Much of reproductive rights activism is squarely centred on the right to have access to birth control and abortion. But while this remains an important factor in securing women's rights, the right to become a mother is a paramount issue to millions of women across the globe. The pro-life movement continues to suggest that women are "killing babies" but ignores the millions of women who have been prevented from ever carrying a child: the right to motherhood is the other side of the reproductive coin, which does not receive enough attention.

Times Online recently featured an article discussing forced sterilisation in China to enforce the one-child rule. The article states that in Puning, a county in Guangdong province, the government is imprisoning relatives of people who have broken the one-child policy in an attempt to force them to submit to sterilisations; the goal is to complete 9,559 sterilisations.

Similarly, a human rights group has recently alleged that Uzbekistan's government had instructed health workers to surgically sterilise women as part of a campaign to reduce its birth rate. But while the east is often singled out for its breaches on human rights (and by doing so reifying a false east/west divide), forced sterilisation continues to be a real and present danger in the Americas.

The Movimiento Amplio de Mujeres Linea Fundacional has worked to raise awareness regarding the forced sterilisation that occurred in family planning centres in Latin America between 1995 and 2000. The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Women found that health officials in Peru used threats, promises and bribes to convince campesinas to submit to these operations. The BBC reports that 215,227 "sterilising operations on women" occurred in Peru alone. Unsurprisingly, the women targeted were poor, indigenous, rural and Quechua-speaking. This happened a scant 10 years ago.

In the US, coercion and persuasion are also often used when sterilisation occurs. Women incarcerated after having been convicted of drug use during pregnancy or child abuse were, in several states, given the option to take Norplant to avoid or reduce the length of incarceration.

Norplant has also been suggested as a "cure for poverty", and thus legislators saw it as an opportunity to reduce their welfare rolls by coercing poor women to take this medication for substantial periods. In 2008, an Illinois appellate court denied an attempt to have a mentally disabled woman sterilised against her will. The fact that we are still debating the right of neurologically atypical women to reproduce is reflective of a culture determined to practice social Darwinism.

This echoes the 1927 Buck v Bell decision that saw the US supreme court uphold a ruling that made it legal to sterilise those who were considered socially unfit – among the undesirables were numerous disabled women. In his decision, Justice Holmes stated:

It is better … if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those … manifestly unfit from continuing their kind … Three generations of imbeciles is enough.

A systemic devaluation of disability still exists, which allows the continual questioning of not only reproductive rights, but also the humanity of differently abled people. Because some of the conditions are deemed to be inheritable, sterilisation has historically been considered a viable social option – and though not enforced, many states still have coercive sterilisation laws on the books. The eugenicist approach to the disabled can be evidenced by the 186 deaths at "state facilities for the retarded over 18 months" in Austin, Texas.

The violation of reproductive rights in China is heinous and should definitely be a case for concern and civil disobedience. However, we should not allow this to obscure the forced sterilisation that continues to be an issue in the west. The ability to become a mother is a priority to millions of women, disabled or not, rich or poor. A more inclusive approach to reproductive rights is a necessity, because women often have different experiences dealing with reproduction based on their race, ability or class. A reproductive movement that does not actively seek to engage with the idea of promoting a woman's right to motherhood is not necessarily seeking equal reproductive justice.