UN: Contraception is a human right

Huffingtonpost.com:

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says access to contraception is a universal human right that could dramatically improve the lives of women and children in poor countries.

It is the first time the U.N. Population Fund’s annual report explicitly describes family planning as a human right.

It effectively declares that legal, cultural and financial barriers to accessing contraception and other family planning measures are an infringement of women’s rights.

The report released Wednesday isn’t binding and has no legal effect on national laws.

The global body also says increasing funding for family planning by a further $4.1 billion could save $11.3 billion annually in health bills for mothers and newborns in poor countries.

The U.N. doesn’t count abortion among the measures.

I totally agree. Women will not have economic autonomy and control unless they have the basic right to control their own reproduction.   This concept is even more important in lesser developed countries where  women have inadequate health services.   Women in poor countries often walk miles  to clinics and to traveling health care providers in hopes of getting contraception so that they can avoid yearly pregnancy.

It’s about time their plight is universally recognized.  How many children can women bear in a lifetime?  How does unlimited fertility affect poverty?

 

The Post’s View: A wrongly imprisoned man in Virginia

Washington Post Editorial:

IN VIRGINIA, a young man has languished in prison for four years for a crime he did not commit. Now that his lone accuser has admitted that she invented the charges against him, the state and the courts seem paralyzed, unable to quickly arrange for the release of the wrongfully imprisoned man. This is a travesty.

The man is Jonathan Montgomery, age 26. In 2007, a then-teenage girl named Elizabeth Paige Coast accused Mr. Montgomery of having molested her six years earlier, when she was 10 and he was 14. It wasn’t true.

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