A Human Right to Family Planning?

It is commonplace for new human rights to be bootstrapped by advocates and through dishonest reporting. Did you know there is a universal human right to family planning? This was announced last week by the head of the UN Population Fund. In this report , you can see the reporter lists half a dozen documents that supposedly assert this binding human right.

The report starts by citing the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and goes on to list the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and then a handful of UN resolutions.

Problem is, none of them cite family planning as a human right. The International Covenant from 1966 does not even mention family planning. Family planning is mentioned in CEDAW but only as a category of nondiscrimination. It is mentioned in the Children’s Rights treaty but only as an aspect of education within the “right to health.”

And all of those UN resolutions mentioned? They cannot establish any new rights because they are non-binding.

The problem is that most folks around the world have no idea what UN documents say or don’t say, not even law makers. They take this claims as gospel and then impose them on their own people. This is a very dangerous game. Why? The degradation of the human rights regime poses grave danger to those who really need them.