Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights

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Overview of UN conferences on the topic
Classification and (official) line of argument (1993)

Reproductive health and reproductive rights stands for a legal approach to anchor family planning as a human right.

The concept has been linked to family planning by the UN Population Department under the umbrella term human rights since 1966 .

Result of the 1994 World Population Conference

At the World Population Conference in Cairo in 1994, reproductive rights and international population policy were linked to "health" under the name Sexual and reproductive health and rights ( SRHR for short ). Internationally active population and development organizations such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), WHO , UNFPA , USAID and the World Bank have since defined sexual and reproductive health and rights as goals of human rights-based politics.

Reproductive health and reproductive rights continue to be the basic paradigm for population control. The industrialized countries have justified the developing countries since 1958 (according to the Coale- Hoover study) that a slowdown in population growth is necessary for sustainable (economic) development .

Every person is thus granted the right to lead a satisfactory sex life and (officially) to decide for himself how many children he has children. It is required that everyone should have access to information about contraception and to safe, effective and affordable contraception. In addition, every woman should have access to medical care during pregnancy and childbirth. Thirdly, everyone should be able to receive health services that protect them from sexual diseases or treat them. The focus should be on the individual rights to self-determination, physical integrity and non-discrimination .

Situation today

In many countries around the world, people cannot fully exercise their “reproductive rights” (including abortion). It is argued that the main reason for this is poverty (costs for education and contraception).

The fight against female genital mutilation is assigned to this legal approach by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

reception

In the final document of the World Population Conference in Cairo, a comprehensive reform of population policy was promised. Critics of that final document, however, assume only rhetorical concessions (rhetorical shift). With regard to the incongruence of women affected by self-determination rights and the fulfillment of neo-colonial demands, u. A. spoken of "ideological schizophrenia".

"With the feminization of argument succeeded the population lobby - relying on women's health - with, to make matters to be discussed term reproductive rights' to a rhetorical relatively uncontroversial problem area." (Többe Gonçalves 2000).

"In this respect, the health discourse is the central 'content' hinge for the re-articulation of the population-political macro and micro level after Cairo ." (Schultz 2006).

