The Reproductive Rights Action Team has changed its name to Reproductive Justice Action Team, which is defined as "the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities," (SisterSong Women of Color reproductive collective). It thus encompasses a larger agenda including all health issues surrounding reproductive rights and in particular rights of minority women.

Democrats Abroad upholds the core belief in the Democratic Party that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion—regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured.

The key actions that will promote reproductive health, rights and justice according to the Democratic Party Platform[1] are:

• Oppose—and seek to overturn—federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment (which prohibits the use of federal funding for abortion).
• Protect Planned Parenthood from funding cuts.
• Condemn and combat any acts of violence, harassment, and intimidation of reproductive health providers, patients, and staff. 
• Defend the ACA, which extends affordable preventive health care to women, including no-cost contraception, and prohibits discrimination in health care based on gender.
• Address the discrimination and barriers that inhibit meaningful access to reproductive health care services, including those based on gender, sexuality, race, income, disability, and other factors.
• Strongly and unequivocally support a woman’s decision to have a child, including by ensuring a safe and healthy pregnancy and childbirth, and by providing services during pregnancy and after the birth of a child, including adoption and social support services, as well as protections for women against pregnancy discrimination.
• Create a society where children are safe and can thrive physically, emotionally, educationally, and spiritually. 

In order to highlight and promote understanding and action on this issue amongst our members, Democrats Abroad Global Women’s Caucus has created a Reproductive Justice Action Group. The Group has three broad mandates:

1. Educate and inform DA members globally on reproductive rights issues;
2. Discuss and develop strategies for maintaining and advancing womens’ reproductive rights,
3. Take actions to further our goals, lobby our Congress when appropriate (call storms, postcards, emails etc) and generally keep the issues alive.

Recommended Reading

We would like to suggest a number of stellar links as useful education and research for our followers:

Planned Parenthood has numerous resources on its website. See:

www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/abortion-access-tool/US for the status of access to abortion in your state, including restrictions, if any.

For information on your legislators’ voting record on reproductive rights see: www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/congressional-scorecard Select any state and you can see the voting record of the legislators from that State. Planned Parenthood gives each legislator a score from 0-100% based on that voting record. If you click on the legislator you can see how they voted on each proposed bill. This is a live link that is updated regularly.  

Also, On the Planned parenthood site there is a section that is quite genius.  It provides tips for activism for when all you have is 2 minutes, 10 minutes, and/or an hour to give.  A nice something to think about as we get close to Nov 2020. 

We also highly recommend watching this webinar: https://youtu.be/4Ej2zG4JpXY with Lynn Paltrow from National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Dorothy E Roberts (author of Killing the Black Body).

Finally, here are some links to relevant articles/blogs to post:

• WSJ re: abortion and the SCOTUS:

www.wsj.com/articles/the-smart-way-to-overturn-roe-v-wade-11563739004

• SCOTUSblog:

www.scotusblog.com/2019/03/abortion-could-return-to-the-supreme-court-in-plain-english/

We also recommend the following site for the Status of Women in the States:

          https://statusofwomendata.org

And  www.politico.com/2020-election/candidates-views-on-the-issues/ .

Both of these sites seem to be updated on a rolling basis. 

Action Team Members

Our team is composed of:

• Salli Anne Swartz, Chair (France)
• Ann Hesse (Germany; Chair of the Global Women’s Caucus)
• Courtney Plummer (UK)
• Sarah Thomsen (Sweden)
• Carol Moore (UK)
• Karin Lippert (Canada)
• Julie Buchanan (Canada)
• Connie Borde (France)
• Joan Stack (Panama)
• Kaitlin Hickey (US/France)

Please be in touch with us at [email protected] if you want to help.

_____________________________________________________________________

[1] These are the positions in the 2016 Democratic Party Platform which are currently under revision and will be updated when available.