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Joan Dunlop, advocate for women's health rights, dies at 78
Joan Dunlop, a global leader in addressing women’s issues who helped prod the United Nations to define a woman’s right to say no to sex as an essential human right, died on Friday at her home in Lakeville, Conn. She was 78.
Ms. Dunlop devoted herself to expanding women’s rights to control their own bodies. The right to say no to a request for sex was endorsed as a universal guideline by more than 180 nations at a conference in Beijing in 1995. Ms. Dunlop lobbied the delegates as president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, an advocacy group that supports 50 health projects in eight countries. She held the post from 1984 to 1998.
Her leadership in women’s issues grew from her involvement in organizations dedicated to controlling population. She believed that if women have better living standards and more independence, they will be empowered to decide how many children they will bear.
“When we say population policy, people think family planning, and we’re saying it’s far more than that,” she said in 1994 in an interview with The New York Times.
That year, she summoned 15 colleagues to London in advance of a United Nations conference on population and development in Cairo. They wrote the “Women’s Declaration on Population Policies,” a set of guidelines that the United Nations ultimately adopted. It was the first international agreement on population policy that made women’s rights a central concern.
Ms. Dunlop had an illegal abortion as a young woman in England, an experience that fueled her campaign to improve women’s reproductive choices, she said. She was also angry at the rise of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which she perceived as “an organizing tool” for conservatives promoting their broader political agenda.
the rest of the article
Ms. Dunlop devoted herself to expanding women’s rights to control their own bodies. The right to say no to a request for sex was endorsed as a universal guideline by more than 180 nations at a conference in Beijing in 1995. Ms. Dunlop lobbied the delegates as president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, an advocacy group that supports 50 health projects in eight countries. She held the post from 1984 to 1998.
Her leadership in women’s issues grew from her involvement in organizations dedicated to controlling population. She believed that if women have better living standards and more independence, they will be empowered to decide how many children they will bear.
“When we say population policy, people think family planning, and we’re saying it’s far more than that,” she said in 1994 in an interview with The New York Times.
That year, she summoned 15 colleagues to London in advance of a United Nations conference on population and development in Cairo. They wrote the “Women’s Declaration on Population Policies,” a set of guidelines that the United Nations ultimately adopted. It was the first international agreement on population policy that made women’s rights a central concern.
Ms. Dunlop had an illegal abortion as a young woman in England, an experience that fueled her campaign to improve women’s reproductive choices, she said. She was also angry at the rise of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which she perceived as “an organizing tool” for conservatives promoting their broader political agenda.
the rest of the article
According to this article in Jezebel, she was also Child-Free!