Proactive Policy
NIRH’s strategy is to go on the offensive to pass laws that expand equitable access to reproductive health care, with a specific focus on abortion, contraception, and reproductive health equity.
Through in-depth policy creation and analysis, coalition-building, and legislative strategy, we pass and implement laws to shift the policy climate in cities and states across the country.
NIRH advocates for policies that move our society away from all institutionalized, accepted, or de facto forms of interference, discrimination, coercion, and criminalization based on reproductive health decisions.
FOCUS AREAS FOR 2022
SAFE, EQUITABLE ACCESS TO ABORTION IN COMMUNITIES WITHOUT SHAME OR STIGMA
Access to safe and legal abortion is critical to individual’s ability to maintain their health and dignity, as well as independence, freedom, and social and economic equality. With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, it is more important than ever for NIRH to promote equitable access to abortion care.
AFFORDABLE, CONVENIENT ACCESS TO ALL METHODS OF CONTRACEPTION AND NON-COERCIVE, INCLUSIVE CONTRACEPTION COUNSELING
The ability to control whether and when to have a child can determine the course of a person’s life. NIRH believes that all people should have access to the full range of contraceptive options, be empowered to choose the method that is right for them, and have the ability to stop or change that method at any time. This vision is an important step towards ensuring that all people have the right to individual self-determination; are able to choose if, when, and how to start and grow a family; and to achieving overall gender equity.
ELIMINATING RACIAL AND ECONOMIC DISPARITIES IN HEALTH
For more than two decades, the reproductive justice movement, led by Black women, has pushed our nation to recognize the basic human rights we all share, including the right of all people to live their healthiest lives, people who can become pregnant to choose when and whether to become parents, and the right of every person to parent their children with dignity and in safety.