NIRH’s predecessor organization, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) is founded in New York as a 501(c)4 organization. This becomes NARAL New York, and later, NIRH and the NIRH Action Fund.
Who We Are
We are an advocacy organization that fights for just and equitable access to reproductive health care in states and cities nationwide.
For more than 40 years, NIRH has been partnering with communities to build coalitions, launch campaigns, and successfully advocate for policy change. NIRH’s strategy is to go on the offensive and focus on communities where change is needed and where we can make a difference.
We work hand-in-hand with state and local reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations and other groups that are invested in this fight to pass laws that expand access to abortion and contraception and advance health equity. Our approach to advocacy, policy, and politics strives to center the people who are most impacted by barriers to care, historically underserved, and often under-represented — Black women and Black communities, Indigenous and other communities of color, low-income people, and immigrants. .
Our political arm, the NIRH Action Fund, works in parallel to change state and local electoral and policy landscapes.
We don’t just push back against restrictions on reproductive autonomy; we fight for a society in which everyone has the freedom and ability to control their reproductive and sexual lives.
It all began in New York in 1968, when we launched as a grassroots political, 501(c)4 organization with the mission of legalizing abortion in New York State. We were successful in making New York one of the very first states to do so in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade was decided.
Since our founding, the National Institute for Reproductive Health and the NIRH Action Fund have worked to expand access to reproductive health care, including abortion care, in communities across the country. Over the years, we’ve grown and evolved, but we’ve stayed true to our core mission of fighting for reproductive freedom, passing proactive policies, and advancing a positive vision of reproductive freedom.
In 1980, out of that grassroots, state-based effort grew the origins of what is now a national organization, the National Institute for Reproductive Health and the NIRH Action Fund, dedicated to passing proactive legislation to safeguard access to reproductive health care in states and cities across the country. Since then, we’ve expanded our fight to new states and cities, helping others across the country push forward to protect and advance reproductive freedom.
Today, NIRH is the only national group working hand-in-hand with partner organizations on the ground across the country, expanding reproductive freedom everywhere.
OUR COMMITMENT TO RACIAL EQUITY
NIRH and NIRH Action Fund staff and board have a deep commitment to racial equity, and been engaged in a multi-year process to adopt a racial equity lens across the organizations. We are a reproductive health and rights organization that incorporates reproductive justice values into our work. We recognize the interconnectivity of identities, such as race, socio-economic status, immigration status, ability, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and how they interact with systems of oppressions to shape and impact a person’s freedom and ability to control their reproductive and sexual lives.
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