Extract Religious fundamentalism and a lack of resources are the chief barriers to achieving sexual and reproductive rights for all by 2015, concluded the 2004 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) . . . Katherine McDonald, president of Action Canada for Population and Development, said that advocates of the Cairo consensus have been overly distracted by their efforts to isolate and shame US and conservative backlash and must reinvest in a commitment to human rights. “In-depth policy analyses of sexual, reproductive, and abortion rights are lacking,” she said.
Abstract This paper presents an overview of the dimensions of unsafe motherhood, contrasting data from economically developed countries with some from developing countries. It addresses many common factors that shape unsafe motherhood, identifying medical, health system and societal causes, including women’s powerlessness over their reproductive lives in particular as a feature of their dependent status in general. Drawing on perceptions of Jonathan Mann, it focuses on public health dimensions of maternity risks, and equates the role of bioethics in conscientious medical care to that of human rights in public health care. The microethics of medical care translate into the macroethics of public health, but the transition compels some compromise of personal autonomy, a key feature of Western bioethics, in favour of societal analysis. Religiously-based morality is seen to have shaped laws that contribute to unsafe motherhood. Now reformed in former colonizing countries of Europe, many such laws remain in effect in countries that emerged from colonial domination. UN conferences have defined the concept of ‘reproductive health’ as one that supports women’s reproductive self-determination, but restrictive abortion laws and practices epitomize the unjust constraints to which many women remain subject, resulting in their unsafe motherhood. Pregnant women can be legally compelled to give the resources of their bodies to the support of others, while fathers are not legally compellable to provide, for instance, bone-marrow or blood donations for their children’s survival. Women’s unjust legal, political, economic and social powerlessness explains much unsafe motherhood and maternal mortality and morbidity.
Journal Synopsis All jurisdictions in the US require proof of vaccination for school entrance. Most states permit non-medical exemptions. Public health officials must balance the rights of individuals to choose whether or not to vaccinate their children with the individual and societal risks associated with choosing not to vaccinate (i.e., claiming an exemption). To assist the public health community in optimally reaching this balance, this analysis examines the constitutional basis of nonmedical exemptions and examines policies governing conscientious objection to conscription as a possible model. The jurisprudence that the US Supreme Court has developed in cases in which religious beliefs conflict with public or state interests suggests that mandatory immunization against dangerous diseases does not violate the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. Accordingly, states do not have a constitutional obligation to enact religious exemptions. Applying the model of conscientious objectors to conscription suggests that if states choose to offer nonmedical exemptions, they may be able to optimally balance individual freedoms with public good by considering the sincerity of beliefs and requiring parents considering exemptions to attend individual educational counseling.
Closely interlinked with the subject of a Revaccination Act is that of the Conscience Clause. When the Royal Commission on Vaccination published its final report and boldly recommended a Conscience Clause, a great part of the medical profession and probably also of the public were startled at what they regarded as a lowering of the vaccination flag. Some opponents of vaccination appeared at first to be jubilant over what they professed to regard as an antivaccination victory. . .
The question of retaining, mending, or ending the above clause will shortly have to be settled. There are many medical men in favour of, and seriously advocating, the last alternative. They argue (i) that a “conscience clause” is altogether wrong in principle; that it is an anomaly without precedent, and opposed to the spirit of all other compulsory legislation; and that if vaccination is to be compulsory, it should be compulsory for all. (2) That the ” conscience clause ” is greatly abused, and that its administration is becoming a farce. (3) That it has not succeeded, in the sense of securing more vaccination. . .
Whilst agreeing in toto with your timely and forcible leader as regards the moral it indicates, yet do I take exception to certain statements therein contained. I object to the statement that it is petty sessional doings which have made Section ii of the Act-the conscience clause-a laughing- stock in so many parts of the country. The reason why it is not a laughing-stock in every part of the country is either because of the good sense or correct views of the inhabitants or because the antivaccinationists have neglected to disseminate their pernicious literature and to enforce their dangerous propaganda amongst these fortunate sections. . .
The Conscience Clause-the only section of the Vaccination Act as yet in force-appears to have caused some consternation amongst the magistrates upon whom will rest the duty of administering it. To those of the “Great Unpaid” who have heretofore systematically refused to do their duty it will make but little difference; they will continue to disobey the law with perhaps an easier conscience. Setting them aside, however, we anxiously turn to consider the attitude which those who have always endeavoured to do their duty upon the bench are about to adopt. . .
