Help Support the Human Rights of Birthing Women!

National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) needs your help to take advantage of an amazing opportunity to share our birth justice expertise with human rights advocates and maternity care experts from around the world.

NAPW believes that women retain their human rights at all stages of pregnancy, and that reproductive justice applies to all pregnant women and demands that they have the right to give birth with dignity. We have been offered the opportunity to contribute our unique perspective at a groundbreaking international conference on women’s human rights during pregnancy and birth.

Without your help, though, we will not be able to go.

“Human Rights in Childbirth,” to be held in the Hague, is the first conference of its kind, bringing together international experts in human rights and in maternal and fetal health. The conference follows a recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights, stating that women have a human right to choose the circumstances and location in which they give birth. Participation by U.S. human rights advocates is vital to realizing this landmark victory for American women. NAPW’s experience and deep understanding of the coercion and punishment women and families can face around pregnancy and birth give us unique knowledge and perspectives essential to understanding this decision and its implications for the rights of all pregnant women.

If, with your help, we can raise the funds to attend the conference, NAPW will bring information and insights that draw on our years of first-hand experience defending pregnant women in criminal and civil child welfare cases. We have been invited to present on a panel entitled “The Rights of the Baby,” where we will illustrate the ways that legally separating fetuses from the pregnant woman who carries, nurtures, and sustains it has dangerously empowered the state and outsiders to punish a wide range of pregnant women and restrict women’s birthing options in the U.S. We will share lessons learned from our extensive documentation of violations of women’s Constitutional and human rights during pregnancy and birth, and bring home fresh models and perspectives from other countries to improve respect of women’s human rights in childbirth domestically.

As thanks for your generosity, we will provide free access to a live "report-back" webinar after the conference for those who donate $25 or more. Those who donate $50 or more will also be invited to get an early look and have an opportunity to give feedback in a pre-conference webinar.

This is a crucial opportunity for NAPW to make a valuable, lasting contribution to the field of women’s human rights. But a struggling economy and a wave of unjust prosecutions of pregnant women have left NAPW without the resources needed to bring our expertise to the global women’s rights conversation. We need your help to bring these women’s voices and stories to this audience of international change makers.

Your donation will help NAPW send our staff member, expert in international human rights law and birth justice, to the Hague as well as make it possible for an emerging legal scholar and expert in midwifery and health care systems to participate in this unprecedented event. Donations in any amount will help us reach our goal of sending the world a message: birthing rights are human rights!