scholarly journals What Constitutes a “Due” Burden on Women’s Access to Abortion: A Cultural Discourse Analysis of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (SI) ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Gao Xueying
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
Cultural Discourse Analysis ◽  
Burden Test ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
The U.S

We can find numerous international treaties and legal documents that support women’s choice for safe and legal abortion. However, there are constant different, incompatible and even opposing discourses around abortion globally. This paper examines a 2016 legal case (Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt) to explore how anti-abortion discourse in the U.S. has found its way into the legal text. I begin by addressing women’s right to abortion as a human rights issue and then I investigate how U.S. abortion law entangles with social and cultural reality in the country; I then offer a close reading of the Supreme Court’s judgement and discuss the implications of such a legal text. Public opinions on reproductive rights in the U.S. are closely related to the dynamics between religious culture and feminist activism, and political manipulation leads to divided opinions over the issue. A close reading of the case shows that the court’s constant emphasis on “right to privacy” sets the stage for the current fragility of the reproductive rights in the U.S. cultural and political context. First, it opens a gate for anti-abortion groups to burden women with moral responsibility; second, under TRAP laws it becomes difficult for the abortion providers to justify their stand. I further argue that the undue burden test, which was central to winning this case, is not a strong test for future lawsuits over abortion rights.

Reproductive rights: Legal aspects of the right to sterilisation

Stanovnistvo ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 39 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 119-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hajrija Mujovic-Zornic
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
German Law ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Penal Policy ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Voluntary Sterilization

In this paper the author discusses the nature and importance of the right to reproduce, in particular the right to sterilisation. In the time past sterilization has been practiced only as a measure of penal policy or the prevention of mental health diseases. Today, mostly we can speak about the right to sterilization (especially reversible sterilization). The patient have a free choice to decide any method of contraception and that could be a voluntary sterilization (also called human, contraceptive, non-therapeutical in French law, and obliging in German law). Various legal questions about this right can be raised, in accordance of state of reproductive rights (how they are regulated by the law) and the protection of reproductive rights (especially the right of pregnant woman as a patient). Yugoslav law not yet has a complete regulation and adequate solutions in this area, except the abortion law. The primary gynecology care has contraceptive counseling, but concrete measures and education are insufficient. It cannot begin to give consistent answers to all of these questions without a coherent conception of the right to reproduce, which is the primary duty of legal experts.

Anti-Sterilization Abuse Organizing: A Retrospective Examination

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Marian McDonald
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minority Women ◽  
Federally Funded ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Retrospective Examination ◽  
The U.S

November 1988 marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Government's adoption of guidelines for federally-funded sterilizations. This action was the result of years of organizing by the anti-sterilization abuse movement which grew in the early 1970s in response to the alarming increase in numbers of coercive sterilizations, particularly among poor and minority women. This retrospective examination looks at the strengths and weaknesses of anti-sterilization abuse organizing in the United States, and draws out lessons for other areas of work. It begins by exploring the problem of sterilization abuse and the history of the movement against it. The movement is analyzed using key theoretical concepts of community organizing. An evaluation indicates that the anti-abuse efforts were successful and rich with lessons for reproductive rights and other popular health struggles today.

Advancing Reproductive Rights through Legal Reform: The Example of Abortion Clinic Safe Access Zones

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronli Sifris ◽  
Tania Penovic ◽  
Caroline Henckels
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Medical Abortion ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
High Court ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
Abortion Clinic ◽  
Safe Access

The past two decades have seen significant reforms in abortion law throughout Australia. From the perspective of advancing women’s reproductive rights, the most significant abortion law reforms have been the decriminalisation of abortion, removal of impediments to accessing medical abortion, the imposition of an ‘obligation to refer’ on medical practitioners with a conscientious objection to abortion, and the introduction of safe access zones around abortion clinics. This article focuses on the introduction of safe access zones as a key legal reform that has been implemented across Australia to support and promote women’s reproductive rights, drawing on empirical research conducted by the first and second authors and discussing this research in the context of the recent High Court decision confirming the constitutionality of safe access zones.

scholarly journals Connecting Reproductive Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law: Lessons from Poland in Times of COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 1072-1097
Author(s):  
Atina Krajewska
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Tribunal ◽  
Litmus Test ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between reproductive rights, democracy, and the rule of law in transitional societies. As a case study, it examines the development of abortion law in Poland. The article makes three primary claims. First, it argues that the relationship between reproductive rights and the rule of law in Poland came clearly into view through the abortion judgment K 1/20, handed down by the Constitutional Tribunal in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The judgment and the context in which it was issued and published are interpreted as reflections of deep-lying processes and problems in Polish society. Consequently, second, the article argues that analysis of the history of reproductive rights in recent decades in Poland reveals weak institutionalization of the rule of law. This is manifest in the ways in which different professional groups, especially doctors and lawyers, have addressed questions regarding abortion law. Therefore, third, the article argues that any assessment of the rule of law should take into account how powerful professional actors and organizations interact with the law. The Polish case study shows that reproductive rights should be seen as important parts of a “litmus test,” which we can use to examine the efficacy of democratic transitions and the quality of the democracies in which such transitions result.

