Reduction and Erosion of Legal Rights - Essay Example

Reduction and Erosion of Legal Rights to Reproductive Freedom There has been a growing recognition around the world that reproductive rights are fundamental human rights that the government is morally and legally obligated to fulfill, respect, and protect. The values underscoring these reproductive rights - equality and non-discrimination, self-determination, and human dignity – are enshrined in the United States’ constitution and the Universal declaration of Human Rights. Reproductive health involves two general ideas; the right to reproductive self-determination and the right to reproductive health care (Fried 61). These rights are not restricted to the right of the woman to obtain an abortion or choose. They exist at the core of a woman’s well-being and position in society. Discrimination and gender-equality, which have continued to erode the gains made by feminist groups in the 60s and 70s, harm the health of women and girls directly with neglect of their reproductive health requirements continuing to prevent them full and equal participation in society. This paper is a discussion of the reduction and erosion of legal rights to reproductive freedom. With limited access to reproductive health care, including abortion, pre-natal care, and contraception, women undergo unnecessary risk of STIs, unwanted pregnancy, and injury or death from childbirth and pregnancy. Women need to be free to make a decision on when and whether to exercise their choices sans coercion, to have children, and obtain quality health care with no regard to personal circumstances (Fried 66). Full citizenship can only occur for women if they participate equally with dignity as societal members with autonomy to chart the course of their life. The gradual erosion of reproductive rights in the U.S. has seen millions of women now going without access to affordable reproductive care (Fried 66). Any reform in reproductive laws, in the U.S., needs to include access to comprehensive and quality health care. In the past, the United States has been a global leader as far as human rights and equality are concerned with a proud and long history. However, the country now faces a crossroad in the recognition and protection of reproductive rights. Decades of progress won by grafting and bravery on female autonomy and reproductive health care are being gradually eroded. These drawbacks have been widespread and alarming with federal and state court decisions undermining the protections supported by the Roe vs. Wade case (Fried 70). Federal funding for basic reproductive health care has dropped gradually over the past decade and is now inadequate to serve those who really need it. Additionally, maternal mortality rates for colored women are shamefully high. Moreover, the United States has placed restrictions on foreign aid that is aimed at improving global reproductive health based on a hard stance opposition to abortion in support of abstinence, which is effective and hampers the progress while placing the U.S. out of step with major donors around the world (Fried 70). These injustices need a bold agenda that aims to change the current slide and ensures that the reproductive rights of women are protected by policy-makers and legislation, as well as understood. The courts can no longer be relied on to protect women’s reproductive rights or to comply with internationally recognized standards that guide access to reproductive health care (Fried 73). New feminist thinking in the post-modern era also needs more firepower than the rules used by the old guard in the 60s and 70s. The women’s right’s movement started with clear social objectives, but these noble goals have morphed into one’s of arrogance, erotica, egotism, personal success, and congenially infuriated feminism (Fried 73). Those values from back-in-the-day are not representative of most girls and women today with women today looking forward to marriage with a man, something that would be unsuccessful without at least some understanding of its complementing nature. The effects of modern day trends in reproductive health are appalling and alarming at best. This year alone has witnessed numerous attempts to restrict access to reproductive health care by pro-life groups and state legislatures that make it difficult either for women to obtain reproductive health care and for doctors to provide the care, or via the imposition of health care clinic regulations. Most recently, the state of Mississippi attempted to push through the Personhood Amendment that defined life and personhood as starting at conception (Tong 37). These measures would not only have resulted in abortion being illegal at any phase of the pregnancy, but would have outlawed various contraceptive forms and treated fertilized in-vitro eggs still in the laboratory as human beings. Fortunately, this legislation did not see the go up to fruition. Nevertheless, it is a sign of the tough road ahead in making up for eroded reproductive health space and its opponents. In other parts of the United States, resistance to reproductive health rights continues. An example is North Carolina, whereby a Federal Judge stopped a new proposed law on abortion. The ruling stated that women are not be required to receive an ultrasound that forces them to listen to the heartbeat produced by the embryo before they undergo an abortion (Tong 38). Another law proposed in Virginia sought to mandate a trans-vaginal ultrasound before an abortion was withdrawn after it received national scrutiny, although a mandatory abdominal ultrasound was passed. Governor Rick Perry signed