Congressional Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday that would classify reproductive rights as human rights and require the U.S. State Department to include access to reproductive health care in its annual human rights report, a practice that ended when President Trump took office.

…the State Department’s annual human rights report has critical government uses. “It’s important for immigration judges and for immigration lawyers trying to determine whether asylum claims are founded.”

The report’s use by immigration judges is critical for Stephanie Schmid, U.S. foreign policy council at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who used an example from Central America to demonstrate the harm of excluding reproductive rights from the report. “Any woman that would be coming to the U.S. border right now … fleeing some condition like in El Salvador where you can be jailed for having a miscarriage, and trying to make a refugee or asylum claim at the border, wouldn’t be safe,” she told Rewire.News. “Potentially an immigration judge [could say] ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, the 2017 human rights reports don’t say anything about women being jailed in El Salvador for miscarriages.’ They don’t say anything about the high rate of sexual and gender based violence by gangs and in other situations. So what we do is invalidate and erase the experience and stories of women all over the world.” 

…Clark’s bill mandates that foreign service officers must consult with reproductive health and rights organizations in local communities to gather accurate information for the human rights report.

Here’s How Democrats Want to Classify Reproductive Rights as Human Rights – Rewire.News

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