By Ebehitale Imobhio
Reproductive rights are human rights. They are an individual’s ability to safely and knowledgeably decide if or when they want to have a family. Although it is often reduced to being about access to abortions, the overarching goal of the reproductive rights movement goes beyond that. Reproductive rights include safe access to contraceptives, abortions, family planning, reproductive health screening, and sex education. The reproductive justice movement works to guarantee people’s access to all of those services. Simply, reproductive rights allow an individual to acquire knowledge and make an informed decision about their reproductive health.
Understanding this, it is important to review reproductive rights in the United States,
predominantly under the current White House Administration and especially now in the wake of the recent Supreme Court’s ruling. 
The United States has had a long, poor history with reproductive justice. Out of all the developed countries, the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate especially among its minority population where black, American Indian, and Alaskan Native women are two to three times more likely to die than white women from preventable pregnancy-related causes. The U.S. also has no nationally mandated paid parental level and only has the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 which gives people twelve weeks of unpaid leave. FMLA gives does not apply to everyone and many women cannot afford to take the leave which leads to 1 out of 4 mothers returning to work two weeks after giving birth and only 13% of mothers in the U.S. have access to paid leave. Women who return to work regardless of how healed or ready they are, do it because they cannot afford to take any more time off work. Despite how abysmally the U.S. has historically done with reproductive rights and justice, it has gotten worse under the current White House Administration.
Earlier this month on July 8th, in a 7-to-2 vote the Supreme Court ruled that employers have the ability to opt-out of providing cost-free contraception for its employees, citing an employer’s right to refuse to offer this service if they have a religious or moral objection to contraceptives. This latest move comes after the current White House Administration launched an all-out attack on reproductive rights in the United States since getting into office in 2017. In his first one hundred days in office, the current administration signed a bill to overturn Title X protections which allowed states to block funding for providers of certain family planning services, a move that was met with pushback from the American Medical Association and other organizations. The gag order and overturning of Title X were part of an attack on Planned Parenthood which he had threatened to defund multiple times over the course of his campaign. This resulted in Planned Parenthood refusing Title X related federal funds that were offered with the condition that limited the information that physicians could provide to their patients.
The Guttmacher Institute reported that in 2017 out of the 50 states, 29 states were openly hostile or extremely hostile to abortion while only 12 states were supportive of it. Additionally, 29 states enacted non-scientifically sound abortion restrictions which include things like having the mother get an ultrasound before the abortion and get abortion counseling 72 hours before the procedure. Arkansas and Texas enacted laws that allow medical providers from withholding information about pregnancy from patients to prevent them from getting an abortion. In 2019, Alabama proposed a bill that would allow doctors to be sent to prison for up to 99 years for performing an abortion in nearly all instances. As of now, it has not passed yet and has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge. These are a few examples of the way that the current central administration has tried and often been able to restrict reproductive rights in the United States.
All of the actions that the current White House Administration has taken towards reproductive rights since the current presidency began have only served to drastically roll back the slow progress that the United States was making towards reproductive justice. Despite the claims that the current White House wants to “make America great again,” all actions regarding reproductive justice keep America lagging behind all other developed countries. In 2019 alone, twenty-five new abortion bills were signed into law. Things will no doubt get worse if the current White House administration wins a second term and we need to keep that in mind in these upcoming months. The actions of the current White House Administration have worked against the progress that numerous activists and movements have pushed for. The U.S prides itself on its progress and freedoms, but in all reality, we are far behind many other nations. When a government and those who are in power to make decisions promise to “Make America Great”, but refuse to uphold the freedoms of its people, that promise is empty at best. Reproductive rights are human rights and it’s time for people in power to start treating them as such.
