While in Uruguay for a meeting on DAWN’s research project on Health Sector Reform, Maternal Mortality and Abortion: A Global Policy Research Effort, Sonia Correa, DAWN Research Coordinator for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, spoke at Montevideo City Hall on 20 May 2003. This is a brief excerpt from her presentation.
It is important to highlight that sexual and reproductive rights are a very recent human invention. In the late 1970s American feminists first started talking about such rights in closed spaces. But in the mid 1980s the concept went through the first process of social and political legitimacy. This happened in a meeting in Amsterdam in 1984 co-organized by networks where the debates led to a first global consensus among women on reproductive rights. A decade later, the Programmes of Action of Cairo and Beijing would adopt clear definitions of reproductive rights and women´s sexual rights. These two documents are not binding as international conventions. But, as texts agreed by the international community (with reservations from the Vatican, Islamic countries and few Latin American delegations) they can and should be seen as emerging ethical frames that constitute a moral obligation by the States that signed them.
But we must also acknowledge that the conceptualisation of reproductive rights and, most particularly sexual rights, is far from complete. This is a domain in which we are still embedded in a constant and complex process of thinking and re-thinking and most principally involved in harsh ideological and political struggles. Today, as we know, the core ideas contained in these two concepts are openly attacked by moral conservative forces that are expanding their tentacles in the most diverse societies. At the same time we are challenged to move forward regarding the conceptualisation of these novel rights. One important step in that direction is to examine the meanings of reproductive and sexual rights as part of the wider and complex task of reconstructing existing social contracts. As we know the modern western social contract was built on the basis of philosophical ideas of the l8th century Enlightenment and within it women were placed in a clearly unequal position.
Since then women have experienced restrictive citizenship (when not a full lack of citizenship) and most principally they were symbolically identified with and constrained within the so-called “natural” space of the private world. Similarly, sexuality and reproduction were embedded in the modern social contract in a peculiar manner that viewed these two domains as fundamentally belonging to nature. The most striking illustration of this ideological operation is probably the persistent treatment of sex and reproduction as related to “instinct”.
But as we know time went by and transformation of juridical concept and legal frames would occur throughout the 20 th century. One clear illustration is Universal Declaration on Human adopted in 1948 that included principles of equality between sexes, non-discrimination, protection against violence and torture. But it is important to recall that the 1948 human rights frame remained impregnated by 18 th century premises, having been conceived yet as a universal instrument to correct abuses perpetrated by States against their citizens (negative rights of protection against absolute power or tyranny).
However 45 years later at the Human Rights Conference of Vienna of 1993, the 1948 human rights frame was transformed and expanded. The rift between civil and political rights on one side and economic and social rights on the other that has marked the human rights debate during the cold war was overcome. This new conceptualisation emphasizes the integrity and indivisibility of all human rights. Also in Vienna, feminists proactively influenced the negotiations in order to ensure the recognition that human rights abuses also take place in the private domain, where they are perpetrated by private agents.
Another important gain of the Vienna debates was the characterisation of systematic rapes in situations of armed conflicts as major human rights abuse.
It is vital to situate the right of women to decide in relation to unwanted pregnancies as another important ele-ment of the recent transformation of human rights discourse.
For centuries abortion was basically debated in the frame of religious norms. From the 17 th century on in the Western World it would become a criminal code matter. In Cairo and Beijing, however, consensus was reached that abortion must be considered a major public health problem and that women who undergo abortion must be receive quality care and humane treatment. Most principally in Beijing, a recommendation that was adopted was that countries should revise their punitive legislations. Even if in the context of these two conferences it has not been possible to fully place abortion within a clear rights frame the overall definitions then adopted -reproductive rights means that people have the right to decide upon the number of children free of coercion and discrimination– allows us to say that women´ s decision-making in regard to unwanted pregnancies can and must be included under the same overarching frame. Exactly for this reason abortion is to be also regarded as a democracy-related issue, as one criti-cal domain in relation to which it becomes increasingly necessary to reframe, amplify and update the modern social con-tract we have inherited from Enlightened philosophers.
However, it is not an easy task to transmit to societ-ies at large the full meaning of what a woman´s right to make reproductive decisions free of coercion and discrimination really is. One major obstacle to that understanding is that abortion is enshrined in existing codes as crime against life, when in fact its’ criminalisation was basically aimed at disciplining women’s sexuality. By and large women who re-sort to abortion are penalized because they are portrayed as being irresponsible and sexually lax. In addition, anti-abortion forces are constantly suggesting that if abortion is made legal this would mean that all women “must abort”, when in fact legalizing abortion simply means that women who for specific reasons want to interrupt an un-wanted pregnancy may be able to do so.
We should also be aware that existing punitive laws against abortion do no exist to effectively arrest those women who abort.
For example it is to seriously in no-one’s mind to take to trial and jail the 600,000 Brazilian women who have abortions every year. The objective of criminalizing laws is to sustain a moral environment of guilt. Existing laws mostly favour the existence of a clandestine market through which women can have access to for the procedure.
In relation to this particular aspect we must also call attention to the fact that abortion is an issue of social justice. In our unequal societies, women with resources have access to safe abortion procedures and up-dated technology while poor women and young women must seek clandestine abortions of poor qual-ity that risk their health and lives.
There are also ethical-political aspects around abortion that go beyond the usual public debate on abortion “morality”. The decision to have an abor-tion is never an easy one for a woman. But prevailing arguments against legal abortion more often than not completely neglect women’s capacity to make ethical decisions when they face unwanted pregnancies. In a text written with Rosalind Petchesky in 1993, we affirmed that one of the ethical principles that provides the basis for sexual and reproductive rights is the recognition of women´s personhood, which simply means that women are entirely capable of taking ethical decisions about their bodies and their lives.
As a result of these many obstacles, after Cairo and Beijing the only progressive changes in abortion legislation in the developed world have occurred in South Africa (1996), Mexico City (2001) and, more recently, in Nepal (2002).
If Uruguay advances in this direction, this country will become a real “model” and, above all, it will contribute to opening up the debate in neighbouring countries and the Latin American region at large. This step will also be critical to sustain a progressive regional position in relation this matter in fore coming global debates.
This is crucial because —though the mainstream media and policy analysts in our countries do not mention it— the agenda of moral conservatism against abortion is as important today for the Washington’s hawks as their Hobbesiaunilateralism and the greed for oil. Legalizing abortion in Uruguay will not necessarily be translated into an invasion by the US marines, but it will surely turn into increasing political pressures by the US government in the context of global negotiations that will occur during the next few years, for instance in relation to trade. As I see it, the full approval of the Uruguayan sexual and reproductive health law can effectively mean a major step to counter these sombre global trends.
