Birth control Birth control, also known as contraception and fertility control, is a method or device used to prevent
pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth control only became available in the 20th century. Planning, making available, and using birth control is called
family planning. Some cultures limit or discourage access to birth control because they consider it to be morally, religiously, or politically undesirable.
Abortion According to a study by WHO and the Guttmacher Institute worldwide, 25 million
unsafe abortions (45% of all abortions) occurred every year between 2010 and 2014. 97% of unsafe abortions occur in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. By contrast, most abortions that take place in Western and Northern Europe and North America are safe. The
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women considers the criminalization of abortion a "violations of women's sexual and reproductive health and rights" and a form of "gender-based violence"; paragraph 18 of its
General recommendation No. 35 on gender-based violence against women, updating general recommendation No. 19 states that: "Violations of women's sexual and reproductive health and rights, such as forced sterilizations, forced abortion, forced pregnancy, criminalisation of abortion, denial or delay of safe abortion and post-abortion care, forced continuation of pregnancy, abuse and mistreatment of women and girls seeking sexual and reproductive health information, goods and services, are forms of
gender based violence that, depending on the circumstances, may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." The same
General Recommendation also urges countries at paragraph 31 to [...] "In particular, repeal: a) Provisions that allow, tolerate or condone forms of gender-based violence against women, including [...] legislation that criminalises abortion." The article states "ending the silent pandemic of unsafe abortion is an urgent
public-health and
human-rights imperative." It also states "access to safe abortion improves
women's health, and vice versa, as documented in
Romania during the regime of President
Nicolae Ceaușescu" and "legalisation of abortion on request is a necessary but insufficient step toward improving women's health" citing that in some countries, such as India where abortion has been legal for decades, access to competent care remains restricted because of other barriers. WHO's Global Strategy on Reproductive Health, adopted by the World Health Assembly in May 2004, noted: "As a preventable cause of maternal mortality and morbidity, unsafe abortion must be dealt with as part of the MDG on improving maternal health and other international development goals and targets." The WHO's Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP), whose research concerns people's sexual and reproductive health and lives, has an overall strategy to combat unsafe abortion that comprises four inter-related activities: 209,519 abortions take place in England and Wales alone. Unsafe abortions take place primarily in countries where abortion is illegal, but also occur in countries where it is legal. Despite its legal status, an abortion is
de facto hardly optional for women due to most doctors being
conscientious objectors. Other reasons include the lack of knowledge that abortions are legal, lower socioeconomic backgrounds and spatial disparities. Concerns have been raised about these practical considerations; the UN in its 2017 resolution on
Intensification of efforts to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls: domestic violence urged states to guarantee access to "safe abortion where such services are permitted by national law". In 2008,
Human Rights Watch stated that "In fact, even where abortion is permitted by law, women often have severely limited access to safe abortion services because of lack of proper regulation, health services, or political will" and estimated that "Approximately 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide are attributable to unsafe abortion—between 68,000 and 78,000 deaths annually." The
Maputo Protocol, which was adopted by the
African Union in the form of a protocol to the
African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, states at Article 14 (Health and Reproductive Rights) that: "(2). States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to: [...] c) protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the foetus." The Maputo Protocol is the first international treaty to recognize abortion, under certain conditions, as a woman's human right. The
General comment No. 36 (2018) on article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the right to life, adopted by the
Human Rights Committee in 2018, defines, for the first time ever, a human right to abortion – in certain circumstances (however these UN general comments are considered
soft law, and, as such, not legally binding). Although States parties may adopt measures designed to regulate voluntary terminations of pregnancy, such measures must not result in violation of the right to life of a pregnant woman or girl, or her other rights under the Covenant. Thus, restrictions on the ability of women or girls to seek abortion must not, inter alia, jeopardize their lives, subject them to physical or mental pain or suffering which violates article 7, discriminate against them or arbitrarily interfere with their privacy.
