Reproductive Rights

12 Key excerpts on "Reproductive Rights"

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  Creating a New Consensus on Population

  The Politics of Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, and Women's Empowerment

  • Jyoti Shankar Singh(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7.2. Reproductive health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes. Reproductive health therefore implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. Implicit in this last condition are the right of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, as well as other methods of their choice for regulation of fertility which are not against the law, and the right of access to appropriate health-care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant. In line with the above definition of reproductive health, reproductive health care is defined as the constellation of methods, techniques and services that contribute to reproductive health and well-being by preventing and solving reproductive health problems. It also includes sexual health, the purpose of which is the enhancement of life and personal relations, and not merely counselling and care related to reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases.

  7.3. Bearing in mind the above definition, Reproductive Rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. It also includes their right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents. In the exercise of this right, they should take into account the needs of their living and future children and their responsibilities towards the community. The promotion of the responsible exercise of these rights for all people should be the fundamental basis for government- and community-supported policies and programmes in the area of reproductive health, including family planning. As part of their commitment, full attention should be given to the promotion of mutually respectful and equitable gender relations and particularly to meeting the educational and service needs of adolescents to enable them to deal in a positive and responsible way with their sexuality. Reproductive health eludes many of the world’s people because of such factors as: inadequate levels of knowledge about human sexuality and inappropriate or poor-quality reproductive health information and services; the prevalence of high-risk sexual behaviour; discriminatory social practices; negative attitudes towards women and girls; and the limited power many women and girls have over their sexual and reproductive lives. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable because of their lack of information and access to relevant services in most countries. Older women and men have distinct reproductive and sexual health issues which are often inadequately addressed

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  Faith-Based Organizations at the United Nations

  • Jeff Haynes(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  These include the right of all persons, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence, to: receive the highest attainable standard of health in relation ▸ to sexuality, including access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services seek and impart information in relation to sexuality ▸ receive sexuality education ▸ have respect for bodily integrity ▸ 91 Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights have a free choice of partner ▸ decide whether to be sexually active or not ▸ have consensual sexual relations ▸ have consensual marriage ▸ decide whether or not and when to have children ▸ pursue a satisfying, safe, and pleasurable sexual life.” ▸ According to WHO, “the responsible exercise of human rights requires that all persons respect the rights of others” (quoted in Berer, 2004: 6). Turning to the term “Reproductive Rights,” the following definition was agreed by the UN Program of Action adopted at the ICPD at Cairo, September 5–13, 1994, para. 7.3: “Reproductive Rights” embrace certain human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic rights for all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to the highest attainable standard of sexual and repro- ductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimina- tion, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents. (http://www.choiceforyouth.org/information/ treaties/international-conference-on-population-and- development) The definitions of both sexual rights and Reproductive Rights highlighted here indicate how both terms are intimately linked to human rights more generally, in relation to women, girls, and babies.

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  Ethical Dilemmas in Assisted Reproductive Technologies

  • Joseph G. Schenker(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  Reproductive Rights embrace certain human rights that 30 3 Reproductive Rights as an integral part of women’s rights are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents, and other relevant UN consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing, and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion, and violence. Full attention should be given to promoting mutually respectful and equitable gender relations and particularly to meeting the educational and service needs of adolescents to enable them to deal in a positive and responsible way with their sexuality. (United Nations 1995) Assisted reproduction technology (ART) and, more specifically, in vitro fertilization (IVF) in its many forms, is not specifically mentioned, and for good reasons: In 1994, the procedure was still available only in selected centers and in a limited number of countries, and it would have made no sense to mandate that couples must have access to ART. Today, however, the situation is rapidly changing, and we would not be sur-prised if, in a not too distant future, a right to affordable access to ART would be added to Reproductive Rights. Given the present situation, this chapter will address women’s rights within the broader context of women’s health, especially because, for physicians in general and for gynecologists in particular, the important issues are access to health care and freedom from violence.

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  Local Action/Global Change

  A Handbook on Women's Human Rights

  • Julie A. Mertus, Nancy Flowers(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6 Women's Human Rights to Reproduction and Sexuality DOI: 10.4324/9781315633619-6

  [R]eproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health.