The United States’ Afghan Information and PSYOP Campaign and a Comparison to the Taliban’s Campaign

2018 ◽  
pp. 217-264
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Johnson ◽  
Matthew DuPee ◽  
Wali Shaaker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Strategic Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Operation Enduring Freedom ◽  
Information Campaign ◽  
Mental Space ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
Time Frames ◽  
The U.S

This is one of the more important chapters in that it explicitly compares the U.S. information campaign in Afghanistan to the Taliban’s campaign. The explicit stated goals and strategic communication themes of the U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom are assessed during two distinct time frames – 2001-2006 and 2007-2011. In assessing and comparing the U.S. information operation efforts versus the Taliban, a detailed analysis of different U.S. messaging techniques such as leaflets. As suggested above, these leaflets were assessed for early U.S. engagements to later in the conflict. Later U.S. IO efforts were examined using the U.S. PSYOP Book from 2009. The analyses concluded with the notion that the U.S. had to basically surrender to Taliban dominance in narratives and associated stories. The U.S. efforts basically refused to accept Afghan cultural reality, especially the Afghan peasant mental space. This had a devastating impact on U.S. and NATO rural counter-insurgency efforts. The U.S. had to concede a major portion of the Afghan battle space because the U.S. could not credibly respond to Taliban Islamic mores and troupes.

Abortion and Reproductive Rights

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Maslow Cohen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S

This article discusses critical debate about individual control over the beginnings of life that has sprawled across the fields of academic law, philosophy, politics, religion, the life sciences, and the self-christened field of bioethics from the 1960s up to the present. The subject has formed in and around a cascade of popular pressures; biomedical advances; legislative, judicial, and public policy initiatives; media attention; and the boiling politics in which, at least in the United States, the whole series of enterprises has been bathed. The present undertaking will train on the law. It covers contraception in the United States, abortion law and policy in the United States, and contraception and abortion in Europe and the United Kingdom.

scholarly journals Revisiting Polish Abortion Law: Doctors and Institutions in a Restrictive Regime

2021 ◽  
pp. 096466392110401
Author(s):  
Atina Krajewska
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Sociology Of Professions ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
Social Sanctions ◽  
The Impact

This article examines the motivations of doctors operating in restrictive abortion regimes, and it takes Poland as a case study. It places in the foreground institutional and intra-professional factors that determine abortion healthcare, which to date have been accorded little attention. The article compares the impact that criminal, professional, and social sanctions have upon the provision of abortion services. In so doing, its purpose is to refocus debate in this area. It aims to move the emphasis away from legal and political factors, including the criminalisation of abortion, and to place it on medical agency. The Polish case study is examined to test out, in the context of a late-transitional polity, the sustainability of neo-institutionalist approaches to the study of law and organisations and the sociology of professions. The analysis is particularly important and urgent in light of the recent retrenchment of reproductive rights in Poland, and beyond.

scholarly journals Should or Must?: Nature of the Obligation of States to Use Trade Instruments for the Advancement of Environmental, Labour, and Other Human Rights

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Powell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Harm Principle ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Alien Tort Statute

This article examines whether customs, treaties, and historical facts have caused the ethical human rights obligations of economically powerful states to assume a legal quality. The author argues that the legal quality of these obligations may arise from the global harm principle of international law and human rights obligations found in treaties. As a consequence, states may be held accountable for the human rights violations of transnational corporations. Further, the author examines the possibility of pursuing claims under the U.S. Alien Tort Statute for torts committed in violation of international treaties as another avenue for enforcing human rights obligations.

scholarly journals Reproductive rights: Current issues of late abortion

Stanovnistvo ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-67
Author(s):  
Hajrija Mujovic-Zornic
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
Good Medical Practice ◽  
Essential Question ◽  
Late Abortion ◽  
Woman's Rights ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Woman Health

This article considers the legal issues surrounding induced late abortion in cases when severe medical, therapeutic or ethical reasons have not been in dispute. Generally discussing the essential question about abortion today, it means not anymore legality of abortion but, in the first place, safety of abortion. From the aspect of woman health the most important aim is to detect and avoid possible risks of medical intervention, such as late abortion present. This is the matter of medical law context and also the matter of the woman's reproductive rights, here observed through legislation and court practice. The gynecologist has an obligation to obtain the informed consent of each patient. Information's should be presented in reasonably understandable terms and include alternative modes of treatment, objectives, risks, benefits, possible complications, and anticipated results of such treatment. Pregnant woman should receive supportive counseling before and particularly after the procedure. The method chosen for all terminations should ensure that the fetus is born dead. This should be undertaken by an appropriately trained practitioner. Reform in abortion law, making it legally accessible to woman, is not necessarily the product of a belief in woman's rights, but can be a means of bringing the practice of abortion back under better control. Counseling and good medical practice in performing late abortion are the instruments to drive this point even further home. It does not undermine the woman who wants to make a positive decision about her life and its purpose is not to produce feelings of insecurity and guilt. It concludes that existing law should not be changed but that clear rules should be devised and board created to review late term abortion. In Serbia, this leads to creation and set up guidelines for reconciling medical justification for late abortion with existing law, especially with solutions which brings comparative law. .

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document