10 Essential Essays About Womens Reproductive Rights
After Roe v. Wade, Angela Davis wrote about how the reproductive rights movement was failing women of color. As Roe is dismantled, her diagnosis is more crucial than ever.
While the Convention acknowledges the maternal function of women, social and cultural patterns of conduct often glorify motherhood in a manner that circumscribes womens right to autonomy in exercising life choices. Cultural and religious attitudes may value women according to their ability to produce children. Their health may consequently be jeopardized by repeated pregnancies spaced too closely together, often as the result of efforts to produce male children. Women who have not borne children may be cast out of marriages on the assumption that they, rather than their male partners, are infertile. Women may be denied access to health care that is unrelated to their reproductive functions, and their health needs may be considered secondary to those of their children or, in the case of pregnant women - to the health of their fetuses.
The area of health is particularly interesting in terms of equality theory because of what has already been noted: "real" differences between women and men - some biological (or physiological), and some social. Womens health needs are different from mens due to both biological differences and societal factors. This is particularly true as regards womens reproductive and sexual health, not only because biological differences are of the essence, but also because discrimination against women is closely associated with prejudices and stereotypes based on patriarchal notions of womens sexual and reproductive roles and functions.
Reproductive Justice as a Human Right | Spark - Medium
This then is the legal context within which we are to address womens rights in relation to reproductive and sexual health. The text of the Convention is abstract, and expresses principles that are to serve as guides for conduct. What meaning do they have in actual practice? The Convention imposes a duty under international law to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights articulated thereunder. In an ideal world the aspirations of the legal norms would be observed, but the reality is such that they are not observed. Violations of these standards take different forms at different times and in different places. As mentioned, the following examples of some contemporary patterns of rights violations are taken from reports considered by the CEDAW Committee at its 18th session.
"This positive sense of the word liberty derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other mens, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer - deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to realize that it is not."
One of the most eloquent explications of the meaning of "autonomy" is that of Isaiah Berlin in his essay, . For Berlin "liberty" in the ordinary sense is a "negative" right to freedom, in that one is entitled to be free in certain areas from the interference of others. "I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity." But "liberty" also has a "positive" sense. It is not merely freedom "from" but freedom "to". This positive right to freedom is "autonomy", in the sense that one is entitled to recognition of ones capacity, as a human being, to exercise choice in the shaping of ones life.
Indeed, discrimination against women is a significant factor in the high numbers of deaths and complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Failure to provide maternal health services often reflects the low priority attached to womens special needs in the allocation of resources. Maternal mortality and morbidity can largely be avoided through the provision of reproductive health services, including contraception, safe abortion, and essential and emergency obstetric care. The most obvious human right violated by avoidable death in pregnancy or childbirth is womens fundamental right to life itself. It is arguable that the core minimum content of governments obligations under international human rights instruments is to provide access to affordable quality health services that would prevent maternal mortality.
Reproductive Justice After Roe - Boston Review
Women’s rights have been a long struggle in America’s legal system, as well as in the religious world, for many decades and women continue to have challenges, concerns, and struggles today. Fighting for what is best for their bodies such as a woman’s right to contraceptives to control whether she will get pregnant or not was not ideal for religious and personal reasons but would find a worthy advocate in a woman who would dedicate her life for women’s reproductive rights. The right for a woman to have an abortion became a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Courts in a very well-known case. It has always been a double standard in what was right and wrong, moral or immoral, towards women than men. A man was looked at with respect
Saturday Essay: Reproductive rights save lives, shield freedoms
Pro-Choice“77% of Anti-Abortion Leaders are men, 100% of them will never be pregnant” (Barbara Kruger). Whether to continue or end a pregnancy, has been a long debated topic, extending long after the Roe v. Wade case that went all the way to the Supreme court (ProCon). Abortion is defined as the intentional termination of a pregnancy, frequently performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy (Oxford University Press). Each year, over one million women in America chose to have an abortion (WebMD). What would happen if that right to choose was taken away?
What is a good thesis statement about reproductive health and rights?
The Right to Abortion On January 22, 1973, in a 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down it’s landmark decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, which recognized that the constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s right to make her own personal medical decisions — including the decision to have an abortion without interference from politicians (Planned Parenthood). There are many moments in history when Roe v. Wade has been so close to being overturned, yet it is still in place. Abortion should stay legal, or not overturned, for the health of women everywhere. First, this important case took place at the time of abortion being illegal in most states, including Texas, where Roe v. Wade began.
An Essay on Sexual and Reproductive Rights Defenders
Many other provisions of the Convention have an implicit or indirect bearing on womens rights in relation to health, some of which have been explicated in the General Recommendations of the CEDAW Committee in relation to female genital mutilation; sexual violence; HIV/AIDS; and reproduction.