Editing Reproductive rights (section)

===Population control===
{{See also|Population control}}
[[File:Nicolae Ceauşescu addressing his New Year's Eve message on tv and radio, 1. January 1978.jpg|thumb|[[Nicolae Ceaușescu]], Romanian communist leader, enacted one of the most infamous [[natalist]] policies of the 20th century]]
[[File:Danshan Nongguang Village Bulletin board.jpg|thumb|A community bulletin board in Nonguang Village, [[Sichuan province]], China, keeping track of the town's female population, listing recent births by name and noting that several thousand yuan of fines for unauthorized births remain unpaid from the previous year]]
A desire to achieve certain population targets has resulted throughout history in severely abusive practices, in cases where governments ignored human rights and enacted aggressive demographic policies. In the 20th century, several authoritarian governments have sought either to increase or to decrease the births rates, often through forceful intervention. One of the most notorious [[natalist]] policies is that which occurred in [[communist Romania]] in the period of 1967–1990 during communist leader [[Nicolae Ceaușescu]], who adopted a very aggressive natalist policy which included outlawing abortion and contraception, routine pregnancy tests for women, [[Tax on childlessness|taxes on childlessness]], and legal discrimination against childless people.  Ceaușescu's policy resulted in over 9,000 women who died due to [[illegal abortion]]s,<ref name="Kligman short">Kligman, Gail. "Political Demography: The Banning of Abortion in Ceausescu's Romania". In Ginsburg, Faye D.; Rapp, Rayna, eds. ''Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction.'' Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995 :234–255. Unique Identifier : AIDSLINE KIE/49442.</ref> large numbers of children put into [[Romanian orphanages]] by parents who could not cope with raising them, [[street children]] in the 1990s (when many orphanages were closed and the children ended on the streets), and [[overcrowding]] in homes and schools. The irony of Ceaușescu's aggressive natalist policy was a generation that may not have been born would eventually lead the [[Romanian Revolution]] which would overthrow and have him [[Trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu#Execution|executed]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Freakonomics|last=Levitt & Dubner|first=Steven & Stephen|publisher=Penguin Group|year=2005|isbn=9780141019017|location=80 Strand, London WC2R ORL England|page=107}}</ref>

In stark opposition with Ceaușescu's natalist policy was China's [[one child policy|one-child policy]], in effect from 1978 to 2015, which included abuses such as [[forced abortion]]s.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-18435126 |title=China forced abortion photo sparks outrage – BBC News |journal=BBC News |date= 14 June 2012|access-date=11 March 2017}}</ref> This policy has also been deemed responsible for the common practice of [[sex-selective abortion]] which led to an imbalanced [[sex ratio]] in the country.<ref name="Bulte, Heerink, & Zhang, 2011">{{cite journal|author1=Bulte, E.|author2=Heerink, N.|author3=Zhang, X.|title=China's one-child policy and 'the mystery of missing women': ethnic minorities and male-biased sex ratios.|journal=Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics|year=2011|volume=73|issue=1|pages=0305–9049|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0084.2010.00601.x|s2cid=145107264}}</ref>

From the 1970s to 1980s, tension grew between women's health activists who advance women's reproductive rights as part of a human rights-based approach on the one hand, and population control advocates on the other.<ref>{{cite book |title=Reproductive Rights in a Global Context |last= Knudsen |first=Lara |year=2006 |publisher= Vanderbilt University Press |isbn=978-0-8265-1528-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud/page/2 2] |url=https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud |url-access=registration |quote=reproductive rights. }}</ref> At the 1984 UN World Population Conference in Mexico City population control policies came under attack from women's health advocates who argued that the policies' narrow focus led to coercion and decreased quality of care, and that these policies ignored the varied social and cultural contexts in which family planning was provided in developing countries. In the 1980s the HIV/AIDS epidemic forced a broader discussion of sex into the public discourse in many countries, leading to more emphasis on reproductive health issues beyond reducing fertility. The growing opposition to the narrow population control focus led to a significant departure in the early 1990s from past population control policies.<ref>{{cite book |title=Reproductive Rights in a Global Context |last= Knudsen |first=Lara |year=2006 |publisher= Vanderbilt University Press |isbn=978-0-8265-1528-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud/page/4 4]–5 |url=https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud |url-access=registration |quote=reproductive rights. }}</ref>  In the United States, abortion opponents have begun to foment [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]] about reproductive rights advocates, accusing them of advancing a [[Racism|racist]] agenda of [[eugenics]], and of trying to reduce the [[African American]] birth rate in the U.S.<ref name=Dewan>{{Cite news | last = Dewan | first = Shaila | title = To Court Blacks, Foes of Abortion Make Racial Case | newspaper = [[New York Times]] | date = 26 February 2010 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/us/27race.html | access-date = 7 June 2010 }}</ref>