Washington, DC – Today, a broad and diverse community of more than 100 organizations released the 2023 Blueprint for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Policy Agenda.
The 2023 Blueprint Policy Agenda focuses on specific policy and leadership actions the Executive Branch can take to further advance sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice (SRHRJ).
The Blueprint Policy Agenda is rooted in the bold vision that every person has the ability to make their own decisions about their lives and health regardless of who they are, how much money they have, or where they live.
“The National Health Law Program (NHeLP) is pleased to join more than 100 organizations in the release of the 2023 Blueprint for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Policy Agenda. We ask the Biden Administration to protect and defend the rights of low-income and underserved populations to access sexual and reproductive health care,” said Fabiola Carrión, Director of Reproductive and Sexual Health at the National Health Law Program. “We believe that the executive branch has the opportunity to take swift and bold action to ensure that everyone has access to health care no matter who they are, how much money they make, where they live, or what type of insurance they have. For example, the Biden Administration can rescind harmful policies like Executive Order 13535 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA), as well as finalize rules that protect and expand access to health care coverage including abortion, contraception, pregnancy care, and gender-affirming care like the proposed rule on Section 1557 (the ACA nondiscrimination provision). The Administration should also expand over-the-counter contraceptive access to underserved communities by removing the prescription requirement for Medicaid beneficiaries. Lastly, we ask the Administration to enforce current federal law like Medicaid abortion coverage requirements.”
The Blueprint Policy Agenda can be downloaded at: ReproBlueprint.org
The Executive Summary can be downloaded at: ReproBlueprint.org
The Blueprint Policy Agenda identifies several key policy actions for the executive branch to take, including:
- WORK WITH CONGRESS ON MEANINGFUL BUDGETS: Establish a budget that reflects a commitment to SRHRJ domestically and globally by ending restrictions that limit access to SRHRJ coverage and care and providing adequate funding to truly meet the need for SRHRJ coverage, including fully funding the Title X Family Planning Program, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, the Division of Adolescent and School Health, the Title V Maternal & Child Health Services Block Grant, international family planning and reproductive health programs, UNFPA, and other federal programs that address SRH.
- REVERSE HARMFUL POLICIES: Rescind policies that deny people full equality, such as Executive Order 13535 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Consistency with Longstanding Restrictions on the Use of Federal Funds for Abortion; and Executive Order 13798, Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty, which sets the stage for expanding the use of religion to discriminate against people seeking sexual and reproductive health care.
- FOCUS ON RULEMAKING: Finalize all proposed rules that protect and expand access to health care and coverage, including abortion, birth control, and gender-affirming care, and those that regulate coverage for specific populations, including immigrants, Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, young people, people with low incomes, and people with disabilities.
- AFFIRM U.S. COMMITMENT TO GLOBAL SRHRJ: Launch an initiative to integrate, elevate, and prioritize sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice across foreign policy priorities and global health, development, and humanitarian programs. This effort must include ensuring all agencies that administer global health programs and U.S. Missions provide clear, ongoing, and proactive communication that reflects U.S. support for sexual and reproductive health and rights and clarify what is permitted under current abortion funding restrictions to ensure access to allowable abortion services, information and counseling in countries where abortion is legal; as well as communicating that the global gag rule is no longer in place.
- PROTECT PATIENT PRIVACY: Ensure the privacy and safety of consumers’ health and health-related information, especially any new HIPAA privacy rule protections regarding reproductive health data, as well as ensuring the federal criminal code cannot be used to prosecute people for self-managed abortion and ensure that law enforcement agencies cannot take action against those individuals.
- DEFEND ACCESS TO SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE AND RIGHTS IN COURT: Robustly enforce the protections afforded by Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), access to care under the Title X Family Planning Program, access to medication abortion, the right to contraception established in Griswold v. Connecticut, and other attempts to restrict access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care and rights.
