person — Kim became a mother.

“Abortion remains difficult to access in these circumstances because even if someone files a police report, there are no clear guidelines on how to qualify for legal abortion in cases of sexual violence,” the report explained. “Kim’s mother did not even know that an exception for rape existed under the criminal abortion law.”

Exceptions typically have a “multitude of very specific requirements,” Sidhu told Salon.

“These laws are pretty hard to navigate, even for someone like myself, who's a lawyer, to be able to understand what the guidelines are,” Sidhu said. “In that particular circumstance, the mother did not realize that there was an exception for rape, but even if she had, to be able to kind of navigate that, and take a child to law enforcement and get a physical exam, it is very complicated.”

Sheila, another woman whose name was changed for privacy, became pregnant in Mississippi when her hormonal birth control implant expired and she couldn’t afford a new one. Since the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi the month after the Dobbs decision, she couldn’t afford to travel out of state to obtain care, either. She was forced to have the child without being able to work and pay for childcare. 

“The idea behind human rights are that they should be available, equally and universally, to everyone,” Sidhu said. “If I live in rural Oklahoma and I can't access an abortion unless I travel hundreds of miles, then I'm facing an undue burden compared to somebody who maybe, for example, lives in Washington, D.C.”

The report emphasized that there is a disparate impact of abortion restrictions, highlighting how systemic and structural racism prohibit people from equal access to health insurance. That results in a lack of access to contraception, prenatal care and abortion care. 

“For Black women, these bans represent a denial of abortion care to a constituency who, due to longstanding discrimination and ongoing challenges accessing comprehensive reproductive healthcare, seek abortions at a higher rate than any other group, and are already suffering far higher rates of maternal mortality,” the report states. “For Indigenous women, Dobbs adds even more restrictions to what many had long experienced as effective bans on abortion due to pre-existing federal government restrictions on the Indian Health Service, on which many of them depend for their health care.”

The report urged the U.S. to create a federal protection for abortion, among other suggestions. 

“I think that's pretty clear, that's the number one thing that needs to happen,” Sidhu said. “So that everyone, everywhere, has the same right to be able to access abortion care.”