See also

literature

  • Bonnie Mass (1975): The Population Target. The Political Economy of Population Control in Latin America.
  • Farida Akhter (1984): Depopulating Bangladesh. A Brief History of External Intervention into the Reproductive Behavior of a Society.
  • Farida Akhter (1994): Reproductive Rights and Population Policy. In: Few children - a lot of consumption? Votes on the population issue by women from the south and the north.
  • Shalini Randeria (1995): The Socio-Economic Embedding of Reproductive Rights. Women and Population Policies in India.
  • Betsy Hartmann (1995): Reproductive Rights and Wrongs. The Global Politics of Population Control.
  • Susanne Schultz (2006): Hegemony - Governmentality - Biopower. Reproductive Risks and the Transformation of International Population Policy.
  • Betsy Hartmann, Anne Hendrixson, Jade Sasser (2016): Population, sustainable development and gender equality. In: Gender Equality and Sustainable Development (Eds. Melissa Leach), pp. 56–81.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. UN 1966: Declaration on Population by World Leaders : "But this right [size of family] of parents to free choice will remain illusory unless they are aware of the alternatives open to them."
  2. ↑ Franziska Schutzbach : Population, Crisis, Nation , in: Karin Hostettler, Sophie Vögele (Ed.): Diesseits der imperiale Geschlechtordnung , Transcript Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2343-7 , pp. 80f and footnotes 7 and 8 .
  3. ↑ "The study was a commissioned work for the World Bank." (Maria Dörnemann: Plan Your Family - Plan Your Nation. Population policy as international development action in Kenya 1932-1993 , Berlin and Boston 2019, p. 141).
  4. ^ Coale, Hoover (1958): Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries. Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp. 6-25.
  5. ^ Geoffrey Gilbert: World Population. A Reference Handbook , Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford 2005, p. 22.
  6. ↑ Cf. BMZ : “For the sustainable development of these countries, it is important to slow down population growth and to take demographic changes into account. Realizing sexual and reproductive health and rights is one of the prerequisites for this to happen. "
  7. ↑ The paradigm of sustainable development , i.e. the linking of environmental, economic and population policy , can already be found in the United Nations Environment Program (final declaration for the UN conference in Rio 1992) (PDF), for example Principle 8: "To sustainable development and a To bring about a higher quality of life for all people, the states should reduce and eliminate unsustainable modes of production and consumption habits and promote a suitable population policy. ”The then still new“ environmental sustainability paradigm ”was in this respect also a topic at the 1994 World Population Conference - cf. Bianca Többe Gonçalves: Population and Development. Münster 2000, p. 100.
  8. ↑ Cf. Bianca Többe Gonçalves: Population and Development. Münster 2000, p. 108: “At the institutional and governmental level it is no longer to be found [the questioning of the dogma of overpopulation]. With the reproductive paradigm, the population lobby has become the unquestioned 'winner' after a long search for legitimation for population policy. "
  9. ^ Susanne Schultz (2003): Neoliberal Transformation of International Population Policy. The politics of post-Cairo from the perspective of governmentality (PDF), p. 7: “At first glance, the emphasis on the issue of maternal mortality by the programs of the population establishment appears to be a successful restriction of anti-natalistic goals, but it seems to promise that not only the right to decide against children, but also the right to health services in order to “go safely through pregnancy and childbirth” (Section 7.2. of the program of action) are taken seriously. However, the discourse on maternal mortality is linked to anti-natalistic strategies through various epidemiological surveys and categories of risks. "
  10. ↑ Lilli Sippel, Tanja Kiziak, Franziska Woellert, Reiner Klingholz: Africa's Demographic Challenge (PDF), p.?.
  11. ↑ BMZ (2014): Sexual and reproductive health and rights
  12. ^ Heide Mertens: Women and international population policy. What does self-determination mean here? In: Move locally, negotiate globally. International Politics and Gender (Ed. Uta Ruppert). Frankfurt and New York 1998, p. 158.
  13. ^ Susanne Schultz (2003): Neoliberal Transformation of International Population Policy. The Politics of Post-Cairo from the perspective of governmentality (PDF), p. 6: “The risk discourse [reproductive risks] makes it possible to reformulate and defuse the concept that, on the one hand, is the protest of women's health movements against previous practices on various levels of family planning programs. "
  14. ↑ Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment (2006): Opposition to “Day of Six Billion” ( Memento of the original from September 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , The Statement . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cwpe.org
  15. ↑ The term “ideological schizophrenia” in this context was originally used by the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment in 1999, in German-speaking countries “ideological schizophrenia” in particular by Susanne Schultz. See the silence after Cairo. Institutionalized population policy (PDF), p. 23.
  16. ↑ “In the political debate, the decisive question is whether the 'bio-politics of the population', as Foucault called it (Foucault 1977), is the actual power technique of the modern age and thus the basis for totalitarian phenomena. Whether rather the 'rationalization of reproduction' represents the individual response to the social and economic upheavals (Dienel 1995). So is the increasing spread of contraceptives in all countries of the world a process supported by international organizations, but which essentially reacts to changes in reproductive behavior? Or are women in the south, as well as minorities in the north, forced to control their reproduction with massive propaganda and more or less subtle coercion? This contradiction also divided the international women's groups that dealt with population policy at the World Population Conference in Cairo in 1994. One of the women, who mainly work in international organizations, has pleaded with their manifesto 'Women's Voices' (cf. excerpt ) for interference in international population policy and want to support a population policy that guarantees women the right to reproductive health and self-determination (cf. . Heim / Schaz 1996: 173). Women should seize the opportunity to interfere (cf. ibid .: 176). They believe that women will choose contraception for themselves and that there is a particular need to improve conditions for family planning in terms of health care.
    'I believe that the concept of reproductive rights can and should become the basis of population policy (...) I firmly believe that there would be no population problem if women really had a choice' (Marge Berger, quoted in Heim / Schaz 1996: 192).
    The opposite position is summarized in the declaration of the Feminist Network against Genetic and Reproductive Technologies (FINRRAGE) from Comilla, Bangladesh:
    “Population policy aims to determine the body, fertility and life of women, because so far it still is the women who have children. Population policy is racist and eugenic and means selection: it grants some people the right to survival while at the same time denying it to all others: indigenous people, disabled people and blacks. Its aim is to get rid of the poor, not poverty. Population policy represents the interests of the privileged classes who, in the north and south, defend their lavish lifestyles. There can be no feminist population policy, because that would contradict all positions of women's liberation and violate their principles' (after Schlebusch 1994: 175). ”
    (Heide Mertens: Women and international population policy. What does self-determination mean here. In: Moving locally, negotiating globally International politics and gender (Ed. Uta Ruppert). Frankfurt and New York 1998, p. 157 f.)
  17. ↑ Bianca Többe Gonçalves: Population and Development. Münster 2000, p. 75.
  18. ↑ Susanne Schultz: Hegemony - Governmentality - Biopower. Reproductive Risks and the Transformation of International Population Policy. Münster 2006, p. 214.