The U.S. cannot be a global champion of human rights when its own abortion rights are not protected, one activist group said

Almost 200 human rights organizations from across the world have issued an “urgent appeal” to the United Nations to intervene to ensure the United States protects reproductive rights — after a Supreme Court ruling last year overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.

In a letter issued Thursday, nonprofits and civil society groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Global Justice Center, as well as dozens of smaller U.S.-based charities have written to the U.N. warning that “people residing in the US who can become pregnant are facing a human rights crisis.”

It comes after the Supreme Court ruling last year, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, struck down reproductive protections enshrined in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, igniting a seismic social and legal change in the country by shifting power to regulate abortions into the hands of individual states. A majority of justices argued that Roe v. Wade’s reasoning was “weak” and that the issue of abortion should be considered by “the people’s elected representatives,” in a decision that was a long-sought triumph for conservatives.

At least a dozen states have moved to ban or heavily restrict abortions since Dobbs.

The 196 signatories to Thursday’s letter describe “intensifying harms” occurring in the United States as a result of the legal ruling.

It says approximately 22 million women and girls of reproductive age in the United States are living in states where “abortion access is heavily restricted, and often totally inaccessible,” causing them to face a plethora of public health harms.

“By overturning the established constitutional protection for access to abortion and through the passage of state laws, the US is in violation of its obligations under international human rights law,” it says, detailing violations to the right to life, health and privacy, among others.

U.N. human rights bodies have previously spoken out against last year’s ruling, calling it a “major setback” and a “huge blow to women’s human rights and gender equality.”

However, the signatories in Thursday’s letter called on U.N. mandate holders to do more “to take up their calls to action” and raise the issue at a high level, including by “communicating with the US regarding the human rights violations, requesting a visit to the US, convening a virtual stakeholder meeting with US civil society, calls for the US to comply with its obligations under international law, and calls for private companies to take a number of actions to protect reproductive rights.”

“We sent this letter to draw the world’s attention to the suffering that US abortion law is inflicting on women, girls and others who can become pregnant,” Christine Ryan, legal director of the Global Justice Center, which uses international law to advocate for gender equality, said in an emailed statement.

“There is a staggering level of cognitive dissonance required for the United States to claim a role as a global champion of human rights when millions of its own citizens are living under an extremist anti-abortion” policies, she added.

The letter argued that minorities and those who earn low incomes had been particularly impacted by the ruling.

“Dobbs is devastating for all people who can become pregnant, but it has had and will have an outsize impact on certain marginalized groups who already face documented discrimination within and outside the health care system,” it said. “These groups often have poorer health outcomes compared to other populations, and Dobbs will worsen these.”

Abortion is set to be a key election issue in 2024, with a mixed picture across the United States.

Last month at least 21 governors supporting abortion rights formed a new coalition — the Reproductive Freedom Alliance — initiated by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). The group describes itself as nonpartisan — although the alliance so far only comprises Democratic governors — and aims to expand and protect access to abortion and allow for more collaboration across states.

The missive also comes as rights groups await a decision in a Texas federal court challenging Americans’ access to the federally approved abortion drug, mifepristone. Access to abortion pills is seen as one of the next major battlegrounds in the national debate over reproductive rights, and the decision could have sweeping implications for abortion access across the country, including in Democratic-led states where abortion rights are protected.

Vice President Harris recently criticized efforts to restrict access to the abortion pills as an attack by “extremists” on fundamental rights to health care and indicated that the Biden administration would defend women’s right to abortion medication.

Amnesty International has said that criminalizing abortions does not stop them, with an estimated 25 million unsafe abortions taking place globally each year.

Last summer, the U.N. women’s rights committee also called out the United States on the global stage and “expressed solidarity with women and girls in the United States” urging it to adhere to the international convention known as CEDAW, which the United States helped to draft and signed in 1980 but never ratified, joining nations such as Iran, Somalia and Tonga.