Foreign Policy: The Trump Administration Is Erasing Reproductive Rights at Home and Abroad
Stephanie Schmid, U.S. foreign policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights

“…In April, the U.S. State Department published its annual congressionally mandated Country Reports on Human Rights Practices without the prepared reproductive rights subsection… Deleting reproductive rights from the annual reports erases women, girls, and other people who need reproductive health services from global debates on public health and puts the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable communities at risk by allowing abuses to occur unchecked and unreported, emboldening the violators and compounding the amount and severity of future rights deprivations. … The U.S. government cannot credibly advance an agenda of women’s political, economic, and social empowerment without addressing and assessing the global status of reproductive rights. … Congress must continue to play a forceful role in halting this administration’s backslide from promoting, protecting, and defending the human rights of women and girls worldwide. … Through its oversight function, Congress must also continue to press officials in this administration to explain their harmful actions and urge them to reverse course, to ensure that reproductive rights are not treated as mere spoils in a political contest but instead respected and protected as fundamental human rights” (10/23).