SCOTUS Forced Birth Decision Violates Human Rights

On the morning of Friday, June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—a closely-watched case affecting the right to seek an abortion in the United States. UUSC’s President Rev. Mary Katherine Morn and Vice President and Lead Program Officer Rachel Gore Freed issued the following response:

Today, we witness the culmination of the multi-decade, carefully choreographed efforts of a minority of citizens and politicians to strip away the rights of privacy and bodily autonomy, erode the separation of church and state, and limit our democracy’s principles of checks and balances. In a heartbreaking blow to human rights, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs rejects international human rights principles, constitutional guarantees of liberty, and its own precedents.

Forced birth violates fundamental rights to freedom and bodily autonomy. No person should be compelled to bring a pregnancy to term against their will. No person should be criminalized for providing support to those requiring health care or choosing an abortion.

The court’s ruling also opens the door to future attacks on other fundamental rights, including LGBTQI+ rights, contraception, interracial marriage, and protections against forced sterilization, which likewise depend on the constitutional right to privacy. Despite the majority’s claims to the contrary, it is hard to see how today’s ruling would not embolden those seeking to overturn these constitutional rights. 

Further, the impact of this ruling strikes a compounding blow to the lives of individuals already facing barriers to their rights—Brown and Black people, people marginalized due to economic inequality, people with disabilities, people seeking asylum, and gender-diverse people.

In the face of these attacks to human rights, UUSC’s commitment to reproductive justice and the rights of women, LGBTQI+, and gender-nonconforming people will be unwavering. In every dimension of our work, we center women’s leadership and apply feminist principles to our organizing. We will never stop defending the rights of all women—cisgender or transgender— and all people to bodily autonomy, dignity, and justice, regardless of any court ruling.

UUSC encourages its members to follow and support the organizations listed below to learn more and take action.

• The Afiya Center
• Holler Health Justice
• Indigenous Women Rising
• National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice
• SisterSong
• Yellow Hammer Fund

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The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) is a human rights and solidarity organization founded as a rescue mission in 1940 during the Holocaust. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and with a membership of more than 35,000 supporters across the United States, UUSC’s programs focus on the issues of climate and disaster justice, migrant justice, and international justice and accountability.

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