Julieta Lemaitre and Rachel Sieder Abstract Feminists and religious conservatives across the globe have increasingly turned to courts in their battles over abortion. Yet while a significant literature analyzes legal mobilization on abortion issues, it tends to focus predominantly on domestic scenarios. In this article, we consider the effects of this contentious engagement of pro-choice and anti-abortion movements in international human rights fora, asking what happens to social movement claims…
Australia: Abortion and Human Rights
Ronli Sifris and Suzanne Belton Abstract This article adopts a human rights lens to consider Australian law and practice regarding elective abortion. As such, it considers Australian laws within the context of the right to equality, right to privacy, right to health, and right to life. After setting out the human rights framework and noting the connected nature of many of the rights (and their corresponding violations), the article shifts…
The Role of International Human Rights Norms in the Liberalization of Abortion Laws Globally
Johanna B. Fine, Katherine Mayall, and Lilian Sepúlveda Abstract International and regional human rights norms have evolved significantly to recognize that the denial of abortion care in a range of circumstances violates women’s and girls’ fundamental human rights. These increasingly progressive standards have played a critical role in transforming national-level abortion laws by both influencing domestic high court decisions on abortion and serving as a critical resource in advancing law…
Regulation of Conscientious Objection to Abortion: An International Comparative Multiple-Case Study
Wendy Chavkin, Laurel Swerdlow, and Jocelyn Fifield Abstract Since abortion laws were liberalized in Western Europe, conscientious objection (CO) to abortion has become increasingly contentious. We investigated the efficacy and acceptability of laws and policies that permit CO and ensure access to legal abortion services. This is a comparative multiple-case study, which triangulates multiple data sources, including interviews with key stakeholders from all sides of the debate in England, Italy, Norway,…
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…
Remove the For-Profit Variable from Clinical Drug Trials
Fran Quigley At first glance, it seems that clinical trials are the much-criticized pharmaceutical industry’s best contribution to the medicines process. The industry leans on governments to fund early-stage research, then claims the patent rights to the most promising fruits of that research. That arrangement frustrates many public health advocates, especially since it enables the industry to collect more in profits, and invest more in marketing and lobbying, than it…
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International Drug Control Limits Access to Medicines: A Human Rights Breach?
Marie Elske Gispen The interface between the human rights and drug control frameworks is subject to much international debate and controversy. This is particularly the case in the context of access to controlled medicines: serious negative health, socioeconomic, and human rights consequences can occur with insufficient access to pharmaceuticals. Consumption data reveals that between 2010-2014 there was a global health inequity: internationally controlled opioid analgesics, such as morphine for pain…
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Will Trump March-In and Bring Down Drug Prices?
Fran Quigley In the interview that accompanied President-elect Donald Trump’s Time magazine Person of the Year story, he said, “I’m going to bring down drug prices. I don’t like what has happened with drug prices.” If you don’t find yourself agreeing with Trump very often, you may have finally found common ground. As the President-elect said, there is a lot not to like about drug prices. The global crisis in medicine…
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Closing the Gap Between Formal and Material Health Care Coverage in Colombia
Everaldo Lamprea and Johnattan García Abstract This paper explores Colombia’s road toward universal health care coverage. Using a policy-based approach, we show how, in Colombia, the legal expansion of health coverage is not sufficient and requires the development of appropriate and effective institutions. We distinguish between formal and material health coverage in order to underscore that, despite the rapid legal expansion of health care coverage, a considerable number of Colombians—especially…
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Foreword: Universal Health Coverage – A Return to Alma-Ata and Ottawa
Dainius Puras In 1978, the Alma-Ata Declaration established a bold plan for global health action and social justice, identifying primary health care as the lynchpin for achieving health for all.[1] Several years later, the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, responding to growing health challenges within industrialized societies, formally recognized underlying determinants as an integrated and vital part of health for all.[2] United Nations agencies, national governments, and a range of…
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