Sexual and Reproductive Rights: exercising citizenship. (Sexual Rights and Reproductive Rights).

"Because 'you can't talk about that,' our societies don't discuss sexuality openly and democratically; because 'you can't do that,' illegal abortions cause illness and death; because 'you can't touch that,' love and pleasure are prohibited. Poverty is not just material; sexual repression and lack of control over reproduction also cause human misery. We are citizens; we can decide our nations' destiny. So why shouldn't we decide the destiny of our own bodies?"

This quotation from the call for action of the Campaign for the Inter-American Convention on Sexual Rights and Reproductive Rights impels us to reopen our discussion of a challenging and difficult topic. This issue involves information, proposals, passions and challenges that upset the gendered order of humanity to ensure the exercise of rights. It champions freedom and autonomous control over our bodies, the priorities of a struggle that still continues despite the progress made over the last few years.

But the challenge to define and protect these rights is not the only remaining task. As Lilian Celiberti (2001) suggests, we have not yet engaged in a systematic discussion of sexuality which would allow us to promote new models and symbols, identities, and broader and more flexible definitions. At the same time, we must continue to denounce and disarm the repressive trauma caused by the hegemonic pedagogy of sexuality.

Feminist approaches are based on an "ethnological criticism of androcentrism" of the supposedly universal paradigm of the human male. This criticism seeks to reclaim women's ability to make serious and responsible decisions regarding their sexual and reproductive lives. This implies a fundamental questioning of the idea of a "natural" female identity with the inherent mandate of motherhood as essential to give meaning to sexuality and reproduction.

Sexuality, reproduction, the exercise of rights and the way in which we perceive them are influenced by the gendered organization of the world, manifest in the family, religion, science, education, the environment and the socio-economic and political realities of each society.

As Teresita de Barbieri (1991) explains, this organization based on sex/ gender "grants and legitimizes a set of practices, symbols, representations, norms and values that societies elaborate on the basis of anatomical and physiological sexual difference. In this way, men and women are educated with a life philosophy learned through and characterized by gender," which leads us to experience and develop our sexuality in a given way.

Feminist and gender studies long have recognized the influence of male power over women's sexual and reproductive autonomy. The fact that power resides in sexuality places human beings in a space that is defined on the basis of different forms of gender. Gender assignment constitutes a form of integration in the social hierarchy and is one of the criteria for its reproduction. This also implies having and exercising power over others or not having power even over one's own life.

From the Abstract to the Real

During the past decade, the women's and feminist movements have played a critical role in broadening definitions related to sexual and reproductive health--and sexual and reproductive rights--particularly in developing countries (Correa and Petchesky, 1995). These movements have questioned the disciplinary, analytical and institutional divisions that arbitrarily separate aspects of what is understood as living a full life. Although the health care services are generally concerned with reproduction and dedicate little effort to issues related to sexuality and rights, the worldwide consensus reached at the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) highlighted the need for a broader, comprehensive vision of sexual and reproductive health, recognizing that "reproductive rights encompass certain human rights that have already been recognized in national laws, international documents on human rights, and other United Nations documents that have been approved by consensus." (1)

But regardless of the important advances made in women's sexual and reproductive health over the last few years, the agreements and recommendations reached at Cairo and Beijing have not yet met the goals outlined at these conferences. The failure to implement these agreements is due to governments' reluctance to turn these international agreements and recommendations into sustained and comprehensive public policies truly responding to the needs, demands and rights of the millions of women who continue to risk their health and lives despite the fact that the problems that they face are preventable. Illegal abortion and its consequences, including high levels of maternal mortality in the region, are part of the crude reality of a world that does not recognize or accept the fact that women are entitled to have power and rights and are capable of making free and responsible decisions in regard to all aspects of their health, bodies and sexuality.

Power and Rights

As Brazilian feminist Maria Betania Avila notes, "the deconstruction of the history of private life allowed women to understand the forms of power that were exercised over their bodies [...] For this reason during the 1970s the phrase 'my body, my choice,' inspired defiance all over the world" not only as a slogan but as a basis for the constitution of our very existence, power and self- determination over our bodies and lives.

The exercise of sexual and reproductive rights has generated and will continue to generate controversy and rejection in many sectors of society because it represents a deep and irreversible questioning of philosophical, ideological, religious and political positions. Respect for personal decisions to experience one's sexuality without discrimination nor violence, to have the right to a safe abortion and to freely express one's sexual preferences goes to the heart of the patriarchal system's gender domination. It is here that patriarchal system's power is located, concentrated and sustained, leading to the denial of people's ethical and legal capacity to make autonomous decisions on the basis of an indispensable democratic principle: respect for differences and diversity.

We must continually revise and recreate sexual and reproductive rights and their inter-relatedness with human rights and women's citizenship. Sonia Correa and Rosalind Petchesky have laid out four ethical principles based on power and resources: bodily integrity, personhood, equality and respect for diversity. Each principle presents dilemmas that can only be resolved through social arrangements that differ radically from those that currently exist in a large part of the world and the sine qua non recognition of human rights as "indivisible and independent in that it is impossible to establish a hierarchy that situates one group of rights above another. All human rights have the same importance and moral force, and their recognition can therefore not be supplanted by any condition." (2)

Sexual and reproductive rights have the same power as any other right in several senses. It is each individual's right to choose his or her path and destiny. This implies the defense of sexual freedom, voluntary motherhood, sexual preferences and the interruption of unwanted pregnancies. It implies saying, doing and touching without prohibitions, myths or imposed values, "because we want to speak, listen, debate, break down prejudices, air out our minds, and open windows and hearts," (3) in order to exercise and guarantee those rights as the most humane of human and citizens' rights.

Notes

(1.) CIDEM (1999). "Campaha 28 de Septiembre: Cairo+5 y el aborto," Bolivia: CIDEM.

(2.) Correa, Sonia and Rosalind Petchesky (2001). "Los Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos: Una perspectiva feminista," in Mujeres al Timon. Cuadernos para la Incidencia Politica Feminista. Lima: Flora Tristan.

(3.) From the Call to Action of the Campaign for the Inter-American Convention on Sexual Rights and Reproductive Rights, 2001.

The author is Executive Director of Bolivia's Centro de Informacion y Desarrollo de la Mujer (CIDEM, Women's Information and Development Center).