Failure to address people's reproductive health needs is a matter of human rights and social justice. People have a right to make free and informed decisions about their reproductive lives. They have a right to information and care that will enable them to protect their health and that of their loved ones. They have a right to benefit from scientific progress in health care. We must never forget the right to equality and nondiscrimination on grounds such as sex, marital status, race, age and class.
People have a right to privacy and to freedom from sexual violence and coercion.
Defining reproductive ill-health as not only a health issue but as a matter of social justice provides a legal and political basis for governments to act. We know what happens when they do not act when people's sexual and reproductive rights are denied. Every year, at least 120 million women who do not want to become pregnant do not have the means to prevent it. Every year, there are more than 330 million new cases of curable sexually transmitted diseases and one in 20 adolescents becomes infected. Every year, the HIV virus infects 5.2 million people, over half of them young people below 24 years old.