States parties must provide safe, legal and effective access to abortion where the life and health of the pregnant woman or girl is at risk, and where carrying a pregnancy to term would cause the pregnant woman or girl substantial pain or suffering, most notably where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or is not viable. In addition, States parties may not regulate pregnancy or abortion in all other cases in a manner that runs contrary to their duty to ensure that women and girls do not have to undertake unsafe abortions, and they should revise their abortion laws accordingly. For example, they should not take measures such as criminalizing pregnancies by unmarried women or apply criminal sanctions against women and girls undergoing abortion or against medical service providers assisting them in doing so, since taking such measures compel women and girls to resort to unsafe abortion. States parties should not introduce new barriers and should remove existing barriers that deny effective access by women and girls to safe and legal abortion, including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers. When negotiating the Cairo Programme of Action at the 1994
International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), the issue was so contentious that delegates eventually decided to omit any recommendation to legalize abortion, instead advising governments to provide proper post-abortion care and to invest in programs that will decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. On 18 April 2008 the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a group comprising members from 47 European countries, adopted a resolution calling for the decriminalization of abortion within reasonable gestational limits and guaranteed access to safe abortion procedures. The nonbinding resolution was passed on 16 April by a vote of 102 to 69. During and after the ICPD, some interested parties attempted to interpret the term "reproductive health" in the sense that it implies abortion as a means of family planning or, indeed, a right to abortion. These interpretations, however, do not reflect the consensus reached at the Conference. For the European Union, where legislation on abortion is certainly less restrictive than elsewhere, the Council Presidency has clearly stated that the Council's commitment to promote "reproductive health" did not include the promotion of abortion. Likewise, the European Commission, in response to a question from a Member of the European Parliament, clarified: The term reproductive health was defined by the United Nations (UN) in 1994 at the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development. All Member States of the Union endorsed the Programme of Action adopted at Cairo. The Union has never adopted an alternative definition of 'reproductive health' to that given in the Programme of Action, which makes no reference to abortion. With regard to the U.S., only a few days prior to the Cairo Conference, the head of the U.S. delegation, Vice President Al Gore, had stated for the record: Let us get a false issue off the table: the US does not seek to establish a new international right to abortion, and we do not believe that abortion should be encouraged as a method of family planning. Some years later, the position of the U.S. administration in this debate was reconfirmed by U.S. Ambassador to the UN,
Ellen Sauerbrey, when she stated at a meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women that: "nongovernmental organizations are attempting to assert that Beijing in some way creates or contributes to the creation of an internationally recognized fundamental right to abortion". She added: "There is no fundamental right to abortion. And yet it keeps coming up largely driven by NGOs trying to hijack the term and trying to make it into a definition". Collaborative research from the
Institute of Development Studies states that "access to safe abortion is a matter of human rights, democracy and public health, and the denial of such access is a major cause of death and impairment, with significant costs to [international] development". The research highlights the inequities of access to safe abortion both globally and nationally and emphasises the importance of global and national movements for reform to address this. The shift by campaigners of reproductive rights from an issue-based agenda (the right to abortion), to safe, legal abortion not only as a human right, but bound up with democratic and citizenship rights, has been an important way of reframing the abortion debate and reproductive justice agenda. large numbers of children put into
Romanian orphanages by parents who could not cope with raising them,
street children in the 1990s (when many orphanages were closed and the children ended on the streets), and
overcrowding in homes and schools. The irony of Ceaușescu's aggressive natalist policy was a generation that may not have been born would eventually lead the
Romanian Revolution which would overthrow and have him
executed. In stark opposition with Ceaușescu's natalist policy was China's
one-child policy, in effect from 1978 to 2015, which included abuses such as
forced abortions. This policy has also been deemed responsible for the common practice of
sex-selective abortion which led to an imbalanced
sex ratio in the country. From the 1970s to 1980s, tension grew between women's health activists who advance women's reproductive rights as part of a human rights-based approach on the one hand, and population control advocates on the other. At the 1984 UN World Population Conference in Mexico City population control policies came under attack from women's health advocates who argued that the policies' narrow focus led to coercion and decreased quality of care, and that these policies ignored the varied social and cultural contexts in which family planning was provided in developing countries. In the 1980s the HIV/AIDS epidemic forced a broader discussion of sex into the public discourse in many countries, leading to more emphasis on reproductive health issues beyond reducing fertility. The growing opposition to the narrow population control focus led to a significant departure in the early 1990s from past population control policies. In the United States, abortion opponents have begun to foment
conspiracy theories about reproductive rights advocates, accusing them of advancing a
racist agenda of
eugenics, and of trying to reduce the
African American birth rate in the U.S.
Female genital mutilation Female genital mutilation (FGM) is defined as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons." The procedure has no health benefits, and can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, cysts, infections, and complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths. The
Istanbul Convention prohibits FGM (Article 38). It is estimated that 200 million women worldwide had undergone FGM, including at least 500,000 immigrant women in Europe.
Infibulation, also referred to as Type 3 FGM, is the most extreme form of FGM, and is practiced mainly in
northeastern Africa, particularly in
Djibouti,
Eritrea,
Ethiopia,
Somalia, and
Sudan.
Bride kidnapping or buying and reproductive slavery Bride kidnapping or marriage by abduction, is the practice whereby a woman or girl is abducted for the purpose of a
forced marriage. Bride kidnapping has been practiced historically in many parts of the world, and it continues to occur today in some places, especially in
Central Asia and the
Caucasus, in countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Armenia, as well as in Ethiopia. Bride kidnapping is often preceded or followed by rape (which may result in pregnancy), in order to force the marriage – a practice also supported by "
marry-your-rapist law" (laws regarding sexual violence, abduction or similar acts, whereby the perpetrator avoids prosecution or punishment if he marries the victim). Abducting of women may happen on an individual scale or on a mass scale.
Raptio is a Latin term referring to the large-scale abduction of women, usually for marriage or sexual slavery, particularly during wartime.
