reproductive rights
I learnt about different issues that affect women’s health and access to safe abortion through various sessions. This was also the first time we discussed about sexuality, which I felt was only limited to private parts/genitals. Through this institute, I have been able to understand how all these different issues are controlled by patriarchy and how it affects women’s health. Participant | Abortion, Gender and Rights Institute, 2018
CREA works towards building the sexual and reproductive rights of persons with disabilities, including access to information and the ability to make their own choices around sex, sexuality, abortion, pregnancy and parenting.
Conversations around abortion are steeped in stigma. Access to safe abortion services and right to bodily autonomy is denied to most women. CREA’s program on advancing abortion rights in India began in partnership with CommonHealth (Coalition for Maternal-Neo Natal Health and Safe Abortion).
Since 2014, the program has been shaped to address the conflation between sex/ disability selection and abortion through cross-movement engagement. This engagement has strengthened CREA’s role and visibility as an influencer in key national and state-level advocacy spaces.
CREA has also amplified its work on abortion globally. Engagement with the United Nations has largely been through the Sexual Rights Initiative of which CREA is a member. We have also convened five global dialogues:
- on Decriminalization, Choice and Consent (2014)
- on Disability, Sexuality and Rights (2017)
- on Fetal Rights and Women’s Citizenship: Implications of the New Gender Ideology (2017)
- on Prenatal Testing, Disability and Abortion (2018)
Together, these have helped foster critical conversations on political, cultural and ideological contexts that impede and/ or enable advancing abortion rights as well as create thought leadership and build alliances across movements.
Impact
- The 2018 Global Dialogue on Prenatal Testing Disability and Abortion held in Nairobi, Kenya, resulted in a Nairobi Principles Working Group. The group includes diverse voices, particularly from the global South, to deepen understanding and increase collaboration around prenatal testing, abortion and disability rights, as well as elevate the priorities of persons with disabilities within SRHR.
- In 2019, the group published the outcomes of these dialogues in a three-part publication titled Nairobi Principles on Abortion, Prenatal Testing and Disability. The publication has sparked cross-movement conversations and deeper introspections into feminist spaces as the working group continues to build and develop these principles.
