Ariana Magazine

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Editor’s Letter主編語

Reproductive rights are about much more than abortion or access to contraception. It’s a human rights discussion that affects everyone. As the late American civil rights activist Audre Lorde said: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

In her 1982 address at Harvard University, Lorde was reflecting on the 1960s civil rights movement by black Americans. But this intersectionality, she said, is true for “all the disenfranchised peoples,” including women.

Women don’t live in vacuums, isolated from society. Outdated education, underage pregnancies, maternal mortality, insufficient care, access to assisted reproductive technologies, social stigmas... every so-called “women’s issue” has a ripple effect on the local and international community. While adopting the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2000, world leaders agreed that addressing women’s reproductive health is key to development. A woman’s right to decide when to marry, as well as to control the timing and number of children, is critical for a family’s security and welfare. What’s more, women’s reproductive rights directly correlate with economic development. If just 10 per cent more adolescent girls attended secondary school instead of dropping out to raise children, a country’s GDP would increase by an average of 3 per cent, according to US Agency for International Development. And yet, 200 million girls in the developing world lack access to contraception. In our own city of Hong Kong, young adults rarely receive comprehensive sexuality education, while women face restrictions on timely abortions and assisted reproductive services. Many of us are hesitant about having open, honest conversations about reproductive issues for fear of castigation.

Thatispreciselywhyweneedtopushtheconversationforward.Inthisedition of Ariana, we interview teenage girls driven to black-market abortion clinics in Hong Kong (pg 62), women who have tried to silence their biological clocks with egg freezing (pg 102), and surrogates in India who will no longer be able to give the gift of life to infertile couples once new legislation passes this year (pg 86).

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