The Dublin Declaration on Maternal Health Care and Anti-Abortion Activism: Examples from Latin America

Lynn M. Morgan Abstract The Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare—issued by self-declared pro-life activists in Ireland in 2012—states unequivocally that abortion is never medically necessary, even to save the life of a pregnant woman. This article examines the influence of the Dublin Declaration on abortion politics in Latin America, especially El Salvador and Chile, where it has recently been used in pro-life organizing to cast doubt on the notion that…

Theorizing Time in Abortion Law and Human Rights

Joanna N. Erdman Abstract The legal regulation of abortion by gestational age, or length of pregnancy, is a relatively undertheorized dimension of abortion and human rights. Yet struggles over time in abortion law, and its competing representations and meanings, are ultimately struggles over ethical and political values, authority and power, the very stakes that human rights on abortion engage. This article focuses on three struggles over time in abortion and…

Theorizing Time in Abortion Law and Human Rights

Joanna N. Erdman Abstract The legal regulation of abortion by gestational age, or length of pregnancy, is a relatively undertheorized dimension of abortion and human rights. Yet struggles over time in abortion law, and its competing representations and meanings, are ultimately struggles over ethical and political values, authority and power, the very stakes that human rights on abortion engage. This article focuses on three struggles over time in abortion and…

Abortion Law and Policy Around the World: In Search of Decriminalization

Marge Berer Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide a panoramic view of laws and policies on abortion around the world, giving a range of country-based examples. It shows that the plethora of convoluted laws and restrictions surrounding abortion do not make any legal or public health sense. What makes abortion safe is simple and irrefutable—when it is available on the woman’s request and is universally affordable and…

Editorial – Narratives of Essentialism and Exceptionalism: The Challenges and Possibilities of Using Human Rights to Improve Access to Safe Abortion

Alicia Ely Yamin and Paola Bergallo Context As this special section of Health and Human Rights goes to press, women’s access to sexual and reproductive health, including safe and legal abortion, faces both old and new threats in many corners of the world. Among other things, the US government under Donald Trump decided to defund the United Nations Population Fund and to reinstate and expand the so-called Global Gag Rule…

Editorial – Narratives of Essentialism and Exceptionalism: The Challenges and Possibilities of Using Human Rights to Improve Access to Safe Abortion

Alicia Ely Yamin and Paola Bergallo Context As this special section of Health and Human Rights goes to press, women’s access to sexual and reproductive health, including safe and legal abortion, faces both old and new threats in many corners of the world. Among other things, the US government under Donald Trump decided to defund the United Nations Population Fund and to reinstate and expand the so-called Global Gag Rule…

Drug Policies and Indigenous Peoples

Julian Burger and Mary Kapron Abstract This paper identifies the principal concerns of indigenous peoples with regard to current international treaties on certain psychoactive substances and policies to control and eradicate their production, trafficking, and sale. Indigenous peoples have a specific interest in the issue since their traditional lands have become integrated over time into the large-scale production of coca, opium poppy, and cannabis crops, in response to high demand…

International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Control: A Tool for Securing Women’s Rights in Drug Control Policy

Rebecca Schleifer and Luciana Pol Abstract Discrimination and inequality shape women’s experiences of drug use and in the drug trade and the impact of drug control efforts on them, with disproportionate burdens faced by poor and otherwise marginalized women. In recent years, UN member states and UN drug control and human rights entities have recognised this issue and made commitments to integrate a “gender perspective” into drug control policies, with…

Mechanisms of Accountability for the Realization of the Right to Health in China

Shengnan Qiu and Gillian MacNaughton Abstract China ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2001. It thus bears obligations under Article 12 of the covenant to take appropriate measures at the domestic level to realize the right to health in China. Accountability is an important component of the right to health. This article examines whether the Western concept of accountability, recently imported into China, has the…

Mechanisms of Accountability for the Realization of the Right to Health in China

Shengnan Qiu and Gillian MacNaughton Abstract China ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2001. It thus bears obligations under Article 12 of the covenant to take appropriate measures at the domestic level to realize the right to health in China. Accountability is an important component of the right to health. This article examines whether the Western concept of accountability, recently imported into China, has the…