Women and Men's Shared Responsibility in Contraceptives - Research Paper Example

Women and Men's Shared Responsibility in Contraceptives Introduction The debate on whether the women should be given the right to birth control is one critical debate which has elicited much interest in the recent past. The debate has been brought about by the fact that the right for women to access reproductive health has been threatened by a number of factors. For instance, some employers are for reluctant to give their female employees health cover that includes access to contraceptives. Moreover, some conservative politicians seek to make birth control illegal, thus threatening the ability for women in the USA the right to access birth control and reproductive health services. This article looks at the issues and evaluates why it is necessary for women to access birth control as a human right. It uses both Kantian argument and the utilitarian ethics. Background As Jinxia (89) points out, the modern woman has a very big contribution to both social and economic development. The structure of the society has changed and the modern woman is more than just a reproductive being. They contribute economically to not only their families but also to the whole economy at large. The modern woman provides for her family almost as much, and sometimes as much as their male counterparts (Chadwick 45). In this regard, their need to be able to control their reproductive processes is inherent given that this affects the way they are able to contribute to their families and the economy at large. A woman should then have the right and ability to control when to get pregnant and become a mother, and when not to. Denying them this right would hinder their ability to contribute to the economy and to the social life. Those who say that women must not be given this right are those who have a low regard of a woman and regard a woman as nothing more than a domestic being whose work is to bear and rear children. Unfortunately, this is a practice of the past and does not apply in the modern world. Kantian ethics It is necessary to apply this issue to Kantian ethics. Given that this is a moral/ethical issue to most people, it is necessary to apply the Kantian ethics to identify whether it is good to give women the right to access contraceptives. According to Emanuel Kant, an action is aid to be moral if it is intrinsically based on goodwill. Kant argued that there is no action that can be said to be good or bad on its own, but rather what makes an action good or bad is the good or bad will behind it. Arguing from this Kantian perceptive, it then becomes clear that allowing women to have and access contraceptives would not only be a moral and ethical thing, but would be a good thing to do. This is because this action has goodwill behind it. As has been discussed in the introduction, the modern society would benefit the most if women were able to control their reproductive processes and thus give the power to decide when to give birth and become parents. Not only would the women as an individual benefit, the whole society would benefit from this action. While in this argument, it is necessary to point to two things about denying a woman the right to access contraceptives that would be in contravention of the Kantian law (Anderson 152). The first one is the fact that denying women the right to reproductive health would be unfair to women. Nature placed women at the more involving side of human reproduction. It is for instance easier for a man to be a father and still be able to go about this business as usual. For a woman, the process of becoming a mother (pregnancy) and the time thereafter, makes it difficult for them to go on with their normal businesses. Denying them the right to access a way to control when and why they want to be a mother would be malicious to them and this would not have any good will to them. The second issue is the issue of harm to children. This is because if women were denied a right to control their reproductive processes, there would be many children who would be brought into the world to parents who are not prepared to take good care of them. This would contravene the Kantian ethics. The issue of women’s access to contraceptives can also be analyzed from a utilitarian point of view. The utilitarian theory argues that an action is allowable, or ethical if it has the maximum possible benefit to everyone. It is best used when making decisions which have a dichotomy of possibilities with each of them having disadvantages and advantages. When looking at the issues of women access to contraceptives for instance, one has to ask themselves which are the total benefits for allowing women to access these services and which are the disadvantages for the same. As identified in the introduction, it is clear that there is a big advantage to allowing women to control their reproductive systems and processes. The disadvantages on the other hand are many. This is because denying women the right contraceptives would mean that most of them will be economically disadvantaged and this would be unfair to them (Anderson 183). It would also have a fundamental negative impact on the sociality as well as the economy of the nation. On the other hand, allowing them to use contraceptives will not hurt anyone. Although some may argue that the unborn child would be the one who would be harmed by not begin given the chance to life, this argument is null and void because the baby is not a human and therefore moral ethics will not apply to him, whether considered form a Kantian ethics point of view or the utilitarian point of view. After all, even without contraceptives, women still do not utilize all their eggs to bring life to earth. In conclusion, allowing women to use contraceptives has more befits than harm. On the other hand, denying them this right is a violation of human right because it is their right to heath as well as economic well being. Works Cited Anderson, Barbara. Reproductive Health: Women and Men's Shared Responsibility. New York, NY: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2005. Print Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society World of art. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2012. Print Jinxia, Dong. Women, Sport and Society in Modern China: Holding up More than Half the Sky. London, UK: Routledge, 2004. Print Read More