ABSTRACT

Gender and sexuality have been and remain central to all human cultures. Across history, societies have regulated procreation and, more often than not, exercised varied forms of fertility regulation. Gender, reproduction and sexuality are constructed and enacted as discourses and practices in distinct spheres of personal and social interactions and institutional regulation. The analysis and exercise of reproductive and sexual rights, therefore, requires attention to be paid to their varying meanings and practices. Moreover it is crucial to recognize that the crafting and legitimizing of these rights in the early twenty-first century is deeply connected with the peculiar trajectory of the West in its transition to modernity.