Risks and rights: The uses of reproductive health data

This paper describes the multiple ways that the concept of risk is used in the health field, looking specifically at maternal mortality, contraceptive mortality and morbidity, and HIV/AIDS. Although risk data are often presented as objective and neutral, the paper shows how decisions about policies, programmes and individual treatment inevitably require value-laden choices to be made. It argues that reproductive rights principles should play a critical role in guiding such decision-making and puts forward a concept of reproductive rights that addresses both women's individual decisions about their health and the broader social and structural context in which such decisions are made and implemented.