Updated Coalition Stakeholder Submission for the Universal Periodic Review of the United States

As the United States  approaches its rescheduled 4th Universal Periodic Review (UPR), individuals’ sexual and reproductive health and rights continue to deteriorate across the country. Since our previous submission, there has been an increase in both restrictions on reproductive health-care access (in particular abortion care), and in targeted, state-sanctioned violence, intimidation, discrimination, and harassment of communities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Abortion restrictions are incompatible with international human rights law. The U.S.’s failure to ensure the provision of safe, accessible health care, including the continuum of reproductive health care and gender-affirming care, violates its obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the rights to life, health, privacy, liberty and security of person, freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (TCIDTP), freedom of movement, and conscience, and religion or belief, non-discrimination, and information. Several of these violations are exacerbated by targeted actions by ICE, particularly the rights to freedom from TCIDTP and liberty and security of person for pregnant people in ICE detention, and others directly impacted by their harassment and violence.

In facilitating an increasingly restrictive landscape around abortion and terrorizing and criminalizing targeted communities on suspicion of unlawful presence in the country, the U.S. government has breached its human rights obligations. Moreover, by removing constitutional protections for abortion, empowering states to criminalize persons seeking, providing, and supporting abortion, and emboldening ICE and CPB to target and kidnap community members, the U.S. has engaged in prohibited retrogressive measures in contravention of its treaty obligations and recommendations it accepted during its 3rd UPR.

In advance of the United States’ rescheduled 4th UPR, this submission to the UN HRC is authored by Ipas U.S. and diverse partners. It provides quantitative research and qualitative data gathered from health-care providers, researchers, doulas, abortion funds, and pregnant and/or previously pregnant individuals directly impacted by restrictive abortion laws and in southern states and the recent unlawful changes in and enforcement of immigration policies. It also highlights prior UPR cycle and UN treaty body recommendations that the U.S. has received and largely disregarded. Finally, this submission also presents recommendations for member states to submit to the U.S. during its 4th UPR.