Human Rights Standards on Contraceptive Information and Services

The scale of unmet need for contraceptives is vast. In developing regions, 214 million women and girls of reproductive age want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a modern contraceptive method, according to 2017 estimates.

Under human rights law, every person has the right to determine the number and spacing of their children, and to access the information and means to do so, including sexuality education and family planning services.

Unmet need for contraceptives can result in violations of the rights to privacy, healt ...

The scale of unmet need for contraceptives is vast. In developing regions, 214 million women and girls of reproductive age want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a modern contraceptive method, according to 2017 estimates.

Under human rights law, every person has the right to determine the number and spacing of their children, and to access the information and means to do so, including sexuality education and family planning services.

Unmet need for contraceptives can result in violations of the rights to privacy, health, life, education, nondiscrimination and equality. Human rights law recognizes that high unmet need for contraceptives is linked to numerous harms, including unsafe abortion; maternal mortality and morbidity from higher-risk unplanned or closely timed pregnancies; increased risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV; and infertility arising from STIs. For survivors of rape and other forms of sexual abuse, the failure to ensure legal and accessible emergency contraception is linked to physical and mental suffering, which may amount to ill-treatment.

Barriers to contraceptive information and services may be particularly acute for people from marginalized or vulnerable groups, such as people with disabilities, adolescents, ethnic and racial groups subjected to discrimination, people living with HIV/AIDS, and people living in low-income households or humanitarian settings. People from these groups are also disproportionately affected by coercive or forced contraceptive policies and practices, such as involuntary sterilization, and by harm from poor-quality contraceptive and sterilization procedures. Such practices violate numerous human rights and may rise to the level of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Gendered and other stereotypes about who “should” and “should not” reproduce may shape access to contraceptive information and services and affect the risk of coercion. For example, contraceptive-related policies and programs may exclude single women and adolescents, based on a presumption that they should not be sexually active, or women with disabilities, often stereotyped as asexual. Intersex children may be sterilized early in life due to misconceptions about their fertility and sexuality.

Human rights law and the ICPD Programme of Action recognize states’ obligations to ensure that the full range of good-quality, modern, and effective contraceptives are available and accessible to everyone. Human rights law specifically establishes that emergency contraception, which can prevent pregnancy following unprotected sexual intercourse, should be available without a prescription and free for victims of violence, including adolescents, and that special measures should be taken to ensure that it is available in conflict and post-conflict zones.

States are obligated to ensure that the use of contraceptives is voluntary, fully informed, and free from coercion and discrimination, and they should pay particular attention to groups who have historically been subject to coercive family planning practices, such as Roma, people with disabilities, and women living with HIV.

States must also guarantee the right to seek, receive, and disseminate contraceptive-related information. This includes providing access to unbiased, comprehensive, and evidence-based information and services for family planning and contraception, without discrimination and including to adolescents and youth.