Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Reproductive rights

Note.

Extended content

The mediation request says: Are reproductive rights a sub-set of human rights and can WP assert that they are (as in the case of the main article Human rights#Concepts_in_human_rights)? It should be noted that Phyesalis, the author of the mediation request, was the one to add the entire Reproductive Rights section to the Human rights article, in this edit, along with the disputed language Phyesalis also wishes to add to the Reproductive rights article. Blackworm (talk) 20:09, 6 February 2008 (UTC) Blackworm, we discussed this wording for several days, if you had an issue with it, I wish you had brought it up before I submitted the request. Yes I added reproductive rights to the Human rights article, but what's interesting is that neutral editors find it to be well-sourced and accurate, (see here and here. In the time I started expanding RR from a stub, the article has been rated a start-class article of high importance for Wikiproject Human rights by User:Tkn20. I do not wish to add this material - I want to retain the pre-existing material that Blackworm and Coppertwig have attempted to remove or diminish since they decided to join the article. --Phyesalis (talk) 00:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC) So, how does this mediation work? Are we waiting for a mediator to sign up to take our case, or what? The wording of the mediation request was developed at User talk:Phyesalis/Mediation request. I think some or all of the "pre-existing" material that Phyesalis wants to retain in the RR article was originally introduced into the article by Phyesalis. Regardless of that, the material is currently disputed. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC) Yes, we wait for someone to take the case. And yes, all the material I want to retain, I added because I added most of the material to the stub before Blackworm and Coppertwig arrived. --Phyesalis (talk) 18:03, 7 February 2008 (UTC) Phyesalis, the diffs you point to do not seem to be referring to your edits. Even if they were, that other editors liked them would not mean they do not violate policy. One month before I started editing RR, the first line of the article read, Reproductive rights or procreative liberty is what supporters view as human rights in areas of sexual reproduction.[1] That wording is neutral. You changed that wording and added the disputed language to RR apparently in your first edit to the article, one month before this dispute began. Later, you added it to Human rights. Of course, even longstanding material often violates policy -- that material is longstanding is not an argument that it is acceptable. This language, however, was not longstanding. Blackworm (talk) 20:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC) Actually, I see that sentence as being ambiguous and interpretable as promoting a specific point of view with regard to reproductive rights, therefore not NPOV. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC) "Procreative liberty" seems to be a term of American origin and application, not having any explicit connection to the broad context of international human rights discourses. The stub's sourcing (or lack thereof) suggested that the assertion of synonymity was an OR conflation. The phrase reproductive rights gets 548,000 hits on Google Scholar (v. 4,600 for procreative liberty) and 2.7 million on Google (v. 548,000). I've yet to find a source which equates the two. The two terms certainly relate to one another, but the conflation is a violation of policy. There seem to be two different contexts to the phrase RR - one is an explicit international human rights contexts - concrete, well-documented, covering a wide range of concerns, another is a more amorphous context of the "abortion debate" in countries like the U.S., England and New Zealand. In the former, terms like pro-life and pro-choice don't have the categorical application that they do in the latter. In human rights contexts, the most common set of terms/issues is pro-natalist and anti-natalist - "pro-life" does not mean the support of pro-natalist states parties' policies like criminalizing women who procure abortions, just as "pro-choice" does not mean the support of anti-natalist policies like sex-selective abortion, forced abortion, and forced contraception. Perhaps this should be two different articles or, since this is the introductory page for reproductive rights articles, maybe we should establish a discrete sub-section to deal with country/culture specific contexts? This would be a nice way to compromise on the NCM material - as it revolves around one kind of minor/fringey org.'s interpretation of a single rejected case in the US - it has no peer-reviewed sources, and nothing that establishes it as an international POV. --Phyesalis (talk) 19:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC) I'd be curious to know in what specific way the original phrase promotes a given POV. Not having any connection to "international human rights discourses" isn't a reason. Note the language in the first sentence of the Human rights: Human rights refers to "the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled"[1] Examples of rights and freedoms which are often thought of as human rights include [...] And right: In jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something, or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. What thing or action do reproductive rights advocates want? Could it be this, the #2 hit on Google Images for "reproductive rights"? Is it be the language of The Center for Reproductive Rights? They say, I. Introduction: At the core of reproductive rights is the principle that a woman has the right to decide whether and when to have a child. When faced with an unwanted pregnancy, only she can decide whether she will carry the pregnancy to term.[2] Is it the language of the National Organization for Women? They say, NOW affirms that reproductive rights are issues of life and death for women, not mere matters of choice. NOW fully supports access to safe and legal abortion [...]."[3] I believe Phyesalis has difficulty with the fact that most people equate the phrase "reproductive rights" with abortion, despite what UN conferences said 40 years ago. That is the core reason why saying "reproductive rights are a subset of human rights" is unacceptable without some qualification. Blackworm (talk) 21:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC) Also, right regard to the NCM material, Phyesalis again mistakes NPOV for "international POV." Blackworm (talk) 21:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC) (undent)The fact remains that the majority of the article is about reproductive rights in the context of human rights based on multiple secondary and tertiary peer-reviewed sources. You're steamrolling seem to be endlessly perseverating on the same argument. Maybe many (I'd like to see the data on "most") American or Canadian laypeople view RR as an abortion debate but the fact is it has a well-established international context. I doubt 2 billion Chinese and Indian people are framing anti-natalist policies as "pro-life" or "pro-choice" - your argument has a cultural WP:BIAS of some predominantly white Western countries. You think maternal mortality in sub-saharan Africa is about "pro-choice" or "pro-life" abortion issues? Are the issues surrounding forced contraception about abortion? Is obstetric fistula about abortion? AIDS? HPV? You apparently aren't familiar with the broad based international context. Given that you've acquired at least two of the peer-reviewed sources I cited, I'm surprised that you could read them and not notice that both have an explicit international human rights context. Perhaps I missed your peer-reviewed source countering the existence of this international context. Most laypeople believe that gravity is in the earth pulling on us to keep us on the the surface, when in truth it is external and pushes us toward the earth - should WP assert what laypeople believe to be the truth when reliable sources claim otherwise? --Phyesalis (talk) 21:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC) "International context" does not mean we can state opinion as fact (WP:NPOV). I resent your continued personal attacks ("You're steamrolling"). Also, I would be supremely interested in seeing you go to the gravity article and inserting your "truth" about it there, as you have done in RR and FGC. Blackworm (talk) 00:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC) I'm disengaging until the case is assigned. Have struck "steamrolling" and replaced with different text. I didn't realize that pointing out an instance when someone isn't adhering to behavioral guidelines was a personal attack. I don't think it is, but certainly it was not my intention to attack you with some kind of slur. I've also requested that both pages be protected. --Phyesalis (talk) 00:39, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Introductions

