Introduction

With this submission, the Global Justice Center (GJC) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) aim to provide guidance to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (“Committee”) in its preparation of the list of themes to be examined during the Committee’s upcoming review of the United States (US). The United States’ combined report to the Committee does not consider the current national crisis in reproductive health care and its disproportionate impact on women and pregnant people of color. To mitigate this omission, this submission discusses four sites of gendered racial discrimination in the US: the shackling of pregnant prisoners, inequalities in screening and treatment for cervical cancer, abortion restrictions, and the criminalization of pregnant people and pregnancy outcomes.

We strongly urge the Committee to apply an intersectional lens to its examination of racial discrimination in the US and address the overlapping racial- and gender-based discrimination faced by women of color in the context of reproductive health.