Rapid Response to Control Over Reproductive Freedom

The National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan (NPEIV) is an overarching coalition of individuals, organizations, agencies, and groups that embrace a national, multi-disciplinary, and multicultural commitment to violence prevention across the lifespan.

And we are extremely concerned regarding the recent legislative movement in states such as Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky to restrict the personal rights and agency of women and their constitutionally protected reproductive freedom. Not only are these laws misogynistic in nature, they ignore the severe trauma caused by sexual violence. They place the health and well-being of not only survivors of sexual violence, but women in need of life-saving medical procedures, at risk. These types of laws also dehumanize women and place the rights of abusers over the rights of victims.

Reproductive coercion – in which someone else controls an individual’s reproductive choices - is a recognized form of intimate partner violence, most often perpetrated against women. Laws restricting a woman’s right to make personal decisions about her health, body, and reproductive choice is nothing more than reproductive coercion at the governmental level. Interpersonal violence is violence, whether governmentally sanctioned or otherwise. Please use your voice to stand up against these abuses by calling your legislators to tell them to respect the rights of their mothers and all women.

NPEIV is committed to reducing interpersonal violence and its consequences through scientific research and application of empirical findings. It is our mission to make the prevention of interpersonal violence a national and international priority, and to encourage healthy relationships by linking science, practice, policy and advocacy.

Through our many partnerships and collaborations, it is our vision to end all types of interpersonal violence, for all people, in all communities, at all stages of life. For more information, please visit www.npeiv.org