The Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA): federal legislation that will protect the right to access abortion care throughout the United States.
**WHPA will be reintroduced in Spring 2021. Stay tuned for more information!**
Equal access to abortion care—everywhere—is essential for social and economic equality, reproductive autonomy, and the right to determine our own lives. But anti-abortion state lawmakers have passed hundreds of restrictive laws making abortion care extremely difficult to access for many people—despite constitutional protections.
THE RIGHT TO ABORTION IS NOT REAL IF ONLY CERTAIN PEOPLE CAN ACCESS IT.
WHPA addresses the current attacks on abortion rights across the U.S.
WHPA protects the right to access abortion free from medically unnecessary restrictions and bans on abortion—including mandatory waiting periods, biased counseling, two-trip requirements, and mandatory ultrasounds.
WHPA would create a statutory right for health care providers to provide abortion care, and a corresponding right for their patients to receive that care, free from medically unnecessary restrictions that single out abortion and impede access.
WHPA works toward reproductive, economic, and racial justice.
The elimination of abortion restrictions is central to Reproductive Justice and the human right to maintain bodily autonomy and to live in safe and sustainable communities. People hurt most by abortion restrictions are those already facing barriers to accessing health care and who are bearing the brunt of the pandemic and economic crisis—particularly Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), women, and those working to make ends meet.
WHPA will be reintroduced in the 117th Congress by lead sponsors Representatives Judy Chu (D-CA), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Veronica Escobar (D-TX) and Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). During the 116th Congress, WHPA earned 260 co-sponsors, more than in any previous Congress. See all the 116th co-sponsors in the House and Senate.