Both NIRH and the NIRH Action Fund have worked steadily in New Mexico for several years to ensure that New Mexico repeals its pre-Roe law criminalizing abortion access and continues to be a haven for abortion access in the Southwest. In 2021, with a newly strengthened majority in support of abortion access in the State [...]
Both NIRH and the NIRH Action Fund have worked steadily in Virginia for several years — Virginia has now passed proactive abortion laws two years in a row, rolling back a host of restrictions to create a much-needed access point in the Southeast. Virginia had once been infamous for its attacks on abortion care, passing [...]
One of our core strategies has been to pass laws in every state possible to secure reproductive freedom. In Massachusetts, we worked alongside partners for many years to reform the Commonwealth’s surprisingly restrictive reproductive health laws, securing reproductive freedom in state law, removes barriers to abortion and expands access to this care. In 2017, we [...]
With the implications of a gutted Roe, and fewer abortion clinics open and accessible, we now face the perfect storm for the criminalization of women and medical professionals for seeking or providing abortions. Archaic laws criminalizing abortion could become enforceable and states could introduce new legislation to ban abortion outright, as they have in Ohio. In 2018 and 2019, NIRH supported statewide campaigns in Ohio, New York, and Michigan to decriminalize people seeking abortions and providers who offer abortion care.
For more than 10 years, NIRH and the NIRH Action Fund led the advocacy campaign to educate the public, rally New Yorkers, and convince elected officials to update New York’s laws by passing the Reproductive Health Act.
In October 2018 NIRH launched a month-long education campaign to inform the public about New York’s outdated abortion laws. Before the Reproductive Health Act passed in 2019, New York was just one of a handful of states with laws from the 1800s still on the books that criminalized self-managed abortion performed without a medical provider. [...]
On July 18, 2018, the Massachusetts legislature passed long-overdue proactive legislation to decriminalize abortion. This win is significant because it overturns archaic statutes that have been used to prosecute women who self-manage their own abortions. With this win, Massachusetts pushed back against a hostile anti-choice federal landscape, and laid the groundwork to push even further to [...]
NIRH’s white paper, “When Self-Abortion is a Crime: Laws that Put Women at Risk: An Analysis of Massachusetts Law,” raises awareness about the harms of criminal bans on self-abortion, with a particular focus on Massachusetts, which is one of a handful of states with criminal laws on the books that explicitly make self-abortion illegal.
The legal status of abortion has changed throughout American history – from legal to illegal and back to legal again. However, women seeking to end an unintended pregnancy have always done so, whether it is legal or not. Our white paper, “When Self-Abortion is a Crime: Laws that Put Women at Risk,” documents this history in New York and assess whether there is any justification for the state’s criminal abortion ban.
NIRH President Andrea Miller has been an outspoken advocate against the laws that criminalize women for their abortion decisions. She has emerged as one of the leaders in the field ringing the alarm bell about politicians’ threats to shame, pressure, and ultimately punish women who end their pregnancies. See her op-ed in TIME magazine. To [...]
