Reproductive Health As a Human Right

Access to safe reproductive healthcare is a right of everyone - men, women, adolescents. But most importantly, and something those of us in our "first world" bubble sometimes forget, it's a right regardless of what country/part of the world you live in. It's also something that governments around the world forget as you can see by this map of worldwide abortion laws created by the Center for Reproductive Rights. The disparity is easily apparent. It doesn't just fall along the lines of conservative/liberal or religious/secular; instead it's rich/poor, developed/developing.

In 2000 the United Nations created the Millennium Development Goals. These are 8 quantifiable, measurable goals that the nations around the world felt would greatly improve human rights of the most poor and vulnerable around the world. And they would, if they were actually met. The 2015 deadline for the MDGs are not to far off. We are working our way toward achieving some, but are falling far short of others. In particular, we are far from the goals related to maternal and child health: Goal 3 to promote gender equality and empower women, Goal 4 to reduce child mortality, and Goal 5 to improve maternal health. Despite this, improving women's health doesn't seem like a priority to many, especially if it enables women to take control of their own lives and bodies.

Not only would improving access to reproductive health improve the MCH related MDGs, but it would also improve others like Goal 1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and Goal 6 to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. Improving reproductive health enables men and women to create sustainable families and focus on jobs and education. Not to mention that allowing women to have control over their reproductive health treats them like autonomous humans and not just baby making machines.

Reproductive health is a human right, a right everyone should have. Until the governments of the world understand that, we will always have a huge human rights disparity.

Which Way Home

I stumbled upon another really good documentary through netflix. Which Way Home is about children from Central America who travel as migrants with hopes of crossing the Mexico-U.S. border. So what does that have to do with abortion? Not much directly. I watched the documentary and it was a very emotional subject and it was really hard to watch children take on such a long and painful journey. At the end I cried, only for a moment, but I cried. I cried for the women I have met who have taken a similar journey as the children in this film. I also cried for the women who have left children in their countries of origin in hopes of providing for those children through work in the United States.

At work we serve many women who have reached the United States as undocumented people. I have listened to women tell their stories of walking for days, bus rides, and train rides. I have spoken to women who have been raped by coyotes and are pregnant and it could be the result of a couple different rapes. One of the children who is followed in the documentary tells his story of hiding in the boxcar of a train and watching a mother and daughter get raped by 15 men. These stories are horrifying and real.

My spanish is mas o menos at best and often times I can only pick up on a few words or a sentence. I have brought clothes to women who have showed up in the clinic in need of an abortion and often I've wondered how they are surviving the United States. Sometimes my coworker who is a native spanish speaker fills me in on a woman's story, I am a peripheral support person for spanish speaking women in the clinic where I work.

I have spoken to Latina women who are pregnant as a result of consensual sex and would rather have a baby then an abortion, but often times she cannot imagine supporting a child in the United States on her meager pay because she is sending money home to take care of the children she had to leave with family in her country of origin. Most recently I had to help a spanish speaking woman fill out here chart. I don't claim to be fluent but I have learned to ask most of the questions in spanish involved in filling out the first part of a patient's chart. I recently had a conversation that really changed my perspective. It went like this:

Me: Tiene hijos? (Do you have children?)
Patient: Si
Me: Cuantos? (How many?)
Patient: Tres
Me: Cuando nacimiento? (When birth?)- for lack of better words
Patient: *look of confusion*
Me: El cumpleanos de sus hijos? (Birthdays of your children?)
Patient: no recuerdo.

At this point I had to get some help from my coworker, the native Spanish speaker. I personally did not comprehend that some woman's experience is not conducive to remembering dates like when they gave birth. This conversation was an eye opener for me. I never considered the emotional distance some women must have to maintain when they have left children they love because it seems like the best way to care for them.

Every one in this country, with the exception of Native Americans, is the descendant an immigrant in some form or fashion. I don't understand the need to criminalize Latino people who want to come here. I don't understand who gets to decide which immigrants have a right to be here and which don't. The United States of America is a land of immigrants.

You can go here to watch clips of the documentary if you don't have netflix.

Media Monday! "Abortion Democracy," the documentary

A few weeks ago I met a German woman named Sarah Diehl, who's in the US doing a screening tour for her documentary, "Abortion Democracy: Poland / South Africa." I saw a short preview of the film and have been looking forward to seeing it ever since.

Poland is one of the few countries in Europe that has criminalized abortion in almost all cases -- and this isn't an ancient law, either, but one passed in 1994. I remember a few years ago reading about a Polish woman who sued the government in the European Court of Human Rights after being denied an abortion that would have saved her deteriorating eyesight. Alicja Tysiac is functionally blind as a result of this denial; the court found that the Polish law did not even uphold the narrow exceptions it claimed to make for cases where a woman's health was endangered by pregnancy, the government had failed by the standards of its own law and  Tysiac's human rights had been violated. The court awarded her compensation, but of course that won't restore her sight. The story both outraged and terrified me: abortion policies aren't an abstraction limited to proving ideological points -- they are terribly, viscerally real for the women whose decision-making they vitiate.

South Africa, on the other hand, is one of the few countries in Africa that has legalized elective abortion. The law was changed in 1996 to allow abortion "on demand" in the first trimester and abortion on certain legal, medical or socioeconomic grounds in weeks 13-20. (Quick fact: "on demand" means that women are not required to stand before a judge, panel of doctors, or other jury who will approve or reject their 'case' for an abortion.) Yet legally-qualifying abortions are still quite difficult to obtain for many South African women, especially in the second trimester. In fact, "Abortion Democracy" suggests that it may be "easier to obtain an illegal abortion in Poland than it is to obtain a legal abortion in South Africa." In this sense, national policies are not the only thing that determines the nature of on-the-ground access, not by a long shot.

I'll be watching the movie tonight, so I'll be back with an update on how it was. In the meantime, I hope this trailer gets you as intrigued as I am.