Human Rights Watch, one of the largest rights organizations in the world, issued an 85 page report last week declaring that the lack of access to abortion violates a woman’s human rights. The Human Rights Watch position is seen as a harbinger of increasing sensitivity to womens reproductive rights concerns among international human rights organizations. But with the exception of a news story by Asjylyn Loder on Women’s eNews and a news brief in Ms. Magazine Online — there was nothing in the American media about this remarkable development. (At least nothing that I could find.)
Women’s eNews reports that the human rights group “has thrown its weight behind a woman’s right to choose, simultaneously releasing a report on Argentina recommending liberalized abortion laws there and filing a brief in support of a Colombian case trying to appeal that country’s strict abortion ban.”
“The moves bolster challenges to abortion bans in Colombia and Argentina and raise the pressure on other rights groups that have so far skirted the issue.”
“Reproductive rights advocates hope the will mark a shift in the mainstream human rights community, which they say has long avoided explicit support for reproductive rights–especially abortion–for fear of political backlash.”
The New York-based Human Rights Watch “believes that decisions about abortion belong to a pregnant woman without interference by the state or others. The denial of a pregnant woman’s right to make an independent decision regarding abortion violates or poses a threat to a wide range of human rights.” The organization reports that about 40 percent of all pregnancies in Argentina end in abortion and illegal abortion has been the leading cause of death among pregnant women for two decades.
“Historically,” states the HRW report, titled Decisions Denied Women’s Access to Contraceptives and Abortion in Argentina, “successive governments have legislated on matters related to
contraception and abortion as if women were instruments of reproduction and not equal human beings, contributing to an underlying sense among service providers and policy makers that birth control and reproductive health care are somehow illegitimate, immoral, or even illegal. The consequences for women’s health and lives are serious, sometimes literally fatal.”
“While Argentina’s current government is making important strides toward addressing a number of the abuses exposed in this report, its efforts to date continue at times to be undermined by public health officials who are opposed to reform, or who fear retribution if they implement the needed reforms.”
“As detailed in this report, women who want to use contraceptives face a series of imposing, sometimes insurmountable restrictions and obstacles. These barriers include domestic and sexual violence at the hands of intimate partners which authorities are not moving aggressively enough to prevent and remedy. Another obstacle is blatantly inaccurate or misleading information, too often propagated by health care workers themselves. A third is that many poor women simply cannot afford contraceptives and government promises of assistance are often not reaching those who need it most.”
Women’s eNews also reports that “Abortion is the third-leading cause of maternal mortality in Colombia, according to Women’s Link Worldwide, an international nongovernmental organization dedicated to advancing reproductive rights through international human rights law… Colombian law bans all abortions, even in cases of rape or when the life of the pregnant woman is at risk.”
The horrors of the current situation in Aregentina and Columbia should give pause to those who think that overturning Roe vs. Wade would not be that big a deal — and maybe cause them to consider more seriously the consequences of the policies that the theocratic, procriminalization lobby is seeking to impose in the United States.
Meanwhile, the silence in the American media is chilling.
[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]
Thanks for pointing out the Human Rights Watch report. I missed that.
Reproductive rights are essential in the US, and even more so in areas where access to good medical care is iffy. Women around the world are dying or becoming permanently injured due to lack of care, lack of access to reproductive choices and to others trying to control their lives and bodies.
It’s criminal.
of Human Rights Watch to say so clearly that access to abortion is a key element in women’s human rights.
Given the current discourse, in which even prescription birth control pills are mischaracterized and demonized as a form of abortion, and abortion as a form of murder … if this recent report from HRW does get any media attention in the U.S., well, it will probably be spun as the ugly shadow of human rights work.
When theocracy meets humanism, I guess there’s no way it can be pretty.
Great diary; thanks for bringing the report to our attention.
I think you are right. HRW has taken a very significant, pioneering step. The study about Argentina includes some extraordinary horror stories. No doubt, the tip of the iceberg.
I just want to say too, that Women’s eNews deserves huge credit for reporting this — and many other stories when no one else will. The media, including the progressive/alternative press is silent on this — as is the blogoshere.
I posted this over at the Daily Kos, and most of the comment thread was hijacked by a debate about abortion and language with a partially prochoice evangelical Christian.
The larger issues of whats going on internationally, how it relates to the situation in the U.S., and how the media don’t cover this, got quite lost.
Maybe my posting here, on Kos and my own blog will wake up the blogosphere. Maybe not.
We can only hope that the theocratic movement to totally control the reproductive rights of women can be thwarted in every possible way. That HRW has taken this historic step in pushing women’s reproductive rights to the forefront of a basic human right is a trememdous step forward in insuring that women will continue to have this right and to promote this right for all women worldwide.
Thank you for your work in bringing this issue into the light and hopefully it will garner a well spring of support here and around the world.
