Write your government representative participating in the upcoming review of the Millennium Development Goals. Urge her or him to raise the urgent need to decriminalize abortion for women worldwide as an immediate remedy for avoidable pregnancy-related deaths and as an essential step towards achieving sex equality.
I am writing to urge you, in the context of [insert name of country]’s up-coming participation in the review of the Millennium Development Goals, to raise the urgent need to decriminalize abortion for women worldwide as an immediate remedy for avoidable pregnancy-related deaths and as an essential step towards achieving sex equality.
The Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000, include a commitment to substantially lower maternal mortality and improve gender and sex equality by the year 2015. Worldwide some 13 percent of maternal mortality is caused by unsafe abortions, and this proportion is often more than twice as high where abortion is considered a crime. The decriminalization of abortion would therefore likely achieve precisely the kind of advance the goals are meant to point towards.
For this reasons, and because reproductive rights, including access to safe and legal abortion, are a critical component of women’s human rights, it is imperative that [insert name of country] seizes this opportunity to call for the decriminalization of abortion. I urge you to make this an urgent priority.
Yours sincerely,
[Insert your name and address here]
Related Material
Women’s Sexual Autonomy and Reproductive Choices
Campaign Document, September 1, 2005