- EXPAND ACCESS TO CONTRACEPTION: Increase access to contraception over-the-counter (OTC) by eliminating the unnecessary prescription barrier and requiring insurance plans to cover the cost with no out-of-pocket cost, consistent with the ACA.
- PROTECT ACCESS TO MEDICATION ABORTION AND SELF-MANAGED ABORTION: Build public education and outreach efforts to combat widespread misinformation regarding medication abortion, including creating and supporting the public availability of materials that includes medically accurate information about how self-managed abortion with pills works, what the common side effects are, and under what conditions a person may need to seek medical help following a medication abortion or miscarriage.
- ADDRESS THE MATERNAL HEALTH CRISIS: Develop a robust research and outreach initiative on U.S. maternal mortality, which disproportionately impacts Black and Indigenous communities, in the form of an interagency task force and prioritize funding research to improve maternal health and pregnancy outcomes, ensuring healthy lives for all.
- ADVANCE COMPREHENSIVE SEX EDUCATION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE: Issue guidance and recommendations that are supportive of young people’s access to inclusive evidence-based, medically accurate, age- and developmentally appropriate, culturally and linguistically responsive, trauma informed, affirming of LGBTQIA+ individuals sex education.
- PROTECT AND EXPAND IMMIGRANT ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE: Strengthen standards of care for people in immigration detention, including guaranteed access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care, including by explicitly recognizing providers of sexual and reproductive health services among health care providers recognized as sensitive locations.
- ENSURE COVERAGE AND CARE FOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV: Require ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) jurisdiction plans to include clear commitments to support state efforts to reform or repeal HIV criminalization laws; and to engage with people living with HIV who have experienced incarceration to address the residual impacts of criminalization, including access to adequate treatment and care.
Because many policies require Congressional action, the Blueprint Policy Agenda also identifies several impactful leadership actions for the executive branch to take, including:
- COMBAT STIGMA AND DIS/MISINFORMATION: Use the White House bully pulpit to drive narrative around the importance of access to SRH, combat inflammatory rhetoric and de-stigmatize health care, including abortion, gender-affirming care, and birth control. Combat widespread misinformation about medication abortion. Condemn anti-abortion violence, intimidation of health care providers and patients, and pregnancy criminalization and violations of privacy.
- NOMINATE PRO-SRH PERSONNEL: Prioritize putting forth judicial nominees with a demonstrated commitment to equal justice, civil rights, equal rights, individual liberties, and fundamental rights of equal protection, dignity, and privacy. For all executive-branch positions, nominate individuals who are experts in their field, committed to the core mission of the agency, possess a positive record on reproductive health, rights, and justice, and who will contribute to the diversity of the executive branch.
- MAXIMIZE INFRASTRUCTURE: Expand the scope and mandate of the Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force. Developing a national SRHRJ Strategy, including a framework for integrating sexual and reproductive health equity (SRHE) into federal processes. Establish a permanent infrastructure dedicated to promoting SRHRJ policies and programs grounded in human rights and racial equity. Name a co-director for the White House Gender Policy Council.
- PROMOTE ENGAGEMENT AND CONVENING: Convene a national conference with federal and state policy experts, cabinet-level officials, nonprofit organizations, and other stakeholders, as well as state attorneys general, to discuss and review strategies to protect and expand SRHRJ. Convene a federal advisory committee, or similar entity, to provide access to information and advice, and the public with an opportunity to provide input into a process that may form the basis for policy actions. Mark the 30th anniversary of the landmark International Conference on Population and Development with a high level event in Washington, DC that recommits the U.S. government to the ICPD Program of Action through both rhetoric and action.
- CHAMPION SRHR IN DIPLOMACY AND MULTILATERAL SETTINGS: Leverage the United States’ diplomatic power to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights around the world and urge all countries and leaders to respect, protect, and fulfill the sexual and reproductive health and rights of all people. Support outcome documents, policies at international negotiations, and civil society participation in multilateral bodies and executive boards, which strengthen access to full, evidence-based, sexual and reproductive health and rights. Promote inclusion of civil society experts in multilateral fora, specifically by including diverse, evidence-based participants within the official delegations to international negotiations.
