Along with other young feminists from various countries, I wrote an open letter to defend abortion rights at an international level, especially during forthcoming UN negotiations (Cairo + 20, post-MDGs, 5th World Conference on Women).

We need your signature, and your help in circulating this appeal to your networks!

The open letter will be published in newspapers in just a few days, on September 28, 2012, at the occasion of the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. We are aiming to gather as many signatures of feminists from different countries as possible, in order to show our UN representatives that abortion rights are a struggle that we are also mobilizing around at an international level!

You’ll find below the open letter in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic.

To add your signature, please follow the link to the special petition site  

Please note that the list of signatories may be published on media and the web. All signatories are individuals, not organizations.

 Thank you in advance for your involvement!

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English     French    Spanish   Portuguese   Arabic

The right to abortion is under attack!

International call of young feminists

To our representatives at the United Nations,
Last June, you took a huge step backwards by choosing not to mention ‘reproductive rights’ in the final report of the international Rio+20 conference. In 1994, you had committed to supporting sexual and reproductive rights in the Cairo Action Plan. Are human rights just fleeting declarations, to be forgotten or modified as politics demand?
For us, young feminists from all over the world, women’s sexual and reproductive rights are inalienable and universal. Key amongst is the right to abortion, fundamental for all women on this planet.

We, young feminists, like generations of feminists before us, are fighting every day for the right to legal, free, safe and accessible abortion. In Turkey, the United States or Spain, we have been mobilizing to protect this right where it is under threat; in Poland, Ireland and Brazil, we are organizing to lift all restrictions to it. In many other countries, budget cuts and rollbacks to social programs have been extremely detrimental to women and their health, whether by the closures of women’s clinics, the denial of insurance coverage for contraceptives or the increasing difficulty of accessing safe abortion services. In these countries we are uniting to protect the rights we thought were established.

We, young feminists, demand respect for our right to choose what we want to do with our bodies and our sexualities. No one may interfere with our choices, our bodies and our lives, be it the State, religious authorities, or economic convenience.
In 2014 and 2015, you will review the Cairo Action Plan, the Millennium Development Goals, and perhaps represent your country at a Fifth World Conference on Women. We expect you to reaffirm your commitment for all sexual and reproductive rights, and, specifically, that you explicitly support the right to safe abortion for all women from all countries in the world.
Today, we, young feminists from all continents, refuse any step backward with regards international human rights, and we ask you to represent us during the forthcoming UN negotiations with political courage and conviction.

It is your duty to make our voices heard, support our call, and recognize that each woman has the right to proclaim that “My body is mine!”