  —Programme of Action, United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, Paragraph 7.3

  We, the Governments participating in the Fourth World Conference on Women, are determined to … [e]nsure equal access to and equal treatment of women and men in education and health care and enhance women’s sexual and reproductive health as well as education.

  —Beijing Platform for Action, Paragraph 1.30

  Objectives

  The learning activities and background information contained in this chapter will enable participants to work toward the following objectives:

  • Recognize the importance of reproductive and sexual rights for women and their interconnection with other human rights.
  • Identify obstacles to women’s reproductive and sexual rights.
  • Define the role of government, community leaders, the media, and women themselves in protecting and advocating for women’s reproductive and sexual rights.
  • Critically analyze the relation between population policies and reproductive and sexual rights.
  • Debate the issue of reproductive and sexual health education from the perspective of women’s human rights.
  • Remember core concepts.

  Getting Started: Thinking About Reproductive and Sexual Rights

  About half the world’s female population is of reproductive age (15–49). Over the next twenty years, this group will increase by 30 percent. Half of the world’s population is under the age of 25, and within fifteen years—less than one generation—all 3 billion will have reached reproductive age.1

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  Population Policy and Women's Rights

  Transforming Reproductive Choice

  • Ruth Dixon-Mueller(Author)
  • 1993(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Yet, it is at these levels that policy decisions are made that can affect women's lives in fundamental ways. THE IDEA OF Reproductive Rights AND FREEDOMS The idea of Reproductive Rights and freedoms cannot be considered apart from the exercise of other basic human rights. Reproductive freedom lies at the core of individual self-determination. The principle of "vol- untary motherhood" was central to the movement for female emanci- pation among nineteenth-century liberal feminists, for example (see chapter 2), whereas birth control for socialist and radical feminists was more often a means to sexual and social liberation. One of the earliest international documents on family planning (the 1966 Declaration on Pop- ulation by World Leaders) reflected the liberal tradition by defining family planning as a means of "assuring greater opportunity to each person" and of "free[ing] man to attain his individual dignity and reach his full potential" (United Nations 1975:9). At least three types of Reproductive Rights can be distinguished: (1) the freedom to decide how many children to have and when (or whether) to have them; (2) the right to have the information and means to regulate one's fertility; (3) the right to "control one's own body." The first two concepts have been formalized in various U.N. declarations since the mid-1960s while the third has emerged primarily from feminist discourse. What do these rights imply for the individual, the family, the state? Reproductive freedom refers in most U.N. documents to the freedom of all persons of "full age" to marry or not, to choose one's spouse, to have children or not, and to decide when to have them and how many to have. The concept has gone through an evolutionary process that is not yet complete.

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  Vulnerability and Human Rights

  • Bryan S. Turner(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Penn State University Press

    (Publisher)

  Women’s social rights are very closely connected with their re- productive rights. Article 12 of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1997) says that states should ‘‘take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on a basis of equality with men and women, access to health care services, including those relating to family planning.’’ The 1994 International Conference on Population and Develop- ment recognized the importance of a satisfying and safe sexual life as the basis of the capability to reproduce and the freedom to choose when and how to reproduce. Reproductive citizenship can also be said to include a right not to reproduce. Human rights conventions include reproductive and sexual rights 81 the protection of women (and men) from the threat of rape, especially sexual violence and collective slavery in war conditions. Clearly illus- trating the recognition of such rights, the Hague tribunal on Yugoslav war crimes decided to regard the rape of Muslim women during the Bosnia crisis of 1992–95 as a crime against humanity. The tribunal elevated mass rape from a mere violation of the ‘‘customs of war’’ to a heinous crime. By contrast, sexual citizenship promotes the idea of sexual intimacy as a right and makes no assumptions about reproduc- tion. It is more concerned to promote the idea of freedom of sexual expression and association, and sexual rights thus aim to establish the conditions of sexual difference and recognition. Reproductive Rights pose some interesting problems, however. They have to pay some attention to the issue of what we might call ‘‘the best product,’’ namely, healthy children. It is in the interest of parents to have ‘‘high quality’’ offspring (in genetic terms), and they may also want to limit the number of their offspring to enhance their children’s life chances over time.

