Copelon, Rhonda

English

Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law

REMARKS OF RHONDA COPELON*These presentations highlight three interrelated sources ofreproductive subordination: laws and policies denying womenreproductive autonomy, access to necessary information and services,and the possibility of full participation or citizenship; belief systemsthat include traditionalist religions and cultures, population control-lers, and medical practitioners; and the toleration, if not advocacy, ofpoverty, economic dependency, exploitation, war, and pervasivegender violence and discrimination. All combine to reduce womento less than persons, to objects or vehicles of sometimes competing,and sometimes mutually reinforcing, policies.The presentations also emphasize the centrality of an indivisiblehuman rights framework to changing this scenario and transformingwomen from objects to subjects. This was at the core of the globalwomen's intervention in the International Conference on Populationand Development (ICPD) in Cairo. The concept of reproductiverights transcends the "right to decide freely and responsibly thenumber and spacing of children," which was originally the sweetenerfor Northern-driven population programs. Despite its limitations, theCairo Programme of Action was a watershed in its recognition thatreproductive rights are human rights that include reproductive andsexual health, bodily integrity, and security of the person, and areunattainable without women's equality and empowerment.The key, developed with quiet passion by Dr. Fatallah, is recogni-tion of the fundamental dignity of women. Women must no longerbe the objects of health policy as bearers of new life, transmitters ofdisease, or polluters of the world. This requires, as the CairoProgramme reflects, an understanding of women's reproductivehealth that transcends both maternal and child health and familyplanning frameworks and that renounces population targets andincentives. It requires, as only partially accomplished in Cairo,putting sexual pleasure into health as well as sexual self-determination* Professor of Law and Director, International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic, CityUniversity School of Law.1253THE AMERICAN UNIvERsrTY LAw REvIEw [Vol. 44:1253of both heterosexual and lesbian women into rights.On the most intimate level, the human rights dimension demandsrespect for women's decisions and needs. Sofia Gruskin highlightsthis in discussing the objectification and "disappearance" of womenin HIV/AIDS policy initiatives. Ultimately, she challenges us torespect women's right to make childbearing decisions even whenthose decisions appear deeply troubling "from the outside." It is notlightly that one argues for the right of a woman to bear children withthe threat of AIDS hanging over her life and, in about twenty percentof the cases, that of the child she might bear. But dignity is notdivisible and the narratives of women desiring and foregoingchildbearing in these excruciating circumstances make that clear.Respect for a woman's integrity also encompasses decisions which aredriven by patriarchal pressures that condition a woman's worth on herfertility, at the same time as it includes the duty, as Lauren Gilbertsuggests, to make alternatives available to women in a sensitive,realistic, and noncoercive way.The second essential element of the international human rightsframework-in contrast to neo-liberal U.S. constitutional jurispru-dence-is the indivisibility of economic, social, and cultural rights withcivil and political rights. Traditional population programs provideservices without respect for decisionmaking and health whileneo-liberal policies protect rights that are illusory in the absence ofpersonal wealth and cultural respect for women's autonomy.Lori Heise has done groundbreaking work linking issues andconstituencies concerning violence and reproductive health. She iscorrect that, in the pre-Cairo universe, human rights and reproductivehealth tended to live in separate spheres. That this is changing isapparent in the battle for reproductive rights in Cairo, a result of thesynergy between the women's human rights movement, which madethe condemnation of gender violence a priority at the ViennaConference on Human Rights, and the women's reproductive healthmovement, which transformed population rhetoric in Cairo. Indeed,post-Cairo, we must stop saying reproductive rights and health as ifhealth is not a right. We underestimate the positive potential ofhuman rights to address basic needs by limiting them to negativeadmonitions and after-the-fact relief.The challenge of Cairo is to implement an indivisible approach tohuman rights that is separate from the demographic instrumentalismthat fuels so much of the interest in population as well as some of thecurrent interest in women's empowerment. The months since Cairo,however, underscore the gap between rhetorical and concrete change.1254REMARKS OF COPELONThe recognition that reproductive rights are human rights demandsprofound changes in the design and operation of populationprograms and presents new challenges for the human rights system.For example, treaty bodies, including but not limited to CEDAW,should use the Cairo commitments as a measure of adherence-bothpositive and negative-to the articles they monitor. At the same time,Lauren Gilbert's suggestion of a complaints procedure in the UNHCRcould be fruitfully applied to the programmatic agencies that areresponsible for implementing the Cairo Programme, such as UNFPA,UNDP, WHO, and UNICEF, as well as the international financialinstitutions. It is also particularly important, as the speakers on thispanel have emphasized, that those of us from the United States pressthe reproductive rights vision forward within this country, demandingthat both U.S. foreign and domestic policy respect it.Thus, we have returned from Cairo with an unprecedented, albeitlimited, blueprint for an integrated vision of human rights. As MonaZulficar has discussed, it also requires that we constantly confront theeconomic and military sources of poverty and environmentaldestruction, as well as create a people- and women-centered programfor sustainable human development, to which the Cairo Programmegives only lip-service.Here I want to suggest that we enlarge the framework of humanrights yet another step and integrate what has been dubbed the thirdgeneration of human rights. Reproductive health and decisionmakingare, in turn, inseparable from individual, as well as collective rights toself-determination, development, environmental protection, peace,and security. The third generation of rights-like the futureitself-requires solidarity, as well as accountability of market actors,and an end to economic exploitation and militarism. This includesending the disproportionate flow of wealth in debt service and marketdependency from South to North, as well as the flow of toxificationfrom North to South. It embraces the elimination of all forms ofgender violence and discrimination, as well as all policies andpractices that render people homeless.In the series of World Conferences from Vienna to Cairo, andlooking forward toward the Social Summit and the Women'sConvention in Beijing, women are weaving and interweaving a newand truly holistic vision of human rights-one that extends from theintegrity of our bodies to the integrity of our world. It is a vision wemust ultimately work to realize in all the places where we live. Theending of reproductive subordination, its causes, and its consequenc-es, is one key.1995] 1255

Remarks Conference on the Interventional Protection of Reproductive Rights: The Impact of Reproductive Subordination on Women\u27s Health

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Remarks Conference on the Interventional Protection of Reproductive Rights: The Impact of Reproductive Subordination on Women\u27s Health

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