255 / 464
241
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND HUMAN DIGNITY
right to private and family life. During the UNFPA
9
1994 Cairo Conference on
Population and Development, “delegates agreed that reproductive health is a basic
human right”.
10
Reproductive rights are further developed in Principle 8 of the
UNFPA document, stating that “States should take all appropriate measures to
ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, universal health-care services,
including those related to reproductive health care which includes family planning
and sexual health. Reproductive health-care programmes should provide wides range
of services without any form of coercion. All couples and individuals have the basic
right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children
11
and
to have the information, education and means to do so.”
12
Moreover,
13
reproductive rights were more particularized in the activities of the
UN Human Rights Council in the interaction between criminal laws and other
legal restrictions relating to sexual and reproductive health and the right to health.
14
The Special Rapporteur enumerates restrictions in criminal (or administrative and
civil) regulations which affect the right to sexual and reproductive health: forced
sterilization, forced abortion, forced contraception, forced pregnancy etc.
The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is very abundant in
this regard. According to the Court’s case-law, we may include in reproductive rights:
prenatal medical tests,
15
sterilisation operations,
16
access to a lawful abortion,
17
embryo
donation and scientific research,
18
home birth,
19
medically-assisted procreation,
20
an
9
United Nations Population Fund.
10
http://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/event-pdf/PoA_en.pdf11
With regard to the highest attainable standard of health, the UN Economic and Social Council, in its
General Comment No.14 (E/C.12/2000/4), 11. August 2000, clarifies: „Reproductive health means
that women and men have the freedom to decide if and when to reproduce and the right to be informed
and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their
choice as well as the right of access to appropriate health-care services that will, for example, enable
women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth“. (See footnote 12 of mentionned document.).
12
Ibid
. p.10.
13
Other international instruments (e.g. Convention against Elimination of All Form of Discrimination
against Women, Convention on the Rights of the Child) are connected as well to the concepts of sexual
and reproductive health.
14
UN GA, A/66/254, 3rd August 2011. Interim report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone
to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
15
A. K. v. Latvia (no. 33011/08), 24 June 2014.
16
K.H. and Others v. Slovakia (no. 32881/04), 28 April 2009. (Especially with regard to forced
sterilisation of Roma women).
17
Tysiąc v. Poland,(no. 5410/03) 20 March 2007. Grand Chamber judgment in A., B. and C. v. Ireland
(no. 25579/05), 16 December 2010.
18
Parrillo v. Italy (no. 46470/11). The case is still pending before the Court.
19
Ternovszky v. Hungary (no. 67545/09), 14 December 2010, and other cases still pending before the
Court.
20
Grand Chamber judgment in Evans v. United Kingdom, (Application no. 6339/05), 10 April 2007. Grand
Chamber judgment in S.H. and Others v. Austria (no. 57813/00), 3 November 2011, and other cases.