Bride price, also called bridewealth, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the parents of the woman he marries. The practice of bride price sometimes leads to parents selling young daughters into marriage and to trafficking. Bride price is common across Africa. Such forced marriages often lead to
sexual violence, and
forced pregnancy. In
northern Ghana, for example, the payment of bride price signifies a woman's requirement to bear children, and women using birth control are at risks of threats and coercion. The 1956
Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery defines "institutions and practices similar to slavery" to include: c) Any institution or practice whereby: • (i) A woman, without the right to refuse, is promised or given in marriage on payment of a consideration in money or in kind to her parents, guardian, family or any other person or group; or • (ii) The husband of a woman, his family, or his clan, has the right to transfer her to another person for value received or otherwise; or • (iii) A woman on the death of her husband is liable to be inherited by another person;
Sperm donation Laws in many countries and states require
sperm donors to be either anonymous or known to the recipient, or the laws restrict the number of children each donor may father. Although many donors choose to remain anonymous, new
technologies such as the Internet and DNA technology have opened up new avenues for those wishing to know more about the biological father, siblings and half-siblings.
Compulsory sterilization Ethnic minority women enacted a program of forced sterilization of
Indigenous peoples in Peru in the 1990s Ethnic minority women have often been victims of forced sterilization programs, such as
Amerindian women in parts of Latin America and
Roma women. In
Peru, President
Alberto Fujimori (in office from 1990 to 2000) has been accused of
genocide and
crimes against humanity as a result of the
Programa Nacional de Población, a sterilization program put in place by his administration. During his presidency, Fujimori put in place a program of forced sterilizations against
indigenous people (mainly the
Quechuas and the
Aymaras), in the name of a "
public health plan", presented on 28 July 1995. During the 20th century, forced sterilization of
Roma women in European countries, especially in the
Eastern Bloc countries, both during and after the communist regimes, was practiced. Forced sterilization took place particularly in Czechoslovakia, and the practice continued in the successor states of Czech Republic and Slovakia. In
V. C. vs. Slovakia, the
European Court for Human Rights ruled in favor of a Roma woman who was the victim of forced sterilization in a state hospital in
Slovakia in 2000. In 2004, the
European Roma Rights Center publicized suspicions that Roma women continued to be subjected to forced sterilization across Eastern European countries. In Czechoslovakia, and subsequently in the Czech Republic, the authorities carried on forced sterilizations between 1966 and 2012. Forced sterilization of Roma women in the 20th century also took place in Nordic countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, and in Western European countries such as Austria, France, Germany, and Switzerland.
United States Forced sterilization in the United States was practiced starting with the 19th century. The United States during the
Progressive era, ca. 1890 to 1920, was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of
eugenics.
Thomas C. Leonard, professor at Princeton University, describes American eugenics and sterilization as ultimately rooted in economic arguments and further as a central element of Progressivism alongside wage controls, restricted immigration, and the introduction of
pension programs. The heads of the programs were avid proponents of eugenics and frequently argued for their programs, which achieved some success nationwide, mainly in the first half of the 20th century.
Canada Compulsory sterilization has been practiced historically in parts of Canada. Two Canadian provinces (
Alberta and
British Columbia) performed compulsory sterilization programs in the 20th century with eugenic aims. Canadian compulsory sterilization operated via the same overall mechanisms of
institutionalization,
judgment, and
surgery as the American system. However, one notable difference is in the treatment of non-insane criminals. Canadian legislation never allowed for punitive sterilization of inmates. The
Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta was enacted in 1928 and repealed in 1972. In 1995,
Leilani Muir sued the Province of Alberta for forcing her to be sterilized against her will and without her permission in 1959. Since Muir's case, the Alberta government has apologized for the forced sterilization of over 2,800 people. Nearly 850 Albertans who were sterilized under the
Sexual Sterilization Act were awarded million in damages.
Roman Catholic Church has very strict anti-abortion laws, and
El Salvador has come to international attention due to its forceful enforcement. The
Catholic Church is opposed to artificial contraception, abortion, and
sexual intercourse outside marriage. This belief dates back to the first centuries of Christianity. While Roman Catholicism is not the only religion with such views, its religious doctrine is very powerful in influencing countries where most of the population is Catholic, and the few countries of the world with complete bans on abortion are mostly Catholic-majority countries, Some of the countries of
Central America, notably
El Salvador, have also come to international attention due to very forceful enforcement of the anti-abortion laws. El Salvador has received repeated criticism from the UN. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) named the law "one of the most draconian abortion laws in the world", and urged liberalization, It is recognized as
single-issue terrorism. Numerous organizations have also recognized anti-abortion extremism as a form of
Christian terrorism. Incidents include vandalism, arson, and bombings of
abortion clinics, such as those committed by
Eric Rudolph (199698), and murders or attempted murders of physicians and clinic staff, as committed by
James Kopp (1998),
Paul Jennings Hill (1994),
Scott Roeder (2009),
Michael F. Griffin (1993), and
Peter James Knight (2001). Since 1978, in the US, anti-abortion violence includes at least 11
murders of medical staff, 26
attempted murders, 42
bombings, and 187
arsons. ==See also==