The United Nation’s Population Fund released a report on Nov. 14 that called birth control and contraceptives a “universal human right.”
Now, the idea of birth control or family planning as an inalienable and self-evident right is not particularly odious or controversial. In fact, you could argue the U.N. is stating the obvious if you’re willing to define birth control a little more liberally than the way that it’s used in this report.
How that right is articulated, though, is an incredibly consequential sticking point.
The report suggests many existing cultural and legal objections to contraception inherently infringe upon women’s rights, essentially passing judgment on how three-fourths of the world chooses to conduct its business.
The right to decide what form of contraception should be available is
something that must be defined within individual societies — not by international organizations.
Not having sex is the oldest form of birth control there is, and from what I’ve been led to understand, it’s quite effective.
The U.N. cannot dictate to the rest of the world what is and is not correct according to its particular worldview. That is cultural imperialism.
Access to and acceptance of contraceptives — the physical, prophylactic kind — needs to be developed from bottom up, and not the other way around.
My problem with this proclamation has less to do with any principled stand against condoms or the pill, but more to do with the hypocrisy of the organization issuing it.
I find it interesting the U.N. would declare contraception a universal human right and not, say, the right to raise one’s family as one sees fit.
By declaring access to birth control a universal human right, the U.N. utterly ignores the other side of the coin. Shouldn’t the right to bear children unencumbered by culture or law also be part of any declaration of universal family planning rights?
The report reads, “Today, family planning is almost universally recognized as an intrinsic right” — an ironic statement coming from an organization where the People’s Republic of China has an absolute veto.
I suppose it is only family planning when you’re not planning to have a family.
Since 1979, the PRC has mandated Chinese women may only have one child — on pain of forced abortion, incarceration or ludicrously expensive fines.
The report goes on, “The ability to decide on the number and spacing of one’s children… is taken for granted by many in the developed world and among elites in developing countries.” It completely ignores the one in seven human beings who reside within the borders of China.
If we are to have a declaration of a universal right to family planning, it needs to be a declaration that addresses the concerns of all people and ensures the rights of all people — and it needs to recognize the legitimacy of differing cultural interpretations of what, exactly, family planning means.
I suspect, however, we won’t see such a statement coming from the hallowed halls of 1 United Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y. — not so long as China has a hand in what becomes official U.N. policy and what doesn’t.
Ultimately, this U.N. report will wind up like most U.N. initiatives: hyperbolic, ineffective and widely ignored. And people will go on making, or not making, babies the way they have for centuries.
