scholarly journals The role of human rights litigation in improving access to reproductive health care and achieving reductions in maternal mortality

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (S2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Templeton Dunn ◽  
Katherine Lesyna ◽  
Anna Zaret
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Maternal Mortality ◽  
Reproductive Health Care

Conscientious Objection to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services: International Human Rights Standards and European Law and Practice

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Zampas ◽  
Ximena Andión-Ibañez
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Conscientious Objection ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Reproductive Health Care ◽  
Care Services ◽  
European Court

Abstract The practice of conscientious objection often arises in the area of individuals refusing to fulfil compulsory military service requirements and is based on the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as protected by national, international and regional human rights law. The practice of conscientious objection also arises in the field of health care, when individual health care providers or institutions refuse to provide certain health services based on religious, moral or philosophical objections. The use of conscientious objection by health care providers to reproductive health care services, including abortion, contraceptive prescriptions, and prenatal tests, among other services is a growing phenomena throughout Europe. However, despite recent progress from the European Court of Human Rights on this issue (RR v. Poland, 2011), countries and international and regional bodies generally have failed to comprehensively and effectively regulate this practice, denying many women reproductive health care services they are legally entitled to receive. The Italian Ministry of Health reported that in 2008 nearly 70% of gynaecologists in Italy refuse to perform abortions on moral grounds. It found that between 2003 and 2007 the number of gynaecologists invoking conscientious objection in their refusal to perform an abortion rose from 58.7 percent to 69.2 percent. Italy is not alone in Europe, for example, the practice is prevalent in Poland, Slovakia, and is growing in the United Kingdom. This article outlines the international and regional human rights obligations and medical standards on this issue, and highlights some of the main gaps in these standards. It illustrates how European countries regulate or fail to regulate conscientious objection and how these regulations are working in practice, including examples of jurisprudence from national level courts and cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Finally, the article will provide recommendations to national governments as well as to international and regional bodies on how to regulate conscientious objection so as to both respect the practice of conscientious objection while protecting individual’s right to reproductive health care.

Conscientious Objection in Reproductive Health Care: Analysis of Pichon and Sajous v. France

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Lamačková
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Conscientious Objection ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Reproductive Health Care ◽  
Health Care Context ◽  
The Right

AbstractThis article explores the issue of conscientious objection invoked by health professionals in the reproductive and sexual health care context and its impact on women's ability to access health services. The right to exercise conscientious objection has been recognized by many international and European scholars as being derived from the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It is not, however, an absolute right. When the exercise of conscientious objection conflicts with other human rights and fundamental freedoms, a balance must be struck between the right to conscientious objection and other affected rights such as the right to respect for private life, the right to equality and non-discrimination, and the right to receive and impart information. Particularly in the reproductive health care context, states that allow health professionals to exercise conscientious objection must accommodate this in such a way that its exercise does not compromise women's access to health services. This article analyses the European Court of Human Rights' decision on admissibility in Pichon and Sajous v. France (2001) and argues that a balancing approach should be applied in cases of conscientious objection in the sexual and reproductive health care context.

scholarly journals A Stalled Revolution? Misoprostol and the Pharmaceuticalization of Reproductive Health in Francophone Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siri Suh
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Maternal Mortality ◽  
Rural Women ◽  
Post Partum ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Francophone Africa ◽  
Reproductive Health Care ◽  
Post Partum Hemorrhage

Misoprostol entered the global market under the name Cytotec in the mid-1980s for the treatment of gastric ulcers. Decades of research have since demonstrated the safety and effectiveness of off-label use of misoprostol as a uterotonic in pregnant women to prevent and treat post-partum hemorrhage, treat incomplete abortion, or terminate first-trimester pregnancy. Global health experts emphasize misoprostol’s potential to revolutionize access to reproductive health care in developing countries. Misoprostol does not require refrigeration, can be self-administered or with the aid of a non-physician, and is relatively inexpensive. It holds particular promise for improving reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa, where most global maternal mortality related to post-partum hemorrhage and unsafe abortion occurs. Although misoprostol has been widely recognized as an essential obstetric medication, its application remains highly contested precisely because it disrupts medical and legal authority over pregnancy, delivery, and abortion. I draw on fieldwork in Francophone Africa to explore how global health organizations have negotiated misoprostol’s abortifacient qualities in their reproductive health work. I focus on this region not only because it has some of the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality, but also fertility, thereby situating misoprostol in a longer history of family planning programs in a region designated as a zone of overpopulation since the 1980s. Findings suggest that stakeholders adopt strategies that directly address safe abortion on the one hand, and integrate misoprostol into existing clinical protocols and pharmaceutical supply systems for legal obstetric indications on the other. Although misoprostol has generated important partnerships among regional stakeholders invested in reducing fertility and maternal mortality, the stigma of abortion stalls its integration into routine obstetric care and availability to the public. I demonstrate the promises and pitfalls of pharmaceuticalizing reproductive health: despite the availability of misoprostol in some health facilities and pharmacies, low-income and rural women continue to lack access not only to the drug, but to quality reproductive health care more generally.

scholarly journals Appraisal of Nigeria’s Obligation on Adolescents’ Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Care

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 466
Author(s):  
Oluremi A. Savage-Oyekunle
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Sexual And Reproductive Health ◽  
Female Adolescents ◽  
Judicial Activism ◽  
Reproductive Health Care ◽  
Treaty Monitoring ◽  
Care Information ◽  
The Right

The positive obligations on states parties to ensure covenant rights will only be fully discharged if individuals are protected by the state, not just against violations of covenant rights by its agents, but also against acts committed by private persons or entities that would impair the enjoyment of covenant rights…. (Paragraph 8 General Comment 31 Human Rights Committee) This article explores the responsibility of the Nigerian state towards ensuring female adolescents’ access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care information and services especially contraceptive information and services. It thereafter, considers the stance of the treaty monitoring bodies to state parties’ obligations on the right to access SRH care information and services. The article concludes by declaring the need for judicial activism and stricter monitoring of the government’s activities in other to ensure that adolescents enjoy actual access to SRH care information and services.

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