The term "family planning" encompasses diverse ways to prevent, achieve or space pregnancies, ranging from sterilization, hormonal contraceptives, condoms and fertility awareness/natural family planning to infertility treatment. Effective family planning depends on more than the medical facts about each method. It relies upon active respect for family planning as a human right that belongs to you and everybody else.
A Recognized, Universal Human Right
The 1968 United Nations International Conference on Human Rights in Tehran first recognized the universal, "basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of...children." Between 1968 and 2009, 37 more globally influential statements reaffirmed this right, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development platform; and the Millennium Development Goals.
Features
What is the precise scope of the right to family planning? Perhaps the answer with the broadest global consensus comes from UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, whose family planning advocacy is supported by most of the UN's 192 member states. To promote human rights and women's equality, family planning services must "reject coercion" and "offer a wide selection of methods; reflect high standards of medical practice; [be] sensitive to cultural conditions; [and] provide sufficient information about proper use or possible side effects." However, "UNFPA does not support or promote abortion as a method of family planning."
Benefits
Voluntary family planning brings well-documented health benefits to individuals, families and communities. It reduces abortion as well as maternal, infant and child mortality rates. Specific methods have their own unique health advantages. Condoms, for example, help check the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. The Lactational Amenorrhea Method gives mothers and babies the health benefits of breastfeeding. The availability of family planning in communities empowers women and children to improve their educational and economic status as well as their health.
Obstacles
Perhaps 200 million women on Earth want but cannot obtain family planning methods. Others lack proper instruction or access to their most preferred methods. In many places, gender-based violence sabotages women's own choices about family planning. Such violence makes women and children more vulnerable to further dangers like HIV/AIDS. In some countries, violence against women has included forced pregnancy prevention as a matter of government policy.
Controversies
While widely accepted and practiced, the right to family planning "has not been enshrined in a legally binding human rights treaty and...remains controversial" because of "fear of coercive family planning programmes; [the] idea that family planning promotes promiscuity; [the] abortion debate and status of the unborn child," according to the Human Rights Education Association.
References
- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Family Planning: Violence Against Women
- Human Rights Education Associates: The Right to Family
- International Conference on Family Planning: Kampala 2009---Reaffirmation of Global Family Planning Commitments
- UNFPA: Reproductive Health: Ensuring That Every Pregnancy Is Wanted
- World Health Organization: Health benefits of family planning