Hey there, I'll be work as mediator for this case if you'll have me. You will want to watchlist this page to keep abreast of the discussions.

As always, mediation is voluntary. I do not believe I have any conflict of interest with this case, however if for any reason you feel I would be inappropriate as a mediator for this case, you may choose to decline and wait for a committee member to become available. Declining me as a mediator will not be held against you in any way.

Please note below whether or not you agree with me mediating this case by adding "I agree" or "I disagree". I look forward to working with you. Shell ^babelfish 18:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Thank you for taking the case. --Phyesalis (talk) 19:15, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree per AGF.  :-) (Not remembering having met you before, but assuming that all the mediators know what they're doing, as you seem to with the collapsing of the previous conversation above.) --Coppertwig (talk) 03:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC) ... and thank you very much for agreeing to devote some time and attention to our difficulty. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:15, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Blackworm (talk) 03:23, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

A subset of human rights

• Are reproductive rights a sub-set of human rights and can WP assert that they are?

I've seen some discussion about this on the talk page and also on the page where you worked up the mediation request, but lets see if we can summarize in one place so we have a platform to start the discussion. I understand Amnesty International has made the statement that RR are HR and Coppertwig found some journals discussing the subject; are there any other sources for this POV? How about the sources for the opposing POV, are there more than the quote in the Catholic News Agency?

Some other questions to consider: How could this statement be worded to include both majority POVs? Are we missing an POVs, for example, cultures who practice FGM, cultures with forced abortion - do they have something to say on the subject? Is this statement appropriate for the lead (i.e. do we go in to more detail about the subject later) or can we make it appropriate for the lead?

