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Journalism of Courage
VADODARA, Jan 28: Women in general are today free of physical and mental diseases, disabilities, fear, pain or death associated with reproduction and sexuality, according to speakers at a workshop organised by the Women’s Health Training Research Advocacy Centre (WOHTRAC), a project under the Women’s Study Research Centre of M S University, here recently.
Aimed at spreading awareness about reproductive health among women, the workshop included Dr Shagufa Kapadia, principal investigator, WOHTRAC, Dr Sundari Ravindran, editor of international journal `Reproductive Health Matters’ and Renu Khanna, a core team member of the WOHTRAC and founder of social forum Sahaj Sarthi. The speakers emphasised the need to re-focus the indicators used for assessing reproductive health and said it should move beyond the fertility related indicators and include all socio-economic factors too.
The definition of reproductive rights by women’s movements had evolved over the years and was now understood as a right of women to regulate their own fertility safety by conceiving when desired, thus terminating unwanted pregnancies. The speakers, however, said there was still a need to promote women’s empowerment, and amend social policies to enhance their well-being, promote equitable and mutually respectful gender relations, increase reproductive choice for women and discourage discriminatory and harmful practices such as infanticide, prenatal sex selection, discrimination in food allocation and child marriage.
