As the United States ("US") approaches its rescheduled 4th Universal Periodic Review ("UPR"), individuals’ sexual and reproductive health and rights (“SRHR”) continue to deteriorate across the country. Since our previous submission, both restrictions on reproductive healthcare access, in particular abortion care, and targeted, state-sanctioned violence, intimidation, discrimination, and harassment of communities by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) and Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) have increased. This submission updates this coalition’s April 2025 submission. It includes quantitative research and qualitative data gathered from abortion funds, healthcare providers, doulas, and persons detained or deported by ICE agents. Testimony is from individuals who have been directly harmed by restrictive abortion laws and/or by the recent unlawful changes in and enforcement of immigration policies or from individuals whose clients or patients have suffered such harm.

In September 2024, UN Women and Global Justice Center issued a report detailing challenges and offering legal guidance to improve the documentation of reproductive violence in crisis and conflict by UN international investigations. These investigations play a key role in guiding international responses, so omitting documentation of reproductive violence can have devastating ripple effects. This Q&A draws from the report to provide information on what reproductive violence is, why its documentation in conflict and crisis situations matters, and how this documentation can be done more effectively.

Our coalition recently developed a joint submission to the UN Human Rights Council before the USA’s upcoming 4th Universal Periodic Review. This submission focused on the significant deterioration of sexual and reproductive rights and justice across the country since the elimination of a federal right to abortion and amid a broader undermining of rights in the USA.

Idaho’s “Defense of Life Act” (“Act” or “Idaho’s Law”), a near-total abortion ban, restricts access to necessary emergency reproductive healthcare, exacerbating preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and otherwise negatively impacting pregnant people. The law’s narrow exception for life-saving care will not prevent or mitigate these harms and will leave patients without access to emergency reproductive healthcare. The United States has ratified several human rights treaties that require it to guarantee access to safe and legal reproductive health services, in particular in emergencies or acute medical crises governed by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (“EMTALA”). Under these treaties, the U.S. is required to respect, protect and fulfil the rights to life; freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; non-discrimination; and privacy. Idaho’s draconian abortion law fails to respect these rights and violates the U.S.’s treaty obligations. This violation of the U.S.’s treaty obligations militates in favor of affirming the preliminary injunction issued by the District Court. Causing the U.S. to violate its international obligations will result in irreparable harm and is not in the public interest.

On October 17-18 in Geneva, the United States government faced questions from civil society and the Human Rights Committee on the country’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In addition to questions on immigrants’ rights, racial discrimination, and more, US officials were pressed repeatedly on the state of abortion access in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

The June 2022 Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated federal constitutional protection for access to abortion in the United States. Following Dobbs, more than a dozen states fully banned abortion, and many others passed or proposed increased restrictions. On October 17-18, 2023, the Human Rights Committee will review US compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including the impact of Dobbs on its human rights obligations.