Overview
Sexuality is a key part of being human. It is multifaceted and relates to not only our bodies but our gender identity, sexual orientation, our experience of eroticism and intimacy, and reproduction.
Being able to make decisions about how to express our sexuality, including our sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as about our bodies, our personal relationships, the form and shape of one’s family and the destination of one’s life path, among other things, is essential to our bodily autonomy and dignity.
However, across the world, millions of people, particularly members of marginalized and stigmatized communities and those living in poverty, are prevented from making free and informed decisions about their bodies. In many countries this happens because governments try to dictate how people form intimate relationships, or express desire, as well as whether and when to have children. This affects women, girls and LGBTI people in particular, but it’s not just about individuals, it impacts whole communities.
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What is sexual and reproductive health?
Sexual and reproductive health involves a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. It requires being able to access information, education and services to make informed decisions about our sexuality, pleasure and reproduction throughout our lives.
Being able to enjoy our sexual and reproductive health and rights includes:
- Choosing if, when and who to have sex with, and living free from sexual violence, including rape.
- Deciding if, when and with whom to have children or get married; creating families in different ways including through assisted reproduction; giving birth and parenting children in safe conditions, including during times of conflict and humanitarian crisis.
- Being able to access sexual and reproductive health information and services, including contraception, abortion and treatments for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), gender affirming care and suitable menstrual hygiene products, without discrimination or coercion.
- Receiving information about and being able to engage in pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of taboos, stereotypes, coercion, discrimination and violence.
What international legal obligations do states have to protect our sexual and reproductive rights?
Sexual and reproductive health depends on our access to multiple interrelated human rights, including bodily autonomy and the right to life, the right to be free from torture, the right to health, the right to privacy, the right to education, and the prohibition of discrimination.
This means that States have obligations to respect, protect and fulfil rights related to sexual and reproductive health, including the right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to sexuality, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. To fulfil these obligations States must repeal or eliminate laws, policies and practices that criminalize, obstruct or undermine access by individuals or a particular group to sexual and reproductive health facilities, services, goods and information, and also ensure access.
States have an obligation to ensure that sexual and reproductive health services, goods and information are:
- Available in adequate numbers and equitably distributed among the population.
- Accessible including geographically, physically and socially as well as economically affordable.
- Culturally appropriate and provided without discrimination and with respect for human rights, dignity, privacy and confidentiality; and
- of good quality.
Reproductive justice
Historically and across the world, governments have attempted to control and exploit the bodies of women, particularly those from marginalized communities, for their own political purposes to the detriment of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, severely limiting their potential. This has been done in the context of other multiple oppressions including based on race, class, ability, age and migration status.
Recognizing the limitations of the reproductive rights framework, a group of Black women in the United States coined the concept “reproductive justice”. The concept aims to recognize that reproductive health is deeply intertwined with all facets of our lives and is also a matter of social justice. As Loretta J. Ross, one of the most pivotal voices in the movement, puts it: “Reproductive justice addresses issues of population control, bodily self-determination, immigrants’ rights, economic and environmental justice, sovereignty, and militarism and criminal injustices that limit individual human rights because of group or community oppressions.”
Rising fundamentalisms, increasing militarism and securitization, diminishing rule of law, inequality, shrinking civil society spaces and authoritarian practices have dire consequences on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women, girls and LGBTI people.
Help Amnesty continue its work promoting sexual and reproductive rights.
In the face of a historic attempt to rollback our sexual and reproductive rights, we need your help to keep up the fight.
Criminalisation of sexuality and reproduction
Sexuality and reproduction are criminalized when governments try to control the actions and decisions we take in relation to our bodies through punitive laws and policies. Sometimes this will happen through laws and policies such as criminal bans on abortion, sex outside marriage or same-sex sexual conduct. At other times, indirect regulations use a range of criminal, civil and religious laws and policies relating to public order or “morality” to police and punish certain sexual and reproductive choices or gender expression.
These human rights violations are on the rise across the world and tend to disproportionally affect poor and marginalized communities.
Throughout much of the Americas, for example, pregnant people, health professionals or others who assist them can be punished for seeking, obtaining, providing or assisting with abortion services. In certain states in Africa, opportunistic politicians have pumped life into antiquated statutes or passed new laws punishing same-sex activity with dire penalties. The last few years have also seen a rise in women in the USA being jailed for otherwise legal acts conducted during pregnancy, and globally, individuals can be prosecuted for their HIV status.
