Reproductive Freedom For All Celebrates National Immigrant Heritage Month and Defends Immigrant Rights - Reproductive Freedom for All®

Formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America

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Reproductive Freedom For All Celebrates National Immigrant Heritage Month and Defends Immigrant Rights

Reproductive Freedom For All Celebrates National Immigrant Heritage Month and Defends Immigrant Rights

June marks National Immigrant Heritage Month, a time to celebrate communities that strengthen our nation, and have long been a driving force in the movement to expand and protect freedom, including reproductive freedom. We celebrate the vibrant cultures, resilience, and leadership of immigrant communities, whose stories reflect the values at the heart of our democracy.

This month is also a reminder that those ideals are under attack. As the Trump administration escalates its assault on immigrant communities, families are denied due process, forced to live in fear, and stripped of their dignity. The strength of our democracy is threatened when immigrant communities are marginalized and silenced. The truth is, no one is free until we all are. We cannot achieve reproductive freedom while people are denied health care, have their autonomy taken away, or live under the constant threat of detention or deportation.

Immigrants have long been at the forefront of advancing reproductive freedom as health care providers, advocates, midwives, doulas, and community leaders. Today, they make up nearly 20% of the U.S. health care workforce—including our physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and home health aides—helping sustain access to health care nationwide. Organizations leading the fight for immigrant health, including the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, Caribbean Women’s Health Association, and National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, have expanded access to culturally responsive reproductive health care, challenged systemic barriers, and fought to ensure immigrant communities can exercise their fundamental rights. Immigration advocates have also exposed reproductive health abuses in immigration detention facilities and advanced the principle that reproductive freedom is a human right.

Yet reproductive freedom remains out of reach for many immigrant communities because of restrictive policies and systemic barriers. Noncitizen immigrants are more likely to be uninsured and face barriers to routine health care. Many lawful permanent residents must wait five years before becoming eligible for Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), while DACA recipients and undocumented immigrants remain excluded from most federal health coverage programs, including Affordable Care Act marketplace plans. Reproductive Freedom for All has endorsed legislation to address these longstanding inequities, including the LIFT the BAR Act and the HEAL Act.

Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, twenty-one states have banned abortion, many of which are home to large immigrant populations, including Texas and Florida. In total, at least 1.9 million undocumented women live in states with abortion bans or severe restrictions. Abortion restrictions disproportionately harm immigrant communities, particularly undocumented individuals and mixed-status families, who face additional obstacles to care and heightened risk of criminalization. For those unable to travel across state lines, access to medication abortion is especially important—yet it remains under attack by Trump’s FDA. Along the southern border, where providers are already in short supply, aggressive immigration enforcement compounds the harms of abortion bans, making it even harder for people to access care.

Individuals in immigration detention face some of the most severe threats to their reproductive autonomy. Human rights advocates have documented restrictions on abortion access, inadequate prenatal care, separation of family, and prolonged detention of children and pregnant people in these detention centers. These horrors demonstrate how reproductive autonomy has been weaponized through immigration enforcement. Advocates also warn that transferring pregnant migrants to Texas—a state with a total abortion ban—raises serious concerns about access to care, the treatment of U.S.-born infants in custody, and threats to birthright citizenship.

Reproductive Freedom for All’s 4.5 million members are committed to building a world where everyone—regardless of immigration status—has the freedom to make decisions about their body, family, and future. We are united in pushing back against policies that dehumanize, criminalize, and exclude. Together, we will continue to fight to protect and expand reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy for all.

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For over 55 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4.5 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.