Has filed state and federal lawsuits demanding access to taxpayer-funded abortions for low-income women.
Opposes ban on partial-birth abortion
Opposes any pre-abortion counseling or education in clinics, particularly counseling that might encourage a woman to keep, rather than abort, a child
Seeks to guarantee abortion-on-demand as a basic, worldwide human right
The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) was founded in 1992 as the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. CRR's mission, according to its website, is to guarantee safe, affordable contraception and abortion-on-demand for all women, including adolescents (who, according to CRR, should be free to undergo abortion procedures without parental notification). The organization seeks to ensure that abortion centers are allowed to operate unimpeded, and has filed state and federal lawsuits demanding access to taxpayer-funded abortions (through Medicaid) for low-income women.
CRR opposes bans on the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion, including a Nebraska state ordinance (Stenberg v. Carhart) that forbade the live vaginal delivery of a fetus for the express purpose of killing it, in 2000. It seeks to spread acceptance of abortion-on-demand to other countries throughout the world, and pushes the U.S. to support worldwide abortion rights through the United Nations. Rejecting any attempts to grant the legal status of "person" to the unborn, CRR opposed the 2004 Unborn Victims of Violence Act which recognized unborn children killed during the commission of a crime as victims.
A member group of the National Council of Women's Organizations, CRR opposes any pre-abortion counseling or education in clinics, particularly counseling that might encourage a woman to keep, rather than abort, a child; it has frankly acknowledged its intent to use abortion as a litmus test for its support of any federal judge nominees, including Supreme Court Justices; it endorses RU-486 (Mifepristone, the so-called "abortion pill"), and has encouraged the FDA to make it available without a prescription. CRR also opposes the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, legislation that renders it a federal crime for a teen to attempt to avoid the abortion laws of her own state by going to another (less restrictive) state to undergo the procedure.
The larger goal of CRR is to guarantee abortion-on-demand as a basic, worldwide human right. By extension, those opposing abortion-on-demand would be in violation of human rights legislation and liable for arrest and punishment at the hands of an international tribunal.
CRR's current President is Nancy Northup, formerly of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Northup also served as a consulting attorney with the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. CRR's Director of Communications is Ellen Sweet, former Senior Editor at Ms. Magazine. The Director of Development is Vivian Lindermayer, formerly of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