Sources

RR are HR or similar viewpoints

• Stop Violence Against Women:Reproductive Rights by Amnesty International. "Reproductive rights - access to sexual and reproductive healthcare and autonomy in sexual and reproductive decision-making - are human rights; they are universal, indivisible, and undeniable. These rights are founded upon principles of human dignity and equality, and have been enshrined in international human rights documents. Reproductive rights embrace core human rights, including the right to health, the right to be free from discrimination, the right to privacy, the right not to be subjected to torture or ill-treatment, the right to determine the number and spacing of one's children, and the right to be free from sexual violence. Reproductive rights include the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children, and the right to have the information and means to implement those decisions free from discrimination, coercion, and violence. Reproductive rights also include the right to the highest standards of sexual and reproductive healthcare."
• Human rights and Reproductive Choice, Freedman and Isaac (currently a footnote in the lead): "Almost invariably, discussions of reproductive health strategies acknowledge the close connections between health and law, and include as a basic tenet the importance of reproductive choice as a universal human right." A weakness of this quote is that it refers to "discussions", not to declarations, ratified documents, etc.
• Advancing Reproductive Rights Beyond Cairo and Beijing by Cook and Fathalla. "The Declaration and Platform for Action adopted by 187 UN member states in Beijing reaffirm the Cairo Programme's definition of reproductive health (para. 94), but advance women's wider interests. 'The human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.'" A weakness of this quote is that it applies only to women, not to men. It also emphasizes health but isn't clear on freedom to choose whether to have children.

RR are not HR or similar viewpoints

• Jesuit university endows human rights chair in name of pro-abortion priest by Catholic News Agency. "Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, has called the naming of the new Chair [Robert F. Drinan, SJ -BW]] “deeply disturbing” and “hypocritical.” The university has established a human rights chair “in the name of a heretical priest who has spent much of his lifetime advocating for the most heinous of human rights violations: abortion,” he said in a statement." "Fr. Drinan has been a strong supporter of abortion rights [...]" "However, many say the priest’s [Drinan's] human rights work is all for not, due to his work against the fundamental right to life."

Comments

Thank you very much, Shell. That looks beautiful: very well-organized. I think seeing things laid out like that is helping me see some things a little differently. For example, I'm not sure I had really noticed the word "primarily" before in the sentence "FGC transcends religion as it is primarily a cultural practice." Perhaps also because some time has passed, this sentence doesn't seem to mean the same thing to me that it did before. Perhaps this sentence doesn't contradict the idea that FGC is a religious practice for some people.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be commenting here. I'm afraid to mess up the nice layout. But I need to correct an error: I wasn't the one who found the journal articles. Phyesalis added them to the article as references before I was involved with the article: Cook Freedman What I did was I went to a local university and obtained copies of the articles so I could read them. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I would like to commend Phyesalis for finding those articles; they're good sources of fact and commentary for this article.

The way you've arranged things above, Shell, seems to suggest two opposing points of view -- that RR are or are not HR -- and that what the Wikipedia article says about this can perhaps be decided by a preponderance of sources. I think it's more complicated than that.

The statement "Reproductive rights are human rights" has at least two very different types of meanings. One is a classification, like "ants are insects". The other meaning is a declaration of rights, like "Access to potable water is a human right" or "Every human being should be provided with the means to achieve reproductive health". I believe (and I think Blackworm believes) that even if we had many sources stating certain declarations of rights as if they are facts and no sources contradicting them, that Wikipedia should not make declarations of rights. Wikipedia can report on those declarations with statements like "Many international organizations have declared that..." Declarations of rights are never facts. The fact that such a declaration has been made can be a fact, but the declaration itself is not a fact. It can be a powerful and important statement that many people, or even possibly everyone, agrees with, but it's not like a statement such as "George W. Bush has shaken hands with Stephen Harper" which is clearly either true or false in the physical world independently of the statements or thoughts of various people on the subject, and for which there can be objective evidence such as photographs or eyewitness reports.

While a statement about rights may be true in some sense, it is never objectively verifiable.

