SPOTLIGHT ON ABORTION CARE & REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
Whose Rights? Human Rights! Whose Rights? Our Rights!
Written by Jeff Koetje, MD, AMSA Reproductive Health Programming Strategist
With a twinkle in her eye and a smirk on her lips, and from the ballroom stage set up for the keynote address, Loretta Ross – one of the founding Mothers of the Reproductive Justice Movement – said to several hundred future physicians,
“Sexual Rights just might be my favorite category of human rights,
because it means that if my partner isn’t pleasing me, I can say, ‘Do it better!
You’re violating my human right to sexual pleasure!’”
The room full of students immediately erupted in laughter, mixed with, perhaps, (certainly for me) awe in the face of such a direct, and seemingly bold, declaration of what she, as a human being, has the inalienable right to. Of course, she wasn’t just speaking of her personal, individual right to sexual pleasure; she was speaking of this right, and many other rights, that each and every one of us possess by virtue of being human. She was speaking of human rights, and the importance of helping people better understand and internalize their right to claim their human rights. She made the point that, absent a deep understanding of and unapologetic insistence on our rightful claim to our universal human rights, we become increasingly at risk of accepting the dehumanizing conditions imposed by systems of power that seek to control and dominate people.
Loretta Ross has taught me something else about human rights:
how important it is to name our rights as human rights, even when talking about, say, the conditions under which we labor, learn, or live. I was speaking with her in advance of her keynote address at the 2024 AMSA Convention, Future Physicians for Change, and I described to her some of the exploitative and disturbing conditions under which medical students experience their medical education and training. After several minutes of listening to me, she said,
“Jeff, you’ve been speaking about all of these violations of learning and labor rights that medical students are subjected to,
and not once did you actually say that these are human rights violations!
Call them what they are!”
Lesson learned – when Loretta Ross drops some truth, it’s always a good idea to pick it up.
The results of the US elections, and recent polls showing the general public’s growing support for anti-refugee policies like mass deportation have me thinking a lot about human rights (reminder for us all: seeking asylum is a universal human right!), and we in the AMSA Reproductive Health Project are making plans to make human rights a major theme throughout all of our Project’s programs. The hard truth is that most of us aren’t even all that aware of what our human rights actually are – not that there is a single, exhaustive list of them, but there are lists of human rights, nonetheless, and it’s never a bad thing to periodically refresh our awareness. Perhaps the best known is the Universal Human Rights Declaration of 1948.
In her keynote address, Loretta Ross asked the AMSA audience of future physicians to name categories of human rights, and what followed was some awkward, silent hesitation, and then a few answers that, while correct, were not delivered with the confidence of people certain of what their human rights actually are. But Loretta Ross didn’t tut-tut or scold her audience; she took it as an opportunity to remind us that it is the sacredness of our common humanity, the quality of our humanness, from which flows these rights which are universally ours to claim. And then she took the time to talk with us about each of the categories of human rights, as she sees them.
In her view, there are at least eight categories; and in fact, after describing each of these eight, she spoke about a ninth (“Digital Rights”) and a tenth (“Scientific Rights”), the additions of which reflect the philosophical commitment to the notion that human rights should only ever expand, and never contract, as humans come to deeper understanding of what it is, and what it means, to be human in the context of humanity’s history, present, and future.
These categories, as she describes them, are:
- Civil Rights – Non-Discrimination, Equality
- Political Rights – Voting, Speech, Assembly
- Economic Rights – Living Wage, Workers’ Rights
- Social Rights – Health Care, Food, Shelter, Education
- Cultural Rights – Religion, Language, Dress
- Environmental Rights – Clean Air, Water, and Land. No Toxic Neighborhoods
- Developmental Rights – Control Own Natural Resources
- Sexual Rights – Right to Have or Not Have Children, Right to Marry & When, Same-Sex Rights, Transgender Rights, Right to Birth Control and Abortion, Right to Sexual Pleasure and Define Families
AND now…introducing…the newest…and necessary categories…drum roll please!…
- DIGITAL RIGHTS
- SCIENTIFIC RIGHTS
So, here we are, with a list of human rights categories that might actually be fairly easy to commit to memory! Perhaps we ought to be insisting that this list of 10 be posted in every classroom in the US, rather than that other list of 10, which happens to be the darling of the Christian Nationalists seeking to impose a fundamentalist Christian theocracy upon all of us. But this raises precisely the point that Loretta Ross encourages us to understand: if we do not continually rise up to claim all and every human right that is ours to claim, we will be laid low by the political forces of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and fascism. And our humanity – which is sacred – will be degraded, and our lives – which are, quite literally, scientifically miraculous (amazing, marvelous, wondrous) – will be debased.
So, say it with me, Whose rights? Human rights! Whose rights? Our rights!
###
*Note: an excerpt of this Spotlight is included in AMSA Reproductive Health Project eNews #32:
The Only Way Out Is Through: Resilience in the Face of Uncertainty, Nov. 23, 2024
Find the current and past issues in the AMSA Repro eNews Archive.
ICYMI – Check out our Nov. 16
SPOTLIGHT ON ABORTION CARE & REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
Voters Win Abortion Care Protection in 7 More States
Now 14 of 17 States Succeed in Guaranteeing Right to Abortion Care
Written by Sarah Osborn, Reproductive Justice Coordinator
AMSA Gender & Sexuality Action Committee
Explore the AMSA Reproductive Health Project
Find news, tips, tools, opportunities & more!
Sign-up Here for AMSA Repro Project Updates
