UN official on Roe v Wade: reversal would ‘give legitimacy to growing anti-women’s rights’

Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN special rapporteur on the Right to Health, in Manhattan, New York, on October. Photograph: Desiree Rios/The Guardian

The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health, one of the international body’s most important human rights advocates, has urged the US supreme court not to end federal protections for abortion rights in America.

The comments from the special rapporteur, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, come after a leaked supreme court draft opinion showed a majority of the court’s conservative justices support overturning the nearly 50-year-old precedent in Roe v Wade.