I would like to find a version of the statement "RR are HR" which asserts only the classification information and doesn't seem to be able to be interpreted as a declaration of rights, and another version that is clearly only a declaration of rights and not about classification. I think that would help us to be able to discuss the statements more easily and to discuss which types of statements belong in the article. However, I find it very difficult to formulate any sentence that talks about classification which doesn't appear to me to be open to interpretation as a declaration of rights. I have to make the sentence rather complicated, like this: "Those things which are considered to be human rights can be subdivided into a number of subclassifications, one of which is reproductive rights." It's much easier to write something that appears to me to be a declaration of rights: "Every human being deserves access to the things listed here as reproductive rights." Phrases such as "is a human right" or "are human rights" are commonly used in informal declarations of rights and seem to me to have a strong tendency to be interpreted as declarations of rights. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:22, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest it would be as easy as slapping RR are HR into the article and its counterpart; obviously its not that simple an idea. I fully support attributing the opinion, as we should do with all opinions. Shell ^babelfish 16:30, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Shell, for joining this discussion and framing this aspect so succinctly. Attributing the opinion is my suggested solution as well, however there seems to be disagreement on how to do so. Phyesalis seems to believe that citing the source using an inline footnote is sufficient; Coppertwig and I disagree and believe that such a statement requires us to explicitly state whose opinion it is. Explicitly attributing the views later than the first sentence is one option, but that seems to give the appearance that we are presenting evidence in support of the first statement (thus, the opinion), whereas if the statement (opinion) itself were attributed neutrally by referencing proponents, further elaboration would only give the appearance of supporting the neutral statement, which IMO is preferred. I'd be interested in hearing Phyesalis' and your thoughts on these details. Blackworm (talk) 17:52, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Usually, on Wikipedia, when I hear "attributing a statement" it means to me that we explicitly attribute the statement in the text, not just by providing a reference. For example, if there was a significant minority who thought the moon was made of cheese, we might say "The Green Cheese group believes that the moon is made of cheese, while the majority of scientists think this is bunk." (Okay, we'd probably find a better way to write that ;) ) Obviously, we'd use inline references so people can see where we got our information from and read more about it, but its still important to clearly state in the text who belongs to which opinion. Phyesalis, is this something you could agree to as well? Obviously the wording would still have to be worked out, as well as what par t of this belongs in the lead vs elsewhere... Shell ^babelfish 18:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I generally agree with you, but in your example the opinion presented is that of a minority, and one might argue that saying "the moon is made of rock, not cheese" requires no explicit attribution. I believe Phyesalis makes this argument by presenting sources using terms such as "majority," "international context," and "consensus," which Phyesalis seems to believe is sufficient for the claim to be cited as fact. This is a pattern common to most if not all aspects of this dispute. Is that reasoning sound? Blackworm (talk) 18:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think majority or even consensus opinion can be stated as fact when it comes to telling people what to do. If almost everyone agrees that the moon is rock, a Wikipedia article can just say "The moon is rock." But if almost everyone agrees that people should stop when they come to a red light, I don't think a Wikipedia article should say "People should stop when they come to a red light." Instead, it could say something like "Stopping at red lights is required in countries around the world." It's a matter of whether it's a verifiable fact, or a normative statement. I don't think giving an attribution in a later sentence would be good enough to allow a normative statement to be stated directly in the article as if Wikipedia itself is asserting it to be true. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

It looks like Phyesalis hasn't been on to edit since the mediation was opened, so we're still waiting to see what they think about these points. Thanks for the excellent discussion so far. Shell ^babelfish 18:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay - new job - completely unexpected offer. I hope you won't mind, but it's going to be a few more days before I can give this adequate time. Please accept my regrets for the inconvenience. --Phyesalis (talk) 20:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

No worries, I'm just glad nothing bad happened. Congrats on the job :) When you get a chance, I think everyone has pretty much gone over their positions on this particular issue, so if you can let us know where you agree and where you disagree, we'll see where we can go from there. Thanks. Shell ^babelfish 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, great to hear from you, Phyesalis. Congratulations! I'm not in a hurry – I seem to be rather busy myself these days. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks like we're still waiting here. Phyesalis, could you give us an estimate of when you think you'll be available again for mediation? Thanks for your help. Shell ^babelfish 08:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

• Phyesalis hasn't edited Wikipedia since March 8th; since we're not sure when they might return, I'm going to go ahead and place the mediation on hold for the time being. Please let me know if there are any objections. Thanks. Shell ^babelfish 22:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't object, but I'm not sure where that leaves us. Until now I have been mostly patient about editing disputed material, but it seems the dispute now suffers from an absence of proponents on one side. Would it be inappropriate for me to edit, for the moment, as if no dispute exists, leaving room for the possibility for Phyesalis to return and resume this mediation later? Blackworm (talk) 23:25, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it would still be a good idea to be very careful in your edits by making sure your following Wikipedia policy, but otherwise, editing doesn't have to stop when one editor becomes unavailable. Since its been such a long time since the Mediation was asked for, I'd probably ask for an update on the list of things that need to be mediated anyways -- if anything comes up while Phyesalis is gone that they have concerns over, we can add that as something to address during the mediation. Shell ^babelfish 23:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. (Wow, that was fast.) Blackworm (talk) 23:34, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I already posted a note on Phyesalis' talk page on April 14 that I will soon start editing the articles she asked me not to edit. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)