- Today at a press conference, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Federation of Women and Family Planning, a Warsaw-based organization, will announce the release of a report criticizing the governments of seven East Central European countries for their poor records on women's reproductive health and rights. While each of the countries has recognized the right to health care and family planning, the last decade has been marked by a failure to ensure that laws, policies and institutions will further women's reproductive rights in the region.
The report, Women of the World: Laws and Policies Affecting Their Reproductive Lives, East Central Europe, is an extensive examination of laws and policies affecting women's lives in Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Russia. Based on eighteen months of research, the report is a unique collaboration between non-governmental organizations in each of these countries and the Center for Reproductive Rights . The report concludes that the privatization of the health care system under structural adjustment programs has led to decreased spending on health care and a deterioration in women's ability to control their fertility. Access to comprehensive reproductive health services and basic family planning, such as contraceptives, is extremely limited across the region.
In spite of a history of egalitarian law under state socialism promoting the equality of women, and the adoption of major international human rights treaties including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which are equivalent to domestic law, there remains a large gap between the rights granted by law and the ability to exercise those rights. "These governments' failure to provide adequate reproductive health services within the primary health care system limits women's autonomy and their ability to control their fertility and their lives," states Katherine Hall Martinez, Deputy Director of the International Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights . "A burgeoning nationalistic trend across the region, and a decrease in population, except in Albania and Lithuania where the population is growing slightly, have led to increasingly pronatalist sentiments which subordinate women's autonomy to politics."
"Abortion and sterilization are illegal in Poland. Contraceptives are legal but inaccessible. Women's health is seriously imperiled by illegal abortions. We have no way to control our fertility and our lives when there is no education and no family planning available," adds Wanda Nowicka of the Federation of Women & Family Planning.
Common reproductive health problems uncovered in Women of the World
Lack of access to contraceptives: Laws and policies require governments to play a central role in the provision of family planning services, but government institutions are increasingly inadequate. Modern methods of contraceptives are not widely available, and where they are available they are often prohibitively expensive. In Russia the cost of condoms is the equivalent of two-thirds of a week's worth of wages. Abortion is often the only way for women to control their fertility. Hungary has chosen a different route. Hungary recently created 20 emergency contraception units in hospitals around the country.
Restrictive abortion laws: Right wing extremists forced the adoption of extremely restrictive abortion laws in Poland. Abortion is now illegal except under certain extreme circumstances. Although abortion is legal in Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania and Russia, there is a growing trend towards restrictions in the region. Although abortion laws have been liberalized in Romania and Albania, reversing their previously illegal status, unsafe abortion remains the leading cause of maternal death in the region, up to 20% of maternal deaths in some countries.
No new policies and programs to ease the HIV/AIDS epidemic: Governments acknowledge the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, yet services are severely underfunded and woefully inadequate. Government efforts to provide testing and treatment is undercut by the lack of reliable statistics on HIV/AIDS rates and the government's failure to protect individuals diagnosed with this disease. Only Lithuania guarantees anonymous testing. And only in Romania and Russia are there even laws to protect HIV positive individuals from discriminatory hiring and firing practices in the workplace. Moreover, in most countries, broad categories of individuals must be tested for HIV, such as seamen, prisoners, pregnant women and others.
Adolescent reproductive health issues are lost among more general policies: Teenage pregnancy is a concern for all countries surveyed. But policies and laws that target adolescent reproductive health issues are scarce. Adolescent issues are melded into broader laws and ultimately lost. In Russia, less than 5% of adolescents have received sex education from schools, less than 5% from medical professionals; 20% received information on sex from parents, and 70% from their peers. In Poland-a country without any adolescent reproductive health policies or programs-the government endorses traditional Catholic views about family life.
Copies of the report can be obtained from the Center for Reproductive Rights. The report is also available for download online. Women's reproductive rights advocates from Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Russia are available for comment.
