Catholic Church, reproductive rights and environmental rights

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss some points of intersection of the human rights realm with the field of religion, addressing in particular the agreements and disagreements regarding the doctrines of the Catholic Church on reproductive rights and environmental rights. To that end, we reconstruct a historical and relational narrative of the debate about the origins and evolution of the demographic transition and of human rights, since the time of the French Revolution. By means of a comparative and contextualized analysis, we portray about the debate on population and sustainable development and the views on reproductive and environmental rights set forth in United Nations International Conferences and in the encyclicals Humanae Vitae and Laudato Si '. As society and the environment are going through on opposite routes, the need to reconstitute the planet's biocapacity requires a reflection on the dynamics of demoeconomic growth and the achievement of reproductive and environmental rights. Accordingly, we point out that in the democratic State of law, with respect to the principles of secularity, religious tolerance is essential for the adequate consideration of reproductive rights issues and for deepening the debate on environmental rights.