the Texas trans-vaginal ultrasound bill into law. Because of how the law was drafted, the Governor was able to do so with little public outcry. The Governor cited the fact that he believed that girls and women possessed inadequate information to decide on this issue, even though most studies have indicated that the law will have little effect on the outcome. All this law will do is to increase the number of barriers and drive up cost. Further, in Pennsylvania and Virginia, anti-family planning advocates made an attempt to increase the difficulty abortion clinics would face to stay open by instituting new restrictive measures on the size of staff, elevators, and facility rooms (Tong 41). Another attack that has threatened to erode further the gains made by pro-choice feminist activists has been the attempt, to let pharmacists decide on whether to stock the morning-after pill and other medication if they do not agree with these prescriptions on the grounds of religion. Such arbitrary service withholding needs to be fought while keeping in mind in the names of those who are really in need of the service. It should be informed by the clear separation of state and church in the United States’ constitution. It is time for congress and the executive to demonstrate their commitment in the health and self-determination rights, which women possess and acknowledge that the U.S. has obligations in respecting the reproductive rights of women as human rights and arresting their erosion (Tong 41). To arrest this erosion and decrement in reproductive health legal rights, a number of policy goals that current day feminist pro-choice agitators can choose to pursue to improve the health and life of women (Dixon-Mueller 129). One would be the promotion of unbiased information concerning the reproductive and sexual health of women. The federal government should be pressured to support comprehensive education on sexuality by enacting an act on responsible education about life. This would give adolescents medically accurate and comprehensive legislation concerning pregnancy prevention and the risk of STIs. The government should also enact the act on teen pregnancy prevention and responsibility, which would authorize grants for local agencies to fund projects that give factual and medically accurate information that prevents pregnancy during teenage years. The federal government should be pressured to stop continued funding of programs that advocate for abstinence that stops at marriage such as the Adolescent Family Life Act, the State Formula Grant program, and Community based Abstinence Education Program (Dixon-Mueller 130). To check further, this erosion, the federal government must be pressured into improving access to contraception. This can be done through agitation for increased funding to Title x, which acts as the federally funded program for public family planning that will ensure that services are available to those who require them. The federal government can also be agitated to expand family planning Medicaid coverage via the Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act (Dixon-Mueller 31). This should ensure that benefits from family planning are mandatory under Medicaid. They can also be agitated to ensure that there is easier access to contraceptives by prescription via the enactment of the Birth Control Act, which would prohibit pharmacies from not carrying or providing contraceptives for customers. In this case, there should be protests to amend the Deficit Reduction Act via the repealing of documentation that requires an enrollment for Medicaid, provisions that let states exclude family planning from their benefits packages, and provisions that require states to charge girls and women on Medicaid for services aimed at family planning. The United States government also needs to be agitated to promote the recognition and protection of female reproductive rights at the UN as human rights. Legislation they should be pressured to enact includes the ratification of CEDAW, which defines women’s discrimination as any exclusion, distinction, or restriction made based on sex. Its purpose or effect is nullifying or impairing the enjoyment or recognition of women irrespective of marital status, based on gender equality of fundamental freedoms and human rights in the civil, cultural, social, economic, and political field (Dixon-Mueller 133). The United States should take a proactive role in the nomination of representatives whose commitment to the protection of reproductive rights is not in doubt. Pressure groups can play a role by vetting the candidates for nomination to these posts. Additionally, the government should be pressured to promote the access of reproductive health across the world instead of undermining access to abortion and reproductive health care at UN and international conferences (Dixon-Mueller 133). In this case, the pro-choice pressure groups should make certain that the delegates nominated by the United States’ government are committed to the same course as them. This should concern the protection of reproductive rights for women as fundamental human rights. Priority should be given to science in the debate instead of religion. Works Cited Dixon-Mueller, Ruth. Population policy & womens rights : transforming reproductive choice. Westport : Praeger , 2011. Print. Fried, Marlene Gerber. From abortion to reproductive freedom : transforming a movement. Boston : South End Press, 2010. Print. Tong, Rosemarie. Linking visions : feminist bioethics, human rights, and the developing world. Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield , 2012. Print. Read More