Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

Heather Widdows 10 emphasises that it is not easy to define reproductive
rights – they are absent from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
at a European level there is no consensus on what reproductive rights are and
who is responsible for providing such rights. Even so, everybody agrees on
the importance of reproductive health. Heather Widdows 11 notices that five of
the fundamental issues in reproductive rights in the contemporary context are
abortion, adoption, birth rate, teenage pregnancy and the rights of minority.
She argues that it is important to note that women’s reproductive rights are
linked to other rights – political, social and economic rights. But reproductive
rights are central to any concept of women’s rights. For example, women’s rights
to economic stability depend upon whether a woman can postpone childbirth
(if she wishes) until she is established in a career or stable relationship (rights
to reproductive autonomy) as well as upon social situations and institutions
(such as the state provision of childcare and social assumptions about the role
of women).
Personal Desires and National Goals Related to Human Reproduction
Fertility control is of great interest to both nation states and individuals, but
their goals are not always the same. Nations have been interested in both
limiting and increasing population size at different points in their histories.
Fertility control issues at the state level are mediated by nationalist interests and
contested by individual citizens. States, both on the local and national levels
have great interest in their population characteristics. For both pragmatic and
ideological reasons, a country’s population is a critical resource concerning its
quantity, quality and vitality. In many countries, explicit policies are implemented
when the population is determined by those having power to be too
large or too small, or in some other way, a “problem”. The introduction of state
natalist policies often have unintended consequences and/or differential effects
on the various groups the policies are supposed to affect. Natalism or probirth
is a belief that promotes human reproduction; it may comprise pro-natalist
policies, that is, national efforts to increase population, or anti-natalist policies,
that is, national efforts to decrease population, usually by reducing the birth
10
Heather Widdows, “Introduction”, in Women’s reproductive rights (Women’s rights in Europe), eds. Heather Widdows,
Itziar Alkorta Idiakez and Aitziber Emaldi Cirión, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 1-16.
11
Ibid.
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