Reproductive care is a vital human right: standing in solidarity with women, girls, and anyone with the capacity for pregnancy in the USA

July 25, 2022

Author: Cillian Quinn

The U.S. Supreme Court effectively revoked the constitutional right to abortion on the 24^th of June 2022. This back tracking to restrictive abortion policy puts the United States alongside Poland, El Salvador, and Nicaragua as the only countries to do so in in decades. ActionAid Ireland is deeply concerned that this decision will have a drastic impact not only on women, girls and those who can become pregnant in the United States but also as it sets a dangerous precedence for others to roll back previously fought rights.

Why we support access to abortion services globally?

ActionAid Ireland supports the rights of women, girls and those who can become pregnant around the world to claim their full range of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). We challenge practices that deny them control over their own bodies.

SRHR includes the right to make informed choices about whether or when people have children. It also includes the right to access a full range of affordable and informed family planning services, the right to accurate information and services to prevent and treat sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV and AIDS, and sexual health information and education.

Women, girls, and all those that can become pregnant must have control over their own bodies- this is central to achieving gender equality. Denying or limiting peoples sexual and reproductive rights has devastating consequences.

Around the world, many countries restrict access to safe, legal, affordable abortion, putting thousands of people’s lives at risk. Restricting or banning abortion does not stop abortions from happening. Recent studies estimate that 8–18% of maternal deaths worldwide are due to unsafe abortion in countries where it is banned, and the number of abortion-related deaths in 2014 ranged from 22,500 to 44,000.

Most of these deaths occur in the Global South, with the highest number in Africa. Allowing people access to information about SRHR, including modern contraception and safe abortion, would prevent unplanned pregnancies, STIs, and would save the lives of some of the poorest, most marginalized women and girls.

Why are we being vocal on the overturning of Roe vs Wade by the US Supreme Court

ActionAid Ireland see’s access to safe abortion as a human rights issue. Human rights law clearly indicates that decisions regarding your body are yours, known as, bodily autonomy. Forcing someone to carry on an unwanted pregnancy, or forcing them to seek out an unsafe abortion, is a violation of their human rights, including the rights to privacy and bodily autonomy. Therefore, as a human rights organisation, we stand in solidarity with women, girls and those who can become pregnant in the United States.

We are also deeply concerned of the repercussion the US decision could have on the lives of people across the world if reproductive rights are restricted globally. Approximately 60 countries since the 1990s have expanded policies or laws related to abortion access. Many countries across the world in the last few years alone have made great strides in decriminalizing abortion, such as South Korea, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Benin, the DRC, and Ireland.

We fear that the US decision could fuel anti-abortion movements, limit campaigns for abortion access, and disrupt politics related to women’s rights. This could set a precedent for countries who have made great strides in abortion access to reevaluate their position and rollback on progress made.

We believe that removing access to abortion services has implications that go further than just health, as it can also impact girls’, young women and people that can become pregnant rights and opportunities.

Our position is in line with a vast number of human rights organisations and committees including the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child who supports access to abortion and has urged states to “decriminalize abortion to ensure that girls have access to safe abortion and post-abortion services, review legislation with a view to guaranteeing the best interests of pregnant adolescents and ensure that their views are always heard and respected in abortion-related decisions.”

Protestors at COP 28 in Dubai. Photo: Konrad Skotnicki.

Belfast Climate Change March, 2019. Photo: Trócaire.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

Despite their overwhelming contribution to global emissions, fossil fuel companies continue to attract significant financial backing—driven by their enduring profitability. This is starkly illustrated by the case of ExxonMobil, the top fossil fuel investment held by asset managers based in Ireland. In 2023, ExxonMobil reported €33.63 billion ($36 billion) in profit. That is almost twice the GDP of Botswana (€18.1 billion) and nearly three times Namibia’s GDP (€11.5 billion).

Ireland plays a hugely disproportionate role in facilitating investments into fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. In 2023, the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland generated an estimated 72.5 million tons of CO2e. This is more than the CO2e emissions for the entire country of Ireland—and more than ten times that generated by Sierra Leone.

The Global Human Impact

The climate crisis is here, now, and it is causing disproportionate harm in the Global South. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe cyclones are displacing coastal communities, with projections indicating that 17% of the entire country could be underwater by 2050. The legally binding Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly acknowledges the importance of tackling private finance. Its three overarching goals are: keeping below 1.5C of warming; increasing adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low emissions and resilience.

This gives a clear mandate for action: both tax reform and corporate regulation are needed to tackle financial flows, and both nationally in Ireland and at EU level, ‘polluter pays’ taxes are lacking and regulation of the financial sector remains weak and fragmented. While EU regulation exists, it is designed more to nudge investors toward more sustainable investment practices by increasing transparency and reporting levels than to enforce strict standards. And it is moving in the wrong direction: the recently passed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive excluded investments; and now the EU Commission’s Omnibus legislative proposal threatens to undo the limited gains made on climate plans, as well as blocking future attempts for stronger action at national level.

The Risk of Inaction

Fossil fuel investment is too profitable to remain weakly regulated. If Ireland continues with its current strategy of encouraging FDI at all costs, and relying on weak EU regulation, we are headed for catastrophe. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned that every fraction of a degree beyond 1.5°C brings irreversible consequences: collapsed ice sheets, vanishing coral reefs, and extreme weather events that will make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable. And yet, companies are developing oil and gas fields that could push global warming beyond 2°C.

Our research found that 91% of the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland were to companies that have plans for fossil fuel expansion like these. Ireland cannot afford inaction on this issue.

About This Research

The figures in this report regarding investment from Ireland are based on new research commissioned by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire. In the paper, we uncover the scale of fossil fuel investment through Ireland, who the investors are, and in which fossil fuel companies they are investing. We analyse the current regulatory framework and explain why it is inadequate—and moving in the wrong direction. And we make specific recommendations for change, which are summarised below.

Summary of Recommendations

Regulate the private financial sector
Ireland must end its outsized role as an enabler of destructive fossil fuel investment. Ireland should introduce a strong gender-responsive national human rights and environmental due diligence framework which includes the regulation of investors with respect to human rights and the environment and climate. The transposition of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could achieve this if downstream activities are included and the Omnibus proposal is rejected. Ireland should prohibit investments in fossil fuel expansion and require investors to implement climate transition plans consistent with a 1.5°C climate limit.

Endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Ireland should endorse developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to curb fossil fuel expansion and commit to a fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels.

Support tax justice
Ireland should support bold and fair new global tax rules through the UN Framework Convention on Tax, should adopt all OECD BEPS measures, and should conduct an updated and comprehensive spillover analysis of its tax policy. Ireland should take coordinated action globally, at the EU level and domestically to introduce a range of new taxes to mobilise finance needed for climate justice, based on ‘polluter pays’ and social equity principles such as wealth taxes for the highest earners, climate damages tax on investors, fossil fuel production taxes and levies on aviation and shipping.

Finance a just transition
Ireland must also meet its fair share climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and pay our ecological debt to the Global South. Ireland should support conditionality-free debt cancellation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, commit to a new UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, moving debt negotiations from the IMF to the UN, and to a debt workout mechanism that is fully representative and fair.

Reproductive care is a vital human right: standing in solidarity with women, girls, and anyone with the capacity for pregnancy in the USA

The Profit Driving the Crisis

The Global Human Impact

The Risk of Inaction

About This Research

Summary of Recommendations

Further reading

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