Recent News Coverage of Sexual and Reproductive Health in Lebanon

Abdelwahed, Inas; Abla, Ruba; Afifi, Rima

doi:10.1215/15525864-7025623

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…39 A review of local newspaper articles examining Syrian refugee women’s reproductive health demonstrated that publications were focused on the need to limit Syrian women’s fertility, stop early marriage, and increase access to contraceptive services and family planning awareness programs. 40 …”

Section: The Fear Of Changing Demographicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Restrained motherhood: the Lebanese state in times of changing demographics and moral values

Yasmine¹,

Sukkar²

2019

Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters

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The socially engrained notion that motherhood is essential to womanhood is strongly portrayed in how states view women's political participation through their reproductive capacities. In Lebanon, the state's political agenda influences laws and policies that restrict or encourage women's procreation, depending on their nationality, sect, marital, and legal status. Since 1943, Lebanon's system of proportionally allocating parliamentary seats to sectarian political parties, based on their population size, has spurred fears of demographic changes across sects. This fear is also referenced by politicians as the reason why Lebanese women are legally denied their rights of passing citizenship on to their children and non-Lebanese spouses. With Lebanon holding the highest refugee population per capita in the world, the fear of disturbing the "sectarian balance" directly collides with the reproductive autonomy of both Syrian and Palestinian refugee women. Migrant women living in Lebanon are also restricted to playing out their role as workers and therefore have their sexual and reproductive health and rights denied. Another fear of the state is that of changing moral values, whereby motherhood and parenthood in single women, queer, transgender, and intersex persons are perceived as deviant and a threat to traditional values. This review aims to display how, through fearof changing moral values and demographic shiftsthe Lebanese state practices reproductive oppression on part of the population, while neglecting them and exacerbating their difficult living conditions.

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Section: The Fear Of Changing Demographicsmentioning

confidence: 99%