Rights and Needs

Rethinking the Connections in Debates over Reproductive and Sexual Rights

Bibliographic Data

ID12440247
AuthorsRosalind Pollack Petchesky (Hunter College, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume4
Issue2
Pages17-17
Publication date2000-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHealth and Human Rights (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1079-0969 • E-ISSN: 2150-4113
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/4065194
PMID10796968
OpenAlexW204872612
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited1

t the March 1999 Preparatory Committee Meeting for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session's five-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD+5), the pro-family newspaper Vivant! published a feature artiele, replete with statistical data and graphics, condemning the human rights-based approach to health.' Central to the article's attack was an argument embracing the discourse of basic as a framework ethically and socially superior to that of human rights. Associating such infrastructural conditions as safe water and nutrition with the approach and reproductive and sexual health with the approach, it alleged that indiscriminate funding for the ICPD's idealistically high standards of reproductive and sexual health rights had caused underfunding and deterioration of more basic, practicable and affordable health (emphasis added). The article further insinuated that such flawed priorities reflect a Western agenda (read, of Western feminists) with a blatant disregard for the genuine needs and priorities of women in the South.2 One does not have to defend the deplorable record of the U.S. government and U.S.-based corporations with regard to Southern women's health needs to see that this rhetoric has a primary strategic aim: to demonstrate the

Environmental ethics · Gay rights · Human rights · Political science · Politics · Reproductive health · Reproductive rights · Sexual and reproductive health and rights · Sociology · Demography · Gender Studies · Human Rights and Development · Law · Philosophy

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