- ADVANCE TELEHEALTH EQUITABLY: Coordinate across agencies and sectors to ensure individuals are able to access health care via advancements in technology, with telehealth models of care, education on digital and health literacy, and supports for providers to provide services in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner. All the while centering equity to ensure that the latest innovations and technologies are available to all communities, including via telehealth.
The 2023 Blueprint Policy Agenda builds upon the many actions that the Biden-Harris administration has taken to advance and defend access to sexual and reproductive health care.
The 2019 Blueprint was the first time a wide range of reproductive health, justice, and rights organizations came together to publicly release a detailed and intersectional policy agenda.
Yet, a lot has changed. The wrongly decided United States Supreme Court decision to end the constitutional right to abortion was an attack on bodily autonomy and is part of an ongoing global assault on human rights to undermine access to contraception, sex education, gender-affirming care, the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQIA+ people, and more. Simultaneously, there are growing crises in maternal health, STI rates, climate, and many more.
The Blueprint Policy Agenda serves as both a stake in the ground as well as a policy roadmap to reverse this harmful trajectory.
ENDORSING ORGANIZATIONS: 100+ organizations have endorsed the Blueprint:
Abortion Access Front
ACCESS REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
ACLU
Advocates for Youth
Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH)
AIDS Alabama
AIDS Alliance for Women, Infants, Children, Youth & Families
AIDS United
Alia Alamal Association
All-Options
All* Above All
American Atheists
American Humanist Association
American Jewish World Service
Amplify Youth Health Collective
AVAC
Black Women for Wellness
Black Women for Wellness Action Project
California NOW
Catholics for Choice
Center for Biological Diversity
Center for Reproductive Rights
Church in the Cliff
Coalition to Expand Contraceptive Access
Collective Power for Reproductive Justice
Community Catalyst
Contraceptive Access Initiative
Council for Global Equality
EMAA Project
EngenderHealth
Essential Access Health
Families USA
Fòs Feminista, International Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice
FP2030
Girls Health Ed
Global Fund for Women
Guttmacher Institute
Healthy Teen Network
Hollywood NOW
Human Rights Campaign
Ibis Reproductive Health
If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice
In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda
interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth
International Center for Research on Women
Ipas
Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health
Jane’s Due Process
Lawyering Project
Michigan Organization on Adolescent Sexual Health
MomsRising
National Abortion Federation
National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum
National Black Women’s HIV/AIDS Network
National Center for Lesbian Rights
National Council of Jewish Women
National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association
National Health Law Program
National Institute for Reproductive Health
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice
National Network to End Domestic Violence
National Organization for Women
National Organization for Women Foundation
National Partnership for Women & Families
National Women’s Health Network
National Women’s Law Center
New Voices for Reproductive Justice
Nicole Clark Consulting, LLC
North Carolina National Organization for Women
Our Bodies Ourselves
PAI
Physicians for Reproductive Health
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Population Connection Action Fund
Population Institute
Positive Women’s Network-USA
Power to Decide
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Reproductive Freedom For All
Reproductive Health Impact: The Collaborative for Equity & Justice
Reproductive Justice Resilience Project
Rhia Ventures
RHITES (Reproductive Health Initiative for Telehealth Equity & Solutions)
Secular Coalition for America
SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change
TEACH (Training in Early Abortion for Comprehensive Healthcare)
Teen Health Mississippi
The Feminist Wire
The Hunger Project
The Population Council
The Southwest Women’s Law Center
The TRIAD Trust
The Womxn Project
Ubuntu Black Family Wellness Collective
UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health
Ujima Inc., The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community
UltraViolet
Universal Access Project
Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism
USA for UNFPA
Washington State Federation of Democratic Women
We Testify
Whitman-Walker Institute
Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault
Women Deliver
Women Lawyers On Guard Action Network, Inc.
Women’s Refugee Commission
