“If any of you worry about the issues that are going on in the world as you listen to the news every day and you feel somewhat powerless because the problems, the fractures, are too large and too many, I think you and I can take comfort that PHR is playing its part everywhere in […]
April 16, 2024
Asylum, Attacks on Health Care, Death Investigations, Excessive Force, Mass Atrocities, Reproductive Justice, Sexual Violence, Torture
The U.S. Congress should immediately abolish the use of solitary confinement in U.S. immigration detention facilities, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) urged during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. “Solitary confinement unquestionably leads to severely detrimental health effects. What’s more, sensible alternatives exist. I urge you to pass legislation eliminating solitary confinement completely, and […]
The 55th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva concluded last week. Headed by PHR’s Executive Director Sam Zarifi, JD, LLM, the PHR delegation included Christian De Vos, JD, PhD, director of research and investigations, and Uliana Poltavets, Ukraine emergency response coordinator. The team presented several interventions before the Council, partnered […]
April 16, 2024
Attacks on Health Care, Mass Atrocities, Sexual Violence
Recent state supreme court decisions in Arizona and Florida that uphold dangerous and draconian abortion bans seriously threaten the health of pregnant people and represent the latest attack on reproductive justice in the United States, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said today. “PHR’s research shows that from Louisiana to Oklahoma to Texas to Idaho and […]
Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill Thursday that prohibits state law enforcement, first responders, and coroners from using the invalid concept of “excited delirium,” making Colorado the second state after California to ban the term. The bill follows a landmark research report from PHR that found that “excited delirium” – often used to explain […]
The conflict that started in Tigray, Ethiopia in 2020 continues to cause devastating harm to civilians and the health sector and has led to a large-scale humanitarian and human rights crisis that continues in Tigray and has spread to other regions of Ethiopia. PHR has worked with our medical, public health, and human rights partners […]
An Idaho state law (“The Idaho Act”) that bans pregnancy termination except to prevent the death of a pregnant patient is “demonstrably in conflict” with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires that health facilities offer stabilizing treatment – including pregnancy termination – when clinically indicated to preserve the health of […]
In amicus curiae brief filed in Idaho v. United States, PHR documents how Idaho’s abortion ban dangerously overrides U.S. government protections in the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA), fueling a health and human rights crisis for patients and physicians.
Today, Lift Louisiana, Physicians for Human Rights, Reproductive Health Impact, and the Center for Reproductive Rights published an extensive fact-finding report titled “Criminalized Care: How Louisiana’s Abortion Bans Endanger Patients and Clinicians.” This is the most rigorous and expansive study to date on the impacts of the Dobbs decision on pregnant people and clinicians in […]
Louisiana’s abortion bans violate federal law meant to protect patients, disregard evidence-based public health guidance, degrade long-standing medical ethical standards, and, worst of all, deny basic human rights to Louisianans seeking reproductive health care in their state.
