Fail: Study gives U.S. an F on reproductive rights

When it comes to reproductive rights, the United States is flunking. A report card from the nonprofit, Washington-based Population Institute has given the U.S. an F for the first time in the eight years it has graded the country’s record.

The institute tracks reproductive health and rights—such as access to family planning, sex education, and abortion services—and said there has been a “steady erosion” of reproductive rights at both the federal and state levels over the past decade. In 2018, the institute gave the U.S. a D-.

“The political war over reproductive health rights is far from over, but the legal and regulatory battle lines have been drawn, and the stakes could not be higher,” said Robert Walker, president of the institute.

Grades for each state in 2019 varied widely: Twenty-three states received a B or higher, with California, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington topping the list with As. Twenty states, however, were given fails: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin. The institute attributed the Fs to the passage of restrictive abortion laws by several of these states that “defy the Roe v. Wade guidelines in hopes of persuading the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the landmark ruling.” Almost 500 abortion restrictions have been passed at the state level since 2010, according to the organization’s report.

Grades measured four aspects of reproductive rights in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including effectiveness—what percentage of pregnancies were unintended, and what was each state’s teenage pregnancy rate?; prevention, which examined sex education in schools, minors’ access to contraceptive services, and whether school nurses were authorized to issue medications; affordability, which looked at state policies meant to make birth control affordable to uninsured and low-income individuals and whether they allowed insurance coverage of abortion services; and finally, access to family planning and abortion services.

Overall, the failing grade was part of an “escalating toll inflicted by the Trump administration and its allies,” the institute said. Measures that brought down the grade in 2019 included new rules for Title X, the country’s public family planning program (also known as the “domestic gag rule”). The administration has cut the program’s capacity in half, instead directing grants toward “‘crisis pregnancy centers’ run by staunch anti-abortion advocates, some of whom do not even provide contraceptive services to clients.”

The score also reflects the administration’s appointment of Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court as well as its nomination of dozens of conservative judges to lower courts, which the institute said may result in even more restrictions to access to reproductive health care.

Another major factor that led to the failing grade was the administration’s efforts to slash federal funding for “comprehensive—and evidence-based—sexuality education” and reroute the money to abstinence-only programs.

Not mincing words, the institute concluded that the “general atmosphere around reproductive health and rights has continued to be extremely hostile across the U.S.”