From my textbook "Health and Human Rights: A Reader" by Jonathan Mann:

"But, for explanatory purposes here, it is perhaps easier to describe what reproductive health is not, or rather, by showing what these movements have reacted against.
In the health field, they have reacted against population control efforts that treat women as "targets" of contraceptive programs, blatantly manipulating their reproductive capacity in order to achieve demographic goals - goals set by dominant elites in pursuit of any number of different political agendas. They have reacted against maternal/child health policies that view the health of women as an instrument to ensure the health of children, and not as an important or valuable matter in its own right. They have reacted against medical institutions that focus on different pieces of women's bodies as discrete biological systems to be prodded, probed, and fixed, rather than seeing women's health as women live it, as part of complex interactive systems tied inextricably to the broader conditions of their lives. And they have reacted against domination by health professionals who present "risk" as if the only thing at stake in deciding whether or not to conceive or give birth is the possibility of physical injury; who obsess about reproduction but ignore sexuality; who preach about "personal responsibility" but fold on questions of power and resources, of vulnerability and discrimination."

-snip-

"Thus, stated in the negative, reproductive health and reproductive rights - indeed, human dignity - are about the right not to be alienated from one's own reproductive and sexual capacity; the right not to have that capacity used as an instrument to serve the interests of other individuals, collectivities or states without one's consent and without the opportunity to participate in the political processes by which such interests are defined."

-snip-

"Once health is understood in this way, then improving health necessarily means dismantling the systems that have wrested away from women the ability and entitlement to decide the meanings and uses of their bodies and their lives. But it also means building social systems that promote and support women as effective actors who are vested, committed, inseparable, and indespensable parts of the families, communities, and states within which they live. This second task, the task of renovating or rebuilding, is not an optional after-thought. It is the essence of the search for human dignity and social justice that is the basic motivation for human rights advocacy."

I must be doing something right if I get to take a class on something I care so much about. This is why I love school. Once again, I urge you to visit www.MarchforWomen.org.