Who Decides For Women's Reproductive Rights?

[theHandpuppet]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leila-mouri/who-decides-for-womens-reproductive-rights_b_5551455.html
Leila Mouri
Iranian women's rights activist, journalist
Who Decides For Women's Reproductive Rights?
Posted: 07/02/2014

In a matter of one week in the U.S. and Iran, authorities have made decisions that restrain women's right to control their bodies. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court voted in favor of permitting family companies to deny employees insurance coverage for contraception in the name of religious freedom. Whereas, Iranian MPs ratified a bill last week which in case of becoming a law criminalizes any act that promotes or employs birth control tools and methods.

Based on the Iranian bill, every individual who does vasectomy or tubectomy (tubal ligation) could face 2-5 years of imprisonment. A policy change from the late 1980s and 1990s, when Iranian government implemented a comprehensive national family planning project, which based on UN reports, was one of the most successful population policies.

Family planning was a rational solution to the problem of a population boom resulting from political-religious preaches by the Islamic regime in the first decade after the 1979 Revolution. It led to the reduction of Iran's population growth rate from 3.2 in 1986 to 1.29 in 2010. It meant less pregnancy for Iranian women and thus more achievement in education; it could be a reason for Iranian women being 60 percent of college students since the 2000s.

However, two years ago Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei stated that the family planning was a mistake and that Iran's population needs a boost. Subsequently, conservative government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cut the birth control budget and Iranian parliament drafted a new bill to materialize supreme leader's decree. Finally, last week, the first step was taken towards a new law to restrict access to birth control for Iranian citizens....

MORE at link posted above.

[BrotherIvan]

1. K&R

It meant less pregnancy for Iranian women and thus more achievement in education; it could be a reason for Iranian women being 60 percent of college students since the 2000s.

This is the heart of it. The fact that so many Xtian cults are preaching submissiveness (as can be seen on many of the comments on the HL Facebook page) of wives to their husbands should have been the canary in the coal mine. But men kept acting like it had nothing to do with them, so meh. The greatest way to keep people poor and submissive is to take away their educated choices not to have so many children until they can no longer feed them. It has the double effect of keeping women from achieving higher education and career goals.

[theHandpuppet]

2. Exactly!

Which only underscores that one cannot honestly address the issues of poverty and income inequity as if the rights of women have no bearing on the global economy. In fact, women's equality and reproductive rights are ESSENTIAL to eradicating poverty in this world.

[theHandpuppet]

3. This next link is to a pdf

The Millennium Project (UN)
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/Gender-chapters4-6.pdf

This section covers:
Sexual and reproductive health and rights
Women's inheritance and property rights
Investing in infrastructure that will reduce women's time burdens

[BrotherIvan]

4. Excellent info

I do praise anyone who helps make women's lives better. It is good in every way for the health of the society as a whole and should be supported in any way possible. But we now have an idea that we can treat over half of the population as less than human and somehow that will make it better?

I have never understood why people would be for forcing women to bear as many children as possible. The stereotypes of poor catholics with zoos of children is not that far off. I can't imagine any man who would want to support dozens of kids (or they think they won't have to) and so pay no attention to contraception. We even had a poster on this very site claim "it's a woman's problem." Say what?

If I had any money at all, my dream is to work to develop a 100% effective, easy to use and easy to take birth control. The earth demands it and it makes everyone's lives better--women, children, and men. Hormonal treatments for women have to work very hard to prevent conception. But with males, it's much easier as altering the motility of sperm doesn't take as much to do. But here again, we have the idea that males don't have to worry about pregnancy. There is so much bad education out there and the fundies have been so successful in spreading their lies its maddening. The good news is, most of Europe and parts of Asia are going in the opposite direction. So at least there will be pockets of the world where science won't die.