Lourdes Rivera ’90 on the Future of Reproductive Rights

Lourdes Rivera ’90 offered examples from several countries to caution and inspire the United States at the Oct. 6 Human Rights Workshop, “Beyond Dobbs: Lessons from Abroad for the Fight for Reproductive Rights in the U.S.” Rivera is Senior Vice President of U.S. Programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which uses legal strategies to advance reproductive rights as human rights around the world. The talk used as a launching point Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban was constitutional. 

“This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, taking away an established liberty that was in place for 50 years,” Rivera began. With this decision, she said, the court overturned an “established right that many relied on.” 

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has made the U.S. an outlier, according to Rivera. Rather than being a global leader in expanding rights, she said, the country is in company with El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Poland — the only other three countries that have removed legal grounds for abortion over the past 25 years.  

“This was a retrogression of rights, which is out of step with the global trend of liberalizing abortion rights and expanding access,” Rivera said. 

Since Roe fell on June 24, 18 states are seeking to enforce complete abortion bans, 12 state bans are in effect, and at least half of U.S. states will likely attempt to ban abortion, according to Rivera and tracking of state laws by the Center for Reproductive Rights and others. 

“This has already created chaos and fear for patients, providers, hospital emergency rooms, and abortion funds across the country,” she said.

Meanwhile, in states where abortion remains accessible, providers are scrambling to accommodate the influx of patients, Rivera said. She warned that people who live in states with bans and who seek out abortion care and those who assist them could be prosecuted and jailed. 

Rivera pointed to El Salvador, where abortion is completely banned and where the center has been working with partners to end the criminalization of accessing reproductive health care. People experiencing stillbirths and miscarriages are treated as suspect, particularly if they are Indigenous women or low income — those with the least access to health care services. She noted that those who experience pregnancy loss are at risk of being reported to law enforcement, including by the very health providers from whom they seek care. People in this situation who are convicted may be sentenced to serve anywhere from 20 to 40 in prison. 

According to Rivera, U.S. history and the current situation in countries with abortion bans suggest how criminalization will take shape in the United States.

“We know full well who is going to be targeted in the U.S.,” Rivera said. “It’s going to be women and people with the capacity to become pregnant in communities of color — Black women in particular — immigrants, poor and low-income people, and poor white rural women.” 

Rivera highlighted another lesson about abortion restrictions worldwide.

“Banning abortion has no impact on prevalence — it just makes it unsafe,” she said. “Medication abortion can certainly be a mitigating factor, but not everyone has access or knows about medication abortion, and criminal risks remain where banned.” 

While abortion rights will always be essential, she explained, expanding access to contraception and comprehensive sexuality education have been proven to reduce the need for abortion. Inhibiting abortion access, moreover, raises the risk of maternal mortality. 

“Pregnancy can be one of the most joyful and meaningful experiences one can have,” Rivera said. “I’m a mother, I get it. But at the same time, it is undeniable that pregnancy can impact one’s health, future, and family. It has risks.”

Rivera noted that the U.S. is the only industrialized country in which maternal mortality is increasing. The Centers for Disease Control considers the majority of these deaths preventable, according to Rivera. She also noted that Black and Indigenous women are two to three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. She also cited the example of Mississippi, which has some of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the country, a fact noted by the district court opinion in Dobbs.

In her work, Rivera draws inspiration from feminist and gender justice movements around the world, which are a part of pro-democracy movements fighting against authoritarianism. Authoritarian movements and governments, she said, have used “the specter of gender ideology” to suppress movements advocating for democracy and equality, including in places like Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, and Poland. 

“This is about punishment and control,” she said. “It is well documented that authoritarianism goes hand in hand with suppressing gender equality, including reproductive and LGBT rights.” 

Pro-equality movements in these countries use legal strategies alongside public health research, organizing, narrative and cultural change, civil disobedience, and communication and narrative change strategies to advance their causes. An example is the “Green Wave” movement in support of abortion rights in Latin America. The movement started in Argentina and modeled its advocacy after the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the mothers and grandmothers of those who were disappeared by the country’s brutal military dictatorship. Members of the movement protested, wearing white handkerchiefs, to demand accountability and justice for their loved ones.

“Human rights are key to reproductive rights,” Rivera said, “and it is important to claim human rights for the women and people who are pregnant.” 

Rivera noted that it was at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, that global international development policy moved away from population control. The following year, at the Fourth World Conference in Women in Beijing, then First Lady Hillary Clinton used a phrase inspired by Global South women’s rights advocates when said that “women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights, once and for all.” 

After returning to the U.S. from Cairo and Beijing, Rivera continued, Black women and other women advocates of color like Loretta Ross who engaged with Global South feminists “learned from the human rights framework to name what they were experiencing in the U.S.,” which led to the first articulation of “reproductive justice” by Black women. 

Rivera explained that understanding human rights and where they come from is essential to protecting reproductive rights. She explained that human rights come from political documents, as well as treaties that are legally binding and establish a set of international norms. 

The U.S. has ratified some international treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), but it has not ratified all. The U.N. Human Rights Committee, which oversees the ICCPR, has certain requirements for countries ratifying the treaty, which Rivera framed as the right to life.

“I especially like to talk about the right to life because of the rhetoric the opposition uses,” Rivera said.

Countries ratifying the treaty must provide safe, legal, and effective access to abortion when the health and life of the person who is pregnant is at risk, or when carrying pregnancy to term would cause said person substantial suffering. In addition, countries may not regulate abortion in a way that causes people to undertake unsafe abortions. The ICCPR also outlines that ratifying countries cannot enact new barriers to care and must reduce maternal and infant mortality rates when preventable.

In U.S. courts, Rivera noted, human rights treaties are less salient than federal and state constitutions, though they remain important to domestic advocacy. 

“There’s a lot of parallel language between international human rights and state constitutions, and we need to start exploring this,” she said. 

Rivera also underscored the necessity of building a fairer U.S. Constitution that better reflects the needs of a modern world. 

“Our project needs to be about creating legal jurisprudence and a compelling public narrative about our vision of protecting rights to inspire all people,” she said. “On our way there, we need to demonstrate how Dobbs was wrongly decided.” 

Protecting reproductive rights is not about overturning Dobbs to reinstate Roe, Rivera said, but about a framework that guarantees access as well as rights. Reproductive justice also extends beyond abortion, Rivera said, adding that her entry into this work was the sterilization abuse of women in Puerto Rico, “where one third of my mother’s generation was sterilized.”

This project of protecting reproductive rights requires national solutions, she concluded. These included the Women’s Health Protection Act and the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH) Act introduced in Congress, along with targeted endeavors in state legislatures and courts. 

“I wake up every morning to fight for my daughter to be treated as a full person under the Constitution in every state,” she said. “It is not OK for some people to be treated as full people in some states, but not in others.”