Support the Women’s Health Protection Act
Dear Senators:
The more than 225 undersigned organizations dedicated to protecting and advancing civil rights, health, economic security, LGBTQ rights, and gender justice write in support of S. 1975, the “Women’s Health Protection Act” (WHPA). We urge the Senate to swiftly bring the bill to the floor and for all Senators to vote yes on passage.
Despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade nearly fifty years ago, abortion access has continued to be under threat. Anti-abortion politicians and advocates have continued to undermine abortion access both at the federal and state levels. This is part of a nearly fifty-year strategy to make abortion wholly inaccessible for those who need it. In September, and again in December, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to to put an end to Texas’s S.B. 8, a six-week abortion ban, rendering Roe v. Wade’s protections meaningless for the majority of Texas abortion patients, and giving other states hostile to reproductive rights a green light to ban abortion outright in the near future. People with resources are being forced to flee the state to access abortion, while those who are unable to leave the state are being forced to continue their pregnancies against their wishes. Around the same time, the Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case in which Mississippi has asked the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court could gut or wholly overturn the right to abortion by this summer.
WHPA would help protect access to abortion against state-level bans and medically unnecessary restrictions that are reducing, and in some cases, eliminating, access to abortion across the country. WHPA establishes a statutory right for health care providers to provide, and their patients to receive, abortion free from medically unnecessary restrictions, and limitations, as well as other restrictions, including bans, that single out abortion and impede access to care.