The Reproductive Justice Debate: Time To End The Quagmire

By Chamindra Weerawardhana –AUGUST 30, 2017

Dr. Chamindra Weerawardhana

The cabinet of ministers of Sri Lanka has given the green light to allow access to terminations to birth givers in specific circumstances. This is surely an insufficient provision, as full access to reproductive justice is an inalienable right.

When it comes to the termination or the continuation of a pregnancy, it is solely up to each birth-giver to decide on what they wish to do with their bodies.

The hashtag #mybodymyrights perfectly embodies this basic reality.

Yet, in the patriarchal and gender-stratified world we live in, reproductive justice has become a topic of intense contention, of opposition, of intense debate. In the Sri Lankan case, it is the Catholic bishops who have taken up arms against official government policy, calling for a blanket ban on all terminations. This opposition is nothing new, as the Catholic church has long held a resolutely anti-choice view. 

Picture: Avantha Artigala

The most striking factor is the highly patronising nature of the statement the church has released. It is as if the bishops, a bunch of cis men with tremendous levels of cis-male privilege, assume that cis women, trans men and birth-givers of all gender identities in Sri Lanka have to follow the dictates of the Catholic church when making extremely private decisions on their bodies.

The Catholic church: enemy of gender justice

In many jurisdictions across the world, the Catholic church has a problem with uteruses. In many Latin American countries, the church, a colonial and patriarchal institution on Indigenous land, maintains a tight grip on access to terminations and to the provision of reproductive justice. This has resulted in absolute aberrations of human rights violations, flushing gender justice down the toilet.

To give but one example, it was only recently that Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz, 19, from a small rural community in Cuscatlán, eastern El Salvador, was convicted on the grounds that failing to seek antenatal care amounted to murder. Her story is an extremely traumatising one, having been repeatedly raped by a gang member over several months, in a forced sexual relationship. This very Catholic country has put all the blame on Evelyn, and sentenced her to thirty years in prison.

The Catholic church is also the primary obstacle for the provision of reproductive justice in Ireland. In the Irish Republic, a termination is a criminal offence that carries a 14-year prison sentence. The Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution grants unborn foetuses the same citizenship rights and legal protections as cis women, trans men and birth givers of other gender identities. The #repealthe8th campaign, which calls for the repeal of the 8th amendment and the introduction of modern reproductive justice legislation that respects bodily autonomy, is indeed the foremost gender justice struggle in present-day Ireland.

The denial of reproductive justice in Ireland (North and South), and the political establishment’s intransigence, also water down to a class issue. Wealthy people can access the treatments they require under clement conditions abroad, and it is the under-privileged who suffer from existing restrictions.

In Northern Ireland, where this writer mostly resides, the British Abortion Act, which became law back in 1967, is still not in force. Today’s campaigns for reproductive justice call for the repeal of the existing ban on access to terminations, replacing it with new legislation that gives each birth giver decision-making power over their bodies and also takes a wholesome and comprehensive approach to reproductive justice.

It is beyond belief that even today, 19th century Victorian legislation still form the basis of anti-choice legislation in Northern Ireland. Birth givers are forced to travel to Great Britain for terminations, and are charged in the region of GBP 900 for a termination. Although this policy was changed through a Westminster amendment in June 2017, reports suggest that it is not applied evenly at all times). Once again, those who cannot afford to seek services outside Northern Ireland are the worst affected.

Cases of the Catholic church leaving women to die abound across the world, and the blood-stained record of that church is beyond shameless. This impunity stretches to a range of related issues. It was just recently that the Catholic archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart said he is prepared to be jailed for refusing to report sexual abuse by the clergy to the police, adding that sexual abuse was “a spiritual encounter with God through the priest” and was “of a higher order” than criminal law.

Policymaking on gender justice

On issues that are related to gender justice, state authorities should understand their primary responsibility of ensuring the fundamental rights of their citizens. This enables the state to fully deploy its law-making capacity to draft policies that improve citizens’ quality of life.

In the case of Sri Lanka, the best of signs of sensibility come from reproductive justice and gender justice activists, especially of the younger generation, who have taken to social media and active campaigning to stand against the patriarchal and misogynist dictates of religious denominations.

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