Another obligation
Single men and women without medical issues will be classed as “infertile” if they do not have children but want to become a parent, the World Health Organisation is to announce.
In a move which dramatically changes the definition of infertility, the WHO will declare that it should no longer be regarded as simply a medical condition.
Why not just call them unwillingly childless or similar, instead of hijacking a perfectly good word that means something different?
Because hijacking the existing word will create a new right.
The authors of the new global standards said the revised definition gave every individual “the right to reproduce”.
Oh yes? Sounds like a rapists’ charter, to me.
Until now, the WHO’s definition of infertility – which it classes as a disability – has been the failure to achieve pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sex.
But the new standard suggests that the inability to find a suitable sexual partner – or the lack of sexual relationships which could achieve conception – could be considered an equal disability.
If men have a right to reproduce, that implies that women have an obligation to do the actual reproducing for them, whether they want to or not.
Dr David Adamson, one of the authors of the new standards, said: “The definition of infertility is now written in such a way that it includes the rights of all individuals to have a family, and that includes single men, single women, gay men, gay women.
“It puts a stake in the ground and says an individual’s got a right to reproduce whether or not they have a partner. It’s a big change.
“It fundamentally alters who should be included in this group and who should have access to healthcare. It sets an international legal standard. Countries are bound by it.”
This is a very bad idea. It ignores the drastic asymmetry – that reproduction requires the very physically demanding work of gestation and birth from a woman’s body. If men have a “right” to that then they have the right to force women to do that work. That’s not a good idea. The fact that women get pregnant is one of the roots of, or pretexts for, their subordination. If men now have a “right” to reproduce, that just subordinates women further.
Truly bizarre.
In addition to your comments, it seems to be particularly strange for WHO to be creating a right to reproduce when the world is already overpopulated.
wtf?
“Not having lots of sex” is not a disability!
Handmaids Tale come to life.
Isn’t this argument just a parallel of the one against health care being a human right: oh, the government will put a gun to a doctor’s head and force her to provide medical care to someone?
If reproduction as a human right means countering religious/social/caste forces forbidding consensual sexual relationships between certain people, great. If it means that some harassing bro jerk who can’t get dates for being such an asshole can receive free counseling to be less of an asshole that… also sounds pretty good.
I agree with StlSin. I really don’t think this is at all about forcing women to have children, but protecting the rights of everyone and calling on states to not prevent people from having children they wanted.
I think what #4 and #5 miss is that having a right entails duties on others. What duties do these proposed rights to reproduce entail? I agree that they should entail a negative right of immunity from government interference (except, perhaps, for people who are, say, convicted pedophiles). But I don’t think they should entail a positive right of access to women’s bodies: I certainly don’t think women have a DUTY to provide gestational labour, any more than anyone has a duty to donate a kidney. That IS the Handmaid’s Tale. But is that what these rights are supposed to establish?
I have a suggestion: Why not just let anyone who identifies as infertile to be accepted as such?
I suspect that the resultant “obligation” is intended to be aimed at the taxpayer rather than any individual woman. There is, after all, a right to not reproduce, and no problem that cannot be fixed by bureaucrats with pure intentions.
Outside of the more liberal Western jurisdictions, however, business as usual.
The aim here seems vague, but the linked article suggests that this is largely about normalizing commercial surrogacy, not protecting the rights of everyone or providing free counseling to bro jerks.
I tried looking for a primary source for this atrocity but the WHO website still states that it’s a disease and doesn’t include single people. I think this article is spurious at best, his links don’t go anywhere relevant to what he’s discussing.
Where is the source for this claim the WHO is changing anything? I cant find anything concrete… Am i missing something?
Well the article does say that this is a future change. Henry Bodkin apparently talked to sources. He names a Dr David Adamson as one source. He says the new ruling will be mailed to health ministers in the new year – i.e. in a couple of months. Maybe it’s all an invention, but then the Telegraph will look like a liar, so probably not.
GGP @ 9 – Normalizing commercial surrogacy is not a great idea.
I’ve only skimmed this part way through, but pages 17-18 of the ASRM (American Society for Reproductive Medicine) White Paper explicitly address men’s “rights” – I found it by googling “David Adamson” who was quoted in the Telegraph article* above, and is one of the lead authors of the (purportedly soon-to-be-released) WHO recommendations (and so a clear conflict-of-interest – this is about freeing up money/insurance so more people can access treatments, to benefit themselves & their industry):
ASRM White Paper: https://www.asrm.org/uploadedFiles/ASRM_Content/News_and_Publications/News_and_Research/Press_Releases/2016-04/ATCWhitePaper.pdf
*”Dr David Adamson, one of the authors of the new standards, said: “The definition of infertility is now written in such a way that it includes the rights of all individuals to have a family, and that includes single men, single women, gay men, gay women.
“It puts a stake in the ground and says an individual’s got a right to reproduce whether or not they have a partner. It’s a big change.
“It fundamentally alters who should be included in this group and who should have access to healthcare. It sets an international legal standard. Countries are bound by it.”
Apparently this is the sources of the quotes. I think things are being skewed and that someone needs to talk to both Adamson and the WHO for clarification (which *should* have been done by the first journalist in the first article).
https://www.asrm.org/uploadedFiles/ASRM_Content/News_and_Publications/News_and_Research/Press_Releases/2016-04/ATCWhitePaper.pdf
So maybe Dr David Adamson is fixating on the profitable treatments without pausing to notice that treatments don’t do single men any good unless they can persuade or coerce or pay a woman to do the arduous gestating and bearing.
Yes, where do these babies come from?
If surrogacy becomes more ‘normalized’ wouldn’t that make poor women more likely to accept this arrangement, thereby selling the use of their bodies for their sexual/reproductive worth? Poor women could become mere incubators. Not much different from prostitution if you ask me…
This is a terrifying development.
Yes, it would, and that’s why I object to it.
Another issue that could arise from this kind of reasoning relates to the question of whether anyone should be excluded. As things stand, governments etc. don’t have the right to prevent people from breeding as this would violate their right to bodily integrity. The major exception is people in prison, who are prevented by lack of access to the opposite sex. There are those who argue that men in prison should be permitted “conjugal visits” to impregnate their wives (not sure where female prisoners fit into this as I doubt many women would want to do this as they would not be able to keep a child in prison) as a human right (the right to a family life) but there are also a number of reasons not to permit this as a matter of policy.
Adoption agencies will not permit any person to adopt. Should fertility services have restrictions on who they will assist? Does it make a difference if the state is paying for the service. Many would equate doing this to compulsory sterilisation but there is a crucial difference between violating a person’s body without consent to remove a natural function and giving them medical treatments to make something happen. This is especially true if their problem is lack of a partner and extra-specially true if they require a surrogate.
Extra-specially and with bells on. There must never be such a thing as a “right” to a surrogate.
It’s always seemed weird to me that we allow (in some states/countries) paid surrogacy but not, for instance, compensation to the families of organ donors (let alone payment to living donors of liver grafts or kidneys). The parallels are clear, but of course, the latter would possibly result in men being economically coerced, and that’s something to be avoided, it seems.