Family planning...

Family planning, now extensively exercised in most countries, has started as controlling population plans since the 1960s and 1970s which itself was a significance of the destructive nature of population growth as a bomb, which might explode any moment and devastate the world. In this demographic model, the rights of individuals and women are paid scant attention to as to deciding on their reproduction and intercourse,[^7] while family planning is paid ample attention at the very early stage.

Since 1970, medical-biological model was developed in relation to family planning. The recent model places stress on health care advantages for women as to the reproductive distance and the limitation of children so that childbirth may be brought back to individual level. The plans of the United Nations were centered on elevating and improving mothers’ healthcare conditions and children’s survival.

The idea is that the main shortcoming of the previously mentioned plans lies in ignoring the women’s experiences, rejecting the necessity of self-empowerment and stressing the protection of their free choice. ^8 As gradually as the international movements on healthcare introduced the humanitarian outlook in improving population and healthcare policies, there appeared a change in the demographic models.

The horizon of the new outlook was not only limited to family planning but included many diverse issues including the reproductive health, educational plans, the empowering of women , and equal rights for women.[^9] Surely, the access to healthcare is an issue, which influences the position of women, men and children in all regions of the world. However, due to unequal and vulnerable situations, women encounter many problems.

In 1975, the first women’s conference in Mexico was the turning point of women’s healthcare issues based on human rights. Article 12 of the Convention Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) expressing the equal rights of women and men as to access to healthcare points to the issue of family planning.

The right to equal access to healthcare requires the removal of any social and legal impediments which might exist in this regard especially as to the women who are deprived of such services due to poverty, illiteracy and false beliefs. Article 16 of the aforementioned convention addresses the discrimination against women in private life especially in the realm of the family which is based the long-term cultural processes.