This paper seeks to stimulate a more careful accounting for the reality of sexual and reproductive health within the field of development through examining the formal rules guiding standard-setting, in light of the different intellectual and ideological genealogies of sexual and reproductive rights. The paper uses (homo)sexual orientation and abortion as case studies of current high-profile human rights standard-setting, with specific attention to the contemporary state of human rights law-making in the United Nations today. By placing these two issues in conjunction, the paper seeks to make visible relationships between the vicious political debates in the UN on abortion and sexual orientation, and the multiple and sometimes divergent statements of independent experts and expert bodies in the UN human rights system on these and other sexual and reproductive rights issues.