Pregnancy Criminalization
In countries including El Salvador, Norway, Russia, Ukraine and the USA people who are pregnant can be targeted with punitive policies and practices based on their real or perceived behaviour. In the US, for example, “fetal assault” laws, which allow fetuses to be legally defined as “victims” of assault, have been used to prosecute women who miscarried or were suspected of harming their fetus.
Hundreds of women in the USA have faced arrest, interrogation, prosecution and detention after disclosing what they believed was confidential information to a health care provider, or simply when seeking routine or emergency medical care. Many US states have incorporated similar definitions of “person” into state criminal codes in order to include fertilized eggs, embryos or fetuses as potential “victims” of violent crime. Such punitive regulation violates women’s human rights including their right to bodily autonomy.
Criminalization of sex outside marriage
In countries including Cameroon, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, parts of the United States and Taiwan, sex between people who are not married is treated as a crime and in some cases carries severe penalties. Punishments range from lengthy prison sentences to flogging, or, in a small number of states, death by stoning.
Criminalization of same-sex relations
Consensual same-sex sexual acts are treated as a crime in approximately 60 countries around the world, according to data from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).
In Hungary, an anti-LGBTIQ+ law bans education and advertising that is deemed to “popularize” or even depict, consensual same-sex conduct or the affirming of one’s gender to children.
In China, people looking to access gender-affirming treatments and related health care or modify their sex characteristics to accord with their sense of gender identity face a catalogue of barriers.
Criminalization of sex work
Many countries outlaw sex work by applying laws that criminalize the act of exchanging sex for money or goods and/or the full range of activities related to the selling or buying of sex, such as solicitation and renting a premise for engaging in sex work, among others. Other countries such as New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark and parts of Australia, have decriminalized or legalized sex work, regulating it through licensing or zoning restrictions.
Laws and policies that criminalize sex work, directly or indirectly, violate several human rights. In casting sex workers as either criminals worthy of contempt or as victims who cannot consent to selling sex, these sanctions frequently deny them their dignity and personal autonomy over their bodies and lives.
Criminalizing people living with HIV
92 countries reported that they criminalise HIV non-disclosure, exposure and transmission, according to 202 data from UNAIDs. These laws, which tend to disproportionately affect marginalized populations, are counterproductive as they undermine efforts to prevent new HIV infections and violate the right to equality and non-discrimination.
Case Study: Abortion in Poland
In July 2023, Joanna, a 32-year-old woman, spoke to the media about the distressing and humiliating treatment she faced months earlier at a hospital in Krakow, Poland. According to her testimony, after taking abortion pills in April, she consulted her psychiatrist about her persistent anxiety.
Shortly thereafter police showed up at Joanna’s apartment. The police confiscated her laptop and cell phone and escorted her to a hospital, where female officers made her undress, squat, and cough, while she was still bleeding.
Managing one’s own abortion is not a crime in Poland but helping someone else with an abortion outside the limited legal grounds is. The police were looking for evidence about who helped Joanna with her abortion. Joanna filed a complaint against the treatment she suffered, and a court ruled her treatment unlawful.
What can states do to empower people to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights?
States have an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil everybody’s sexual and reproductive rights. They also have a duty to address the social, economic and political factors that prevent many people from accessing and exercising these rights. There are many ways in which they can do this:
- Empower people to exercise their rights and support social movements promoting sexual and reproductive rights.
- Ensure access to comprehensive sexuality education for people from a young age so they have all the tools they need to exercise their bodily autonomy.
- Carry out public awareness campaigns on harmful social norms, stereotypes, practices and behaviours that negatively impact the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights.
- Address structural and systemic issues and barriers that impact the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights, particularly by marginalized groups, including those facing discrimination based on race, ethnicity, class, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics, migration status, disability, rural and urban divide, among others.
- Refrain from passing laws and abolish laws and practices that punish people for exercising their sexual and reproductive rights at home and abroad.
What is Amnesty doing to promote sexual and reproductive rights?
In the face of a historic attempt to rollback our sexual and reproductive rights, Amnesty International is campaigning alongside activists from across the world to ensure our most basic human rights are protected.
We do this by researching, campaigning and advocating in partnership with feminist organizations to fight back on the rollback of rights.
Want to learn more about these issues? Check out our report “Body Politics: Criminalization of Sexuality and Reproduction”
Help Amnesty continue its work promoting sexual and reproductive rights.
In the face of a historic attempt to rollback our sexual and reproductive rights, we need your help to keep up the fight.