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  Fertility, Health and Reproductive Politics

  Re-imagining Rights in India

  • Maya Unnithan(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  8 Re-imagining rights and the quest for reproductive justice Rights (adhikar) have arrived but justice (nyaya) has not followed. (Fieldwork respondent, Jaipur 2010) In this book I have developed the notion of reproductive politics as being about gendered struggles over the reproductive body as a physical, social and discursive entity. I suggest that as a concept reproductive politics provides an analytic lens to understand the diffusion of global norms such as Reproductive Rights – how they circulate, get rooted and what they come to mean for the poor in their relation to the state and for how development is practised by state, professional and civil society actors. A key concern has been to analyse the implications that sexual reproductive health rights discourse has for development practice and equally for longer established indigenous reproductive claims-making processes. As a politically informed process based on both discourse and lived experience, the focus on fertility and reproduction in this book goes beyond an apolitical rendering of these topics within demographic and population literature (Zaidi and Morgan, 2017). In so doing I have attempted to provide critical insight into the ways in which citizenship is made meaningful in everyday contexts where social reproduction is negotiated at the intersection of family, community, and state and civil society interests and concerns. In this concluding chapter of the book 1 I reflect on the overall complex meanings and interdependencies between sexual, reproductive and health rights that have emerged in the findings of the fieldwork. I draw on recent (predominantly feminist) scholarship on justice, including the moral basis of justice (Sen, 2009), to suggest new ways of imagining rights which capture on the ground complexities in an inclusive frame of reproductive justice

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  Reproductive Justice

  An Introduction

  • Loretta J. Ross, Rickie Solinger(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  Who has the right to sexual and repro-ductive self-determination and full sexual citizenship? Repro-ductive justice activists insist on the human right to engage in sexual activity without fear of violence, unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, or interference by the state. At the same time, reproductive justice activists place demands upon the state for support in implementing these per-sonal decisions, because the state and the economy benefit from the reproductive capacity and the physical contributions of the citizens: persons who are employed in necessary jobs; whose incomes fuel the consumer-driven economy; who keep the pop-ulation robust, contribute to Social Security, pay taxes, provide personnel for the military, and fulfill other functions of national populations. Thus, reproductive justice activists believe that demands for sex education, reproductive health services, child care, protection from pregnancy discrimination, education 184 / The Right to Parent regarding safe sex and protection from HIV/AIDS, and a host of other supports necessary to affi rm sexual human rights are each—and collectively—the right of every person. Reproduc-tive justice activists believe that mothering is a right (as well as a responsibility) that cannot be withheld by the state or society. Examining the concept “the right to be a mother” means we must be clear about what mothering actually means in the cur-rent economic, political, and social context.

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  Reproductive Rights in the Age of Human Rights

  Pro-life Politics from Roe to Hobby Lobby

  • Alisa Von Hagel, Daniela Mansbach(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  2000 ).

  Reproductive Rights

  The term “Reproductive Rights” encompasses a broad range of issues involving reproduction and reproductive health. In the USA, the discussion of rights generally includes the choice to have or not have children, the timing and spacing of childbirth, and the freedom to make these decisions without coercion or threats of violence (Rubin 1994 ). The primary issues at stake in the discussion of Reproductive Rights include the right to birth control, abortion, sterilization, and, more recently, the right to obtain fertility treatments. Controversy over the right to birth control, abortion, and sterilization is not new, and the current debates over these issues reflect many of the same themes regarding the right to life, the rights of individuals, and freedom from coercion (Engelman 2011 ).

  The birth control movement of the early 1900s was a culmination of broader social and political changes taking place in the USA at the turn of the century. Increased immigration, the tremendous growth of manufacturing cities on the East Coast, and the absence of social welfare or safety net led to the development of this movement, encouraging smaller families and preventing self-induced abortions. Despite the broader social changes under way in the USA, and the growing acceptance of birth control among some quarters of the population, birth control was illegal under the Comstock Act of 1873. A product of Victorian-era ideals, the Comstock Act promoted purity, self-restraint, and traditional gender norms, criminalizing pornography, erotica, as well as birth control and abortion (Rubin 1994 ). The birth control movement aimed at ensuring that women were educated and aware of issues surrounding reproductive health and the options available to them. As such, this movement represented one of the first large-scale efforts to promote women’s autonomy and choice in the spacing and timing of childbirth (Engelman 2011

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  Women, Medicine, Ethics and the Law

  • Susan Sherwin, Barbara Parish(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  27 States parties assume obligations to determine risks to women’s reproductive health. The means chosen by states parties to address dangers to reproductive health are to be determined by national considerations, such as patterns of reproductive health-service delivery and the epidemiology of reproductive disability. The goal is the reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity and enhancement of the dignity of women and their reproductive self-determination.

