05.17.2019 / Press Release

Statement: Current Attempts to Scale Back Reproductive Rights Hurt Women and Violate Our Constitutional Principles

Washington, D.C. – Families USA issued the following statement regarding anti-abortion efforts and rhetoric underway in Alabama and other states.

Families USA vehemently opposes threats to women’s reproductive rights. Stripping such rights from women and penalizing health professionals from serving them is a giant step backward in health and freedom for our nation. Alabama’s vote to ban abortions in nearly all instances, and to jail doctors who perform abortions, boldly underscores the hypocrisy of some lawmakers — acting in the interest of a fertilized ovum while at the same time passing laws and supporting policies that ignore the needs of children or women in their states.  Do these elected officials believe that life starts at conception and ends at birth?

America is home to many religions, many which strongly support a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions. But, many individuals in our nation belong to no religion. And by design, our Constitution prohibits any religion from dictating our nation’s laws or the rights that are afforded to all in this nation.

Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act and Georgia’s recent anti-abortion bill are an affront to our nation’s bedrock principle of separation of church and state, allowing one religious sect to proselytize and visit its beliefs on when human life begins on all Americans. In the first quarter of 2019, legislatures in 28 states have introduced some variation of an abortion ban; a national, open-handed agenda against women and their rights is well underway. These attempts to ban abortions, or stymie women’s reproductive rights in other ways, serve a narrow religious agenda, and erode hard-won gains for women’s rights and health equity, rather than women’s wellbeing and their inherent human rights.

Make no mistake, attacks on women’s reproductive rights play out in ways that are not limited to abortion bans. Women’s rights also include access to birth control, or to procedures that serve as birth control.

Women should be able to make health care decisions for themselves. Period.

We strongly urge elected officials across America to stand on the side of women. Instead of following in Alabama’s footsteps they should forge a path towards choice and freedom for women, and to enact laws and policies that support the health and wellbeing of all in our nation from birth and throughout their lives.

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