Reproductive Health Justice for Women with Disabilities

This Paper has been drafted on behalf of the National Organization for Women (NOW) Foundation by the NOW Disability Rights Advisory Committee. The Disability Rights Advisory Committee is comprised of NOW members who are currently living with disabilities and/or who serve as disability allies in their personal and professional lives. Through advocacy, education and action, the Committee strives to advance the full participation of women and girls with disabilities in the United States and throughout the world. Since the dawn of the post–World War II era, women with disabilities, family members, activists, and advocates have worked to create what has evolved into the modern Disability Rights Movement, to effect critical changes towards the empowerment and enfranchisement of all people with disabilities. In the United States despite significant achievements in human and civil rights, many of which were won as a result of hallmark legislation and litigation during the second half of the twentieth century, women with disabilities still experience lagging equality in access to adequate reproductive health care, and face double discrimination on the basis of gender and ability (Blank and Adya, 2007; Shapiro, 1994).

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