Enshrine abortion as a human right on this U.N. declaration anniversary
Adriana Smith was a 30-year-old mother and nurse. She was two months pregnant when she went to an Atlanta emergency room with intense headaches.
She was given medication and sent home, but the next day after being rushed back to the hospital with blood clots in her brain, Adriana was pronounced brain-dead. Her family wanted to say goodbye and let her go peacefully, but the hospital was forced to refuse because of Georgia’s horrific, Republican-led abortion ban.
Instead, against her family’s wishes, Adriana was kept on life support for months. Her family, already devastated, was put through hell while she was treated like nothing more than a human incubator.
Across the world, countries are expanding access to abortion and recognizing that reproductive health care is a basic human right. One based on a simple truth: Without the ability to decide whether to continue a pregnancy, a person cannot fully exercise their rights to life, health, autonomy, privacy, equality or freedom from discrimination and cruel treatment.
U.S. now snubs its nose at human rights review
Over the last three decades, more than 60 nations have reformed their abortion laws while only four have rolled abortion rights back: Poland, El Salvador, Nicaragua — and now, the United States.
With the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the U.S. joined these autocratic nations, making abortion access nearly impossible in almost half of all states, including Georgia.
These abortion bans and restrictions criminalize pregnant women, abortion providers and supporters. Women are dying needlessly because they can’t get lifesaving care, and hundreds are facing criminal charges.
The United States was once a bastion of freedom and defender of human rights. We were instrumental in forming the United Nations after World War II, and Eleanor Roosevelt was a key architect of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first global statement asserting that every person has inalienable rights.
Yet, the Trump administration has turned its back on this nation’s sacred legacy as a leader and defender of human rights.
In November, the United States was scheduled to appear before the United Nations for its Universal Periodic Review — a human-rights assessment that every U.N. member state undergoes every 4½ years.
Despite participating in all previous reviews, this time the U.S. boycotted, sending the message that we no longer care to be the global champion of freedom and equality and are no longer obligated to comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international human rights treaties we signed.
We cannot let this stand. As women, mothers and Georgia lawmakers, we will not rest until our human rights are realized and rooted in law.
We represent the heart of Atlanta as representatives of Georgia’s Fighting 5th Congressional District and Fulton County’s District 3, and we hear stories of women who have gone to the hospital bleeding out and begging for help only to be turned away because the hospital’s legal team did not believe their life was “endangered enough.”
Amber Thurman and Candi Miller both lost their lives because their human rights to life and health care were denied. How many more, whose names may never be known, will die or be injured as a direct result of Georgia’s six-week abortion ban?
Communities in Georgia and beyond will make change
That’s why Wednesday, on International Human Rights Day, we join with hundreds of colleagues around the country to boldly declare that abortion is a human right and that the U.S. must be accountable for its human rights record.
We are proposing legislation at both the local and national level to affirm that reproductive health care and abortion are human rights, to condemn the criminalization of abortion and to serve as a reminder that the U.S. and elected leaders at all levels of government are obligated by the Constitution to uphold the human rights conferred by the international treaties our nation signed.
In 1958, Roosevelt said universal human rights begin “in small places, close to home.”
That is exactly where we are fighting to restore them — in our communities here in Georgia.
We are standing with communities in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Texas that have passed legislation like ours and we urge lawmakers across the country to join us.
Without reproductive freedom, we are not truly free.
Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, represents the 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Dana Barrett represents District 3 on the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.
