Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives

22. Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: The Colombian Case

Chapter 22 Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: The Colombian Case Maria Isabel Plata Introduction Over the past 15-20 years, women in different parts of the world have taken up issues of reproductive health. Their concern has been to empower women to control their own fertility and sexualitywith maximumchoice and minimum health problems by providing information and alternative services, and by campaigning for women's right to make informed choices about their fertility, for improved services and for more appropriate technologies.1 The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Women's Convention)2 is the major international treaty that protects the right of women to make their own decisions about their fertility and sexuality. Under the Women's Convention states are obligated to take all appropriate measures to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, including those forms that result from the lack of reproductive health services and education. Under this Convention, policy-makers, governments, and service providers have to see fertility regulation and reproductive health services as a way to empower women, and not as a means to limit population growth, save the environment, and speed economic development. Women's enjoyment and exercise of reproductive rights and fundamental freedoms will become a universal fact when women everywhere are allowed to make their own decisions about their fertility and sexuality . Women need appropriate information and services, but new reproductive health policies are also required. New policies should require family planning services to address other aspects of women's reproductive health, like pregnancy care, sexuality, and reproductive 516 Maria Isabel Plata tract infections.These services will not succeed if they do not acknowledge that "choice" in the life of a woman is affected by many considerations . The choice of contraception is affected by personal circumstances such as her health, her sexual relationships, the stage she has reached in her reproductive life, her status in society, her risk of suffering violence, her possible exposure to infected partners, her prior experience with other contraceptive methods, and her access to education and information. For new policies to succeed, it is crucial to accept the facts that it will be some time before all women's and men's contraception needs are met and that all contraceptives have failure rates.3 As a result, some women will always need safe abortions. It is also crucial to recognize that the need for education and information cannot be used as a smoke screen to shield the lack of or inadequate delivery of reproductive health and family planning services. Education and information without services, and services without education and information, infringe on women's rights to the liberty and security of their person and to be free from all forms of discrimination due to their status as women. Untilrecently in Colombia, government institutions would proudly say that they were educating families about reproductive welfare, but they left the provision of reproductive health services, especially those dealing with contraception, in the hands of private non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Thus the government did not have to confront society, politicians, or the Catholic Church, to which about 95 percent of the national population nominally belongs. Profamilia is the leading private, nonprofit family planning association , affiliated since 1965with the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The Colombian Ministry of Public Health has offered family planning services since 1969 as part of its health program, but because of severe constraints on the health care budget family planning services are not emphasized. Profamilia helps to fill the gap and currently provides more than 60 percent of all family planning services delivered in the country.4 It runs 48 clinics located in all regions of Colombia, and directly markets contraceptives in pharmacies and small shops throughout the country. The role of the association continues to be "To promote and defend the basic human right of family planning in Colombia and work toward achieving better sexual and reproductive health by offering information and other services." This chapter addresses the recent developments of reproductive rights in Colombia and the new programmatic initiatives taken by Profamilia to empower women to assert their rights. Reproductive RightsasHuman Rights—Colombia 517 The Development of Reproductive Rights in Colombia The Importance of the Women's Convention The Convention provides that states parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure for women "The same rights to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their...