UN urged to intervene over destruction of U.S. abortion rights: The Guardian

LONDON, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Top human rights organizations are calling on the United Nations to intervene over the destruction of abortion rights in the United States, The Guardian reported on Thursday.

In a letter shared in advance with The Guardian and sent on Thursday by nearly 200 organizations and experts, the authors detail how, since the overturning of the federal constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, some 22 million women and girls of reproductive age live in states where abortion access is now either banned or inaccessible.

Abortion restrictions, the signatories write, deny "women's decisional and bodily autonomy in a way that rejects the agency, dignity and equality of people who can become pregnant."

The groups in the letter claim that overturning the constitutional right to abortion contravenes the U.S.'s international obligations as a UN member organization, according to The Guardian.

"The U.S. must be castigated on the world stage for its treatment of women, girls and others who can become pregnant -- the scale and intensity of human rights violations that the U.S. is inflicting on its population are near unfathomable at this point," said Christine Ryan, legal director of the Global Justice Center, one of the signatories in a phone interview with The Guardian.

The authors say the curtailment of abortion rights in the United States is of a piece with the country's history of devaluing the lives of Black women, who are hit worst by abortion restrictions, it said.