| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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economically. This view was endorsed by 180 national delegations at the conference, regardless of the differences in the home countries’ cultural and religious identities. The Cairo Program of Action (1994) recognized reproductive rights as those that ensure reproductive and sexual health, bodily integrity, and the security of the person. In this regard, the state is entrusted with the crucial responsibility of bringing about legal reforms in support of these rights that remove gender-based barriers.
The emerging reproductive health movement has recently met with resistance from population control programs. Proponents of the reproductive health approach support the development of programs that are based on clinic-based links to primary health care, which in many developing countries is of poor quality. On the other hand, this approach does not give due credit to the existing community programs, which have adequately demonstrated their effectiveness in controlling fertility in developing countries. Thus, several studies have presented reproductive health more in terms of clinic-based characteristics and have failed to incorporate factors that influence fertility control. This difference in strategies for achieving reproductive health and fertility control stems from a lack of appreciation for the relationship between reproductive health and fertility control, both of which are influenced by significantly different sets of factors. Given the recent history of the reproductive health movement, very few empirical studies have yet examined the determinants of reproductive health. The assumption that factors that influence fertility are poor predictors of reproductive health has not been adequately and empirically tested. This shifting view toward reproductive health is in agreement with the feminist model, which believes that the best way to ameliorate reproductive health around the world, particularly in developing countries, is to ensure women's reproductive rights.