Reproductive Justice for All

Updated in July 2022

The International Women’s Convocation unequivocally asserts that reproductive rights are human rights. Abortion is healthcare. It is a moral imperative that any gender with the ability to become pregnant has access to safe and legal care that respects their dignity, privacy, and freedom. 

Women in the U.S. have now lost that freedom. On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution does not confer the right to abortion, thus overturning Roe v. Wade, a 1973 court case that recognized the right to abortion in the U.S. The U.S. joins Poland, El Salvador, and Nicaragua as the only countries to roll back legal access to abortion in the past three decades. (In the same time period, nearly 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws, according to the global advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights.)

By removing the constitutional protection, the U.S. Supreme Court decision triggers abortion bans in 13 states, criminalizing abortion in most or all cases; an additional 9 states have either laws prohibiting abortions after 6 weeks or laws enacted before Roe v. Wade that ban abortion and were never removed. “When all is said and done, about half of the states could ban abortion. Meaning 34 million women of reproductive age would live without access,” according to Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organization.

We know that abortion bans only hurt those already hurting: young people who are raped, those struggling to make ends meet, people of color, immigrants, and refugees. Research shows that a woman denied ending a pregnancy is more likely to live in poverty, be unemployed, and be unable to afford groceries and rent than one who was able to get an abortion. This “turned away effect” persists for years and is a major driver in trapping marginalized genders in poverty for generations.

We don’t know yet what the fallout from the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling will be, but it is likely to affect other nations and countless women. Nonetheless, IWC, together with its allies in the Women's Funding Network, will continue the fight for reproductive freedom for all. Please see the full statement of the Women's Funding Network here.