The United Nations Population Fund added to its declaration of human rights last week. In addition to universal human rights to education, clean water and free marriage, humans everywhere now theoretically have the right to contraceptive methods.
According to Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, “Family planning has a positive multiplier effect on development.”
Not only does the ability for a couple to choose when and how many children to have help lift nations out of poverty, but it is also one of the most effective means of empowering women.
Women who use contraception are generally healthier, better educated, more empowered in their households and communities and more economically productive.
Women’s increased labor-force participation boosts nations’ economies.”(CBS news)
In many developed nations, however, higher education and greater economic power are simply correlated to living in a generally wealthier nation.
Maybe societies that ensure women have access to contraceptives are the same ones who make sure their people have other basic rights as well.
The right to not be pregnant is absolutely fundamental. Counter arguments have said that this new declaration challenges the right to have a family if you want to.
It is important that we address this confusion here and now. The assertion that women should have control over their own reproductive choices is precisely that: a re-statement of the importance of the freedom of choice.
This could be the choice to have a baby now, later or never. In any case, the focus is on the choice’s existence and presence.
This freedom in no way challenges the choice to have children. In fact, freedom enhances choice by emphasizing the importance of women’s decision-making power in their own lives.
The Center for Reproductive Rights commented on the UN amendment, “Reproductive freedom lies at the heart of the promise of human dignity, self-determination, and equality embodied in both the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…”
“We envision a world where every woman participates with full dignity as an equal member of society.”
Equality is the key point here and the report symbolizes a breakthrough in the way we see human rights in general. The most important aspect of this breakthrough is that it fundamentally conflates the word “woman” with “human,” and vice versa.
We have long seen documents, everything from Humanae Vitae to magazine articles, confuse the specific male subject with the general implied human subject. This trend has its founding in a very traditional way of thinking, but it is alive and well today.
We take for granted that masculine terms refer to the general human population. Pronouns may seem like a small sticking point, but they gain significance when considered in their larger context.
The idea that the subject is always male, and that any human male deserves to be and automatically is considered the subject, makes it very difficult to see the world in the eyes of anyone else’s needs.
This problem does not exist in a vacuum. It falls within the broader social tendency to confuse the specific with the general, to assume that one type of person accurately or even adequately represents all people.
Evidence of this trend persists in advertising, television, and government right up to the Oval Office. When we let one specific type of person represent us, we lose ability not only to see ourselves in our media and leaders, but also to influence the decisions that specifically affect our lives and our issues.
The United Nation’s recent declaration is a step away from this tradition.
“By choice, not by chance: family planning, human rights and development” states as its reasoning, “Studies have shown that investing in family planning helps reduce poverty, improve health, promote gender equality, enable adolescents to finish their schooling and increase labour force participation.”
The report posits reproductive rights as not only intrinsically valuable, but also as means to other valuable ends.
When women have control over their own reproductive choices, they have a greater chance of being able to use their other rights, such as the right to education.
The United Nations believes that An estimated 222 million women lack access to reliable, high-quality family planning services, information and supplies.
They further their point, “In developed countries, too, high levels of unintended pregnancy exist, especially among adolescents, the poor and ethnic minorities.”
This clarification shows that the U.N. sees this issue as a world problem, not just as a women’s problem. We can see from their example that issues affecting some of us affect all of us.
First, in the practical sense, anything that contributes to our respective nations’ poverty and quality of life affects each of us, not just those capable of bearing children.
In the bigger sense, though, it rectifies a long-term problem in the course of humanity. When we collectively decide to reject oppression of one specific group of people, we acknowledge that oppression is worth rejecting, and in that mindset, we can move forward.
This new meaure is exciting not because it claims that half of humanity adequately represents the whole of humanity, or that their issues are superior and deserve special consideration. The United Nations’ new declaration proves that equality can be achieved by acknowledging that we have made mistakes in the past, but we are fully capable of solving them.