Betraying Our Nation’s Promise of Equal Rights

June 24, 2022 – This morning, in a devastating attack on democracy broadly and on the rights of women and LGBTQI people specifically, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutionally guaranteed right to an abortion. The 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, reversing nearly a half-century of precedent, will certainly take a place of shame as a decision that fundamentally betrays the nation’s promise of equal rights for all.

The Council for Global Equality denounces this cruel and disingenuous ruling in the strongest possible terms. The most immediate ramification of this decision will be to deny needed medical services to those in urgent need of them, as roughly half of the states in the U.S. prepare to outlaw abortion.

In stark terms, the dissent notes, “Yesterday, the Constitution guaranteed that a woman . . . could make her own decision about whether to bear a child, with all the life-transforming consequences that act involves. And in thus safeguarding each woman’s reproductive freedom, the Constitution also protected ‘the ability of woman to participate equally in [this Nation’s] economic and social life.’ … But no longer. As of today, this Court holds, a State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions.”

For the extremists in this country — and from Russia and Romania to Ghana and Guatemala — restricting the rights to bodily autonomy and personal liberty are the cornerstone of the anti-democratic agenda. As CGE Co-Chair Julie Dorf notes, “The devastation of this decision will be felt not only by the American people unable to access abortions, but within our democracy itself. The long-term damage of the Trump Administration’s reckless extremism is being felt every day both by those of us here and by others around the world. We need to keep calling out extremism and the assault on rights here and everywhere.”

CGE Co-Chair Mark Bromley continues, “The United States routinely and appropriately denounces human rights abuses around the world. Unfortunately, we must now depend on rights-affirming governments around the world to join with our pro-choice majority in America to denounce today’s attack on human rights in our country. LGBTQI rights and abortion rights cannot be separated. Reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right for all.”

The ruling ominously reminds us of the clear connection between reproductive rights and LGBTQI rights. The dissent states it best: “no one should be confident that the majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationship, and procreation.” The dissent goes on to warn that foundational cases affirming the rights of LGBTQI Americans are at risk, and the concurring opinion by Justice Thomas suggests that they, too, should be overturned.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling is out of step with the global movement towards expanding the right to abortion, as we have seen in the last few years in Ireland, Mexico, Colombia, South Korea, Thailand, and elsewhere. Dobbs v. Jackson puts the United States in the same camp as Poland and Guatemala, where the attacks on democracy and civil society on the one hand and reproductive and LGBTQI rights are proceeding hand in hand.

Unfortunately, the majority ruling today will embolden authoritarians around the world, who will accelerate their campaigns to stigmatize women, transgender people, LGBTQI families, and other vulnerable populations. We have already seen how Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law follows in the footsteps of Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán (which, in turn, builds on Vladimir Putin’s cynical, so-called 2013 “propaganda” law). Now, similar legislation is pending from Pennsylvania to Romania to Guatemala.  

The Biden Administration must be bold and creative in defending and expanding the right to abortion, to ensure the availability of safe and legal services and to be the best example of what the United States represents in terms of advancing human rights. It must pursue all legislative and administrative options to guaranteeing this right. Internationally, it must promote comprehensive, LGBTQI-inclusive family planning in its development agenda. Moreover, as the Administration takes steps forward to promote LGBTQI rights at home and abroad, it must also continue to explicitly draw the connections between those rights and reproductive rights.

The dissent concludes “With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection.” Propelled in equal measure by sorrow and rage, and in strong solidarity with our member organizations, the Council for Global Equality remains determined to fight for reproductive freedom as a cornerstone of LGBTQI rights in this country and abroad.