Concept

Reproductive rights

Overview

Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights:

Reproductive 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.

Reproductive rights may include some or all of: right to abortion; birth control; freedom from coerced sterilization and contraception; the right to reproduce and start a family, the right to access good-quality reproductive healthcare; the right to give birth where and with whom someone chooses; and the right to family planning in order to make free and informed reproductive choices. Reproductive rights may also include the right to receive education about sexually transmitted infections and other aspects of sexuality, right to menstrual health and protection from practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM). Protections from mistreatment during pregnancy, labor, delivery, and postpartum are also part of the reproductive rights framework, which calls into questions practices like shackling pregnant people in correctional facilities. Reproductive Rights are connected to broader social conditions and determinants, reproductive freedom requires not only legal rights but affordable healthcare, safe living environments, as well, as economic stability.

Reproductive rights began to develop as a subset of human rights at the United Nation's 1968 International Conference on Human Rights. The resulting non-binding Proclamation of Tehran was the first international document to recognize one of these rights when it stated that: "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children." Women's sexual, gynecological, and mental health issues were not a priority of the United Nations until its Decade of Women (1975–1985) brought them to the fore. States, though, have been slow in incorporating these rights in internationally legally binding instruments. Thus, while some of these rights have been recognized in hard law, that is, in legally binding international human rights instruments, others have been mentioned only in non binding recommendations and, therefore, have at best the status of soft law in international law, while a further group is yet to be accepted by the international community and remains at the level of advocacy.

Issues related to reproductive rights are some of the most vigorously contested rights' issues worldwide, regardless of the population's socioeconomic level, religion or culture.

The issue of reproductive rights is frequently presented as vitally important in discussions and articles by population concern organizations such as Population Matters.

Reproductive rights are a subset of sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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A body politic of this kind is called a Democracy, which may be defined as a society which wields all its power as a whole. The sovereign power is not restrained by any laws, but every one is bound to obey it in all things; such is the state of things implied when men either tacitly or expressly handed over to it all their power of…
Benedictus de Spinoza, The Philosophy of Spinoza
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Dominion is acquired two wayes; By Generation, and by Conquest. The right of Dominion by Generation, is that, which the Parent hath over his Children; and is called PATERNALL. And is not so derived from the Generation, as if therefore the Parent had Dominion over his Child because he begat him; but from the Childs Consent, either expresse, or by other sufficient arguments declared. For as to the Generation, God hath…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
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Among the children of the same family there can be no indisputable difference but that of sex, and that of age. The male sex is universally preferred to the female; and when all other things are equal, the elder everywhere takes place of the younger. Hence the origin of the right of primogeniture, and of what is called lineal succession. Laws frequently continue in force long after the circumstances which first gave…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
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Reproductive rights

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