11 Facts About Reproductive Rights

1. Reproductive justice is a comprehensive term that includes a woman’s right to be healthy, both physically and emotionally, the right to make decisions about her body, and the ability to have economic resources (like health coverage) to plan families.
2. More than 350,000 women die each year during pregnancy or childbirth. That’s one woman every 90 seconds.
3. A small yet influential group in the U.S. is fighting to deny women basic reproductive care through birth control pills. This once-universal right to prevent pregnancy is now under attack and with support from state legislatures.
4. In Western Europe, even though the UK is ranked second highest for contraception use, it remains one of the highest for teenage pregnancies and abortion rates.
5. In sub-Saharan Africa, teenage girls ages 15-19 account for 25 percent of unsafe abortions.
6. The Irish law remains that women are only permitted to an abortion if their life is in danger due to the pregnancy. In 2005, 3 women challenged that law after being forced to travel abroad for an abortion.
7. In America, about half of women will have an unintended pregnancy by age 45. Nearly one-third of these pregnancies will be aborted.
8. During 2012 the U.S. placed 43 abortion restrictions in 19 states.
9. Adolescent girls and women in disadvantaged groups are more frequently affected by reproductive inequality, lacking proper health information and services to prevent unintended pregnancy.
10. A large majority of adolescents and young people lack access to proper sexual and reproductive health services (including education) to maintain a healthy life.
11. More than 60 percent of adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa were unaware of how to prevent pregnancy and more than 33 percent could not identify a source for contraceptives.

Bring sex ed to your school. GO

Sources: Amnesty, Reproductive Rights, Jezebel, Amnesty USA, NOW