Abortion care is essential health care. Everyone should have the right and the ability to make their own decisions about reproductive health care, including whether to have an abortion.
But religious extremists and their lawmaker allies have been trying to end legal abortions since Roe v. Wade, often citing their personal religious beliefs as justification for abortion bans and policies that restrict abortion access. AU works with the reproductive rights community to ensure that religion is not used to deny access to abortion.
In AU lawsuits against the Trump-era Denial of Care Rule, health experts said inviting health care providers to deny care because of their religious beliefs would further reduce access to abortions and other reproductive care.
Elected officials, including former Vice President Pence and state legislators across the country, have tried to impose their personal religious beliefs on all of us through anti-abortion policies.
More than 60% of people who have had abortions claim a religious affilation, according to a Guttmacher Institute study.
Abortion bans violate the separation of church and state. Americans United and the National Women’s Law Center—the leading experts in religious freedom and gender justice—have joined forces with thirteen clergy from six faith traditions to challenge Missouri’s abortion bans as unconstitutionally imposing one narrow religious doctrine on everyone.
