Birth Control: A Basic Human Right
The UN recently declared that birth control is a basic human right. Although they have regularly been an outspoken supporter of birth
control as a right, it is an interesting turn of events to have it officially
been declared as a “basic” human right After pondering this for a while, I
started wondering: is birth control really something that is considered
“basic”?
There are two different ways to approach this question. You
can look at birth control as something the prevents pregnancy and therefore
will keep a woman healthier (not that pregnancy is necessary unhealthy, but it
leads to an entirely new set of medical issues) or you can look at birth
control that prevents pregnancy and therefore women take it to prevent
something they don’t want to deal with quite yet. I view birth control as
something someone CHOOSES to take and not something that someone NEEDS to take.
Whether or not voluntary medication can truly be considered
a basic right is the real question here. After all, its not like anyone has
died from not taking a birth control pill. People die from childbirth, which I
suppose can be a “side effect” of not taking birth control. In my opinion, however, basic human rights
are things like access to water and shelter because those are two things that
people will actually die from if they don’t have. People don’t choose to live
on the street or choose to not drink water, but they do choose to take birth
control or not.
I don’t have anything against people having a right to birth
control. I think it is something that every woman should have access to. With
that being said, I still have a problem with it being called a “basic” human
right. Basic human rights should only be reserved for things that are a
necessity for keeping you alive. Plenty of women survive without birth control and
can choose plenty of other ways of controlling pregnancy.
Since women have the option of taking birth control but aren’t
required to use it, birth control should be a right that women have, but not a
basic human right. Everyone should be able to have a right to control their reproductive
health but that basic human rights should be saved for things that are actually
necessary for survival.