I have become increasingly distressed with what does and does not get covered in the news. It has an impact on me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I teach students how to write web journalism–mostly features and analysis, not a lot of news-finding–but still, when most of them come in, they have to be taught how to find news that isn’t put out by the major news corporations in the US.
Thank you for pointing out that a piece of vital news has gotten lost, yet again. And for your eloquent argument about what the end result of such measures against women lead to.
I read this yesterday on dKos too, and it is a good diary for the information it provides. But the idea that a report about human rights in Argentina should be top news in the US is reaching a bit. This report doesn’t even get front page treatment on Human Rights Watch own website! Why should the US media treat it any differently than Human Rights Watch does? It is a report about the state of women’s reproductive rights in Argentina, like many other similar reports this organization provides, nothing more.
Although I am not a supporter of the idea that access to a abortion is human right (indeed, it completely contradicts the very foundation of human rights — human equality — as much as slavery or sexism or racism do), I do agree that the current prohibitions against abortion in Latin America have done nothing to reduce its practice there and that experience can be instructive for just policy here in America too.
au contraire.
As the Womens eNews piece points out, this is paving major territory in the international human rights field, which has resisted the idea that reproductive rights are human rights. Human Rights Watch’s study on abortion and contraception in Argentina is a first foray into the arena.
Given that the matter of reproductive rights is such a hotly contested issue in United Nations related activities thanks to the GOP, in alliance with the Vatican and the Islamic nations, this development, and possible trend is a very important development.
Why, then, does this report not get prominent publicity on the Human Rights Watch website? I just don’t think you can expect mainline news media, or even bloggers for that matter, to get so worked up over a report whose own publishers are not even promoting as breakthrough document of the sort you seem to be implying.
Everything I read in the report points to it being an Argentina-specific issue.
Well, there is a detailed press release available in thier press center which I linked to in my diary, and which I am sure was sent the the logical outlets. (The American Constitution Society and the National Womens Political Caucus, among others found it significant, but not the MSM). There is a related backgrounder, issued the same day on the broader issue of reproductive rights and human rights in the right column. http://hrw.org/backgrounder/americas/argentina0605/
Of course if you read the Argentina report absent the context that HRW now has a reproductive rights program they did not used to have, and you ignore how the the Womens eNews story explains the significance of HRW’s entree into the field, I guess you could say, ‘hey its just a report, this is hype.
I am also not inventing the signficance of this. Here is an excerpt from Women’s eNews’ next day story:
“It’s time,” said Marianne Mollmann, Americas researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch. “I think it is important that international human rights groups get involved in reproductive rights issues in general and in the issue of access to abortion specifically.”
Reproductive rights advocates hope the will mark a shift in the mainstream human rights community, which they say has long avoided explicit support for reproductive rights–especially abortion–for fear of political backlash.
“There’s no longer an excuse that it’s political, and not a human rights issue,” said Luisa Cabal, director of the international program for the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. “It is a human rights issue.” …
Women’s rights organizations have long held that women’s rights are human rights, yet the mainstream human rights community remained silent on reproductive rights issues, especially abortion, said Cabal.
“It’s a matter of an issue that remains invisible,” Cabal said. “Women’s rights are the last on the agenda.”
I maintain that the mainstream media and that with few exceptions, the blogosphere, missed this boat. I understand that you, unlike Women’s eNews and the authorative sources quoted in the story, see no news value here, and you are entitled to your view. But I am issuing a Pooh Pooh Alert on this one.
There is news value there — for people interested in the abortion debates, like eWomens news. I am particularly concerned about any development that would start listing abortion as a human right, and I found your diary interesting for that reason, both on dKos and here.
But I think the real story is what you just mentioned: that a major human rights advocacy organization is pushing the idea that abortion is a human right — a non-sequitar in the view of pro-life thinkers that seriously weakens HRW’s other claims to stand for human rights. (The daughter of the state rep whose Democratic district I chair actually works for HRW in the abortion rights area, so I’m somewhat familiar with their work.) That is an interesting and controversial development and maybe deserves some news coverage for that reason.
But a major point in your diary was that the story is being ignored by media in the US, and I’m just saying, “Hold on there. Not even HRW gave the report front page treatment on its own site. Why expect more of other media?”
I remember the pre-Roe days and the hell some of my women friends went through. Bushco would like to return to those days, regardless of the danger to women. This is an important diary, and I thank you for posting it here.
The right to make one’s own medical decisions is more important now than ever.
That was my response to your diary yesterday. The last time I got involved in an online discussion of abortion, I lost my temper. Up till now I have been avoiding reading this excellent work. I am grateful to you for posting this good news, and for introducing me to the women’s news website. I’m holding my tongue today on this – but thank you very much for posting it, Frederick. The whole world will follow the current and tow even puritan America along.