Is birth control a fundamental right?

Birth control, or contraception, is a practice, material, or device by which sexual intercourse can be rendered incapable of producing a pregnancy. Throughout history, women and men have practiced birth control in a wide variety of ways. However, birth control has become a matter of public debate only in the last two centuries. Speaking and writing about birth control have not always received strong First Amendment protection.

Largely scorned and even condemned by public officials, birth control was once treated as immoral and obscene by lawmakers. President Theodore Roosevelt even referred to it as “suicide of the race”. The 1873 Comstock Act, a federal law designed to prevent the distribution of immoral material, was used to censor communication about birth control, thereby placing medical advice and pornographic literature on the same plane. The well-known feminist Margaret Sanger, an early advocate of birth control, was arrested in 1929 after giving a speech about its practice.

Fifty years ago, the world declared family planning to be a basic human right. Throughout all of human history, efforts to plan, avoid, or delay pregnancy had been a private struggle endured by women and girls. But at the 1968 International Conference on Human Rights, family planning became a human rights obligation of every country, government, and policymaker. The conference’s outcome document, known as the Teheran Proclamation, stated unequivocally: “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.”

Embedded in this legislative language was a game-changing realization: Women and girls have the right to avoid the exhaustion, depletion, and danger of too many pregnancies, too close together. Men and women have the right to choose when and how often to embrace parenthood – if at all. Every individual has the human right to determine the direction and scope of his or her future in this fundamental way.

Yet 50 years later, this right is under attack. In many places, there are efforts to limit education about family planning, to restrict the variety and availability of contraceptive methods, and to prevent women and youth from accessing contraceptives at all. In other places, this right is simply unrealized through lack of access to family planning information and services.

Misinformation about family planning is rampant – and deadly. In Lebanon, one Syrian refugee reported that her husband forbade contraception, believing it causes infertility. In fact, expanding access to family planning would save tens of thousands of lives every year by preventing unintended pregnancies, reducing the number of abortions, and lowering the incidence of death and disability related to complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

Family planning information and services cannot be restricted on the basis of race, sex, language, religion, political affiliation, national origin, age, economic status, place of residence, disability status, marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Contraceptive information and services must be available in sufficient quantity, with sufficient variety, to accommodate everyone in need. Every person must be empowered to make reproductive choices with full autonomy, free of pressure, coercion, or misrepresentation. All individuals must enjoy the right to privacy when seeking family planning information and services. Health workers must be trained to uphold the confidentiality of all people exercising their right to family planning. Health systems, education systems, leaders, and policymakers must be accountable to the people they serve in all efforts to realize the human right to family planning. This means women, young people, and marginalized populations must be aware of their rights, and must be empowered to seek redress if this right is violated.

Until family planning is a universally available choice, this human right will not be fully realized. UNFPA and the World Health Organization have recognized nine standards that must be met in every community, for every individual.

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