Reproductive Rights / reproductive health

                                              

--Not just abortion/birth control
--General term meaning attention to women’s health and fertility control, inclusively.

1. Issues differ, range, by race, class, gender, sexuality, nation. 
   
   
2. Fundamentally tied to “human rights” – repro rights are a woman’s human rights
   • Right to bear children – or not--  Right to plan family - informed family planning from all available options
   • Right to good, regular prenatal care, medical support, decent hospital stay, information about birth options, cntinued well-baby health
   • freedom from forced sterilization (coercive or uninformed
   • Right to not bear children / control fertility
     
     
3. Right to healthy sexuality; separation of sex & reproduction – discourse of desire, health info, freedom from double standard, AIDS info….
   
   
4. Right to marriage and divorce.  Right to choose partner freely, marry freely, divorce freely and equitably. 
   
   
5. Right to healthy relationships, right to define family – single moms, gay/lesbian families, parents with disabilities, othermothers, alternative families. 
   
   
6. Right to basic standards of health (medical provider, insurance, medicine, emotional/psych care), male bias of healthcare/research
   
   
7. Right to competent, respectful healthcare, regardless of sexuality, with translator if necessary
   
   
8. Right to be free from violence (home, workplace, streets).  Women safer on the streets than in her own home
   
   
9. Right to be free from discrimination, whether by gender or repro state (maternity as social good, subsidized by state)
   
   
10. Right to be free from environmental racism

 

Questions to think about:

What other rights affect your reproductive decisions?  wages?  lack of subsidized child care?  health ins?
All of these rights involve state/government policy.  Who decides what family is?  Who decides what family planning choices are legitimate, available?