  If international human rights law is to be truly universal, it has to require states to take effective preventive and curative measures to protect women’s reproductive health and to afford women the capacity for reproductive self-determination. International human rights treaties require international and national law to secure women’s rights to: (1) freedom from all forms of discrimination; (2) liberty and security, marriage and the foundation of families, private and family life, and information and education; and (3) access to health care and the benefits of scientific progress.28

  Treaty Interpretation

  Empirical evidence and feminist legal methods can be used to reveal the law’s neglect of women’s reproductive health and expose legal bias that damages women. Empirical surveys and epidemiological studies, including those developed by the United Nations (UN) and its specialized agencies,29 demonstrate how governmental neglect of reproductive health results in high levels of avoidable maternal and infant death and sickness, and in the exclusion of women from educational, economic, and social opportunities.

  Empirical data show inequities in access to reproductive health services. Governments need to weigh evidence of how laws endanger the rights of women. Data are widely available showing that maternal and infant mortality and morbidity are associated with a dearth of family planning services.30

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  The World Health Organization

  A History

  • Marcos Cueto, Theodore M. Brown, Elizabeth Fee(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  “Reproductive Rights” also meant a condemnation of compulsory sterilization and that women had the right to exercise voluntary choice in marriage, to determine the number and spacing of children, and to have access to information and the means for making a choice about abortion. Another new term was “sexual health,” which implied the search for fulfilling and healthy lifestyles. Some terms acquire a more complex meaning, such as “gender,” which replaced “sex” and was used to emphasize that gender orientation could be different to an individual’s sex. It was also a term that suggested diversity, tolerance, and respect. An all-encompassing term that replaced “family planning” and “population control” was “sexual and reproductive health” (to be replaced in the early twenty-first century by “sexual rights” in order to encompass gays and other sexual minorities). The WHO and other agencies embraced and supported the new vocabulary and mindset prompted by the meetings in Cairo and Beijing. 39 A 1995 World Health Assembly resolution declared “reproductive health” a priority area, urging member countries to organize or strengthen their reproductive health programs, paying particular attention to equity and human rights. A year later, the health agency organized two new units: Family and Reproductive Health (FRH), and Gender, Women, and Health (GWH). The first unit was required to link the management of childhood diseases with overall child development (known as Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses, IMCI) in order to improve the prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, includ- ing cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, it was responsible for identifying key interventions to decrease maternal morbidity and mortality.

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  Human Rights and Technological Change

  Conflicts and Convergences after 1945

  • Michael Homberg, Benjamin Möckel, Michael Homberg, Benjamin Möckel(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wallstein Verlag

    (Publisher)

  Reproductive Rights Population growth and overpopulation discourse created a powerful new reality in the 1950s and 1960s. Compared to the focus on morals in the interwar period, contraception became increasingly seen as a matter of national security, economic growth, and modernization. Women’s organi- zations struggled with finding political positions in this new environment which could take into account the increasing availability of contraceptives for women around the world, while at the same time acknowledging the demographic and economic imperatives behind their expansion that often ran counter to advancing individual rights. In contemporary histories on the genesis of the human right to contraception, the utilitarian perspec- tives embedded are either largely ignored or counterposed to the posi- tions of women’s organizations. Without acknowledging the references to population growth, the Oxford Handbook of Reproductive Ethics argues that the UN’s declaration of a human right to contraception in the 1960s form the basis »upon which current Declarations regarding sexual and reproductive health rights are based.« 41 Others argue that the women’s movement advanced a human rights agenda against the population con- trol agenda propagated by organizations like the IPPF or the Population Council. In such perspectives, human rights and demographic goals are counterposed. Historically, the relationship between individual rights 41 Francis: Oxford Handbook of Reproductive Ethics, 66. reproductive technologies, contr aceptives, 143 and demographic goals was more complicated and resulted in conflicts between different ideas of feminism. Within the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women, for example, wider global tensions about the politics of population control became immediately apparent.

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