There’s no question where this United Nations official stands on abortion.

Deputy Human Rights High Commissioner Kate Gilmore told the Guardian that the strict abortion laws being passed in several American states is “a crisis direct at women.”

“ ‘We have not called it out in the same way we have other forms of extremist hate, but this is gender-based violence against women, no question.’ ” — Kate Gilmore

Gilmore, who was appointed to the position in 2015, added that a committee of U.N. experts has independently declared that the absolute prohibition of abortion is against human rights. She said the restrictive abortion bans recently passed in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri and Ohio, and advancing elsewhere, were “deeply distressing.”

“ ‘It’s clear it’s torture – it’s a deprivation of a right to health.’ ” — Kate Gilmore

She also argued at a Guardian event on reproductive rights last week that abortion-opposition groups put their ideologies over scientific evidence. “It’s an assault on truth, science and universal values and norms,” she said. “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”

The evidence she’s referencing stresses that outlawing abortions does not stop women from getting them; instead, it prevents them from getting the procedure done safely. The Guttmacher Institute, for one, estimates that 56 million abortions were performed each year between 2010 and 2014, and 25 million of those were considered unsafe. The World Health Organization has also reported that in wealthy countries, an estimated 30 women die for every 100,000 unsafe abortions, but in poorer developing countries, that jumps to 220 women killed per 100,000. In sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, the fatalities spike to 520 women for every 100,000 risky procedures.

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In the U.S., 75% of women who obtain abortions are low-income, and nearly half live below the federal poverty level. And women who are denied abortions are more likely to be living in poverty four years later, according to a 2018 American Journal of Public Health report. What’s more, they were also less likely to have a full-time job, and were more reliant on public assistance than women who were able to get abortions.

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“We have to stand with the evidence and facts and in solidarity with women, and in particular young women and minority women who are really under the gun. This doesn’t affect well-off women in the same way as women with no resources, or able-bodied women the way it affects disabled women, and urban women the way it affects rural women,” said Gilmore.