Global Campus Europe: EMA

Permanent URI for this collection

https://reponew.gchumanrights.org/handle/20.500.11825/42
European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation Theses written in partial fulfilment of master's degree

Browse

Browsing Global Campus Europe: EMA by Subject "abortion"
  • Item
    The 2013 Irish legislation on abortion: turning-point or missed opportunity? : a critical analysis from a human rights perspective
    ( 2014) Cosentino, Chiara ; Higgins, Noelle
    While Ireland is being targeted by a worldwide Amnesty International campaign on sexual and reproductive rights, a reflection on the Irish legal framework on abortion is deemed necessary. The present work assesses whether the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act approved by the Irish Parliament in July 2013 represents a step forward or a missed opportunity for the protection of women’s reproductive rights in Ireland. After illustrating the legal, political and social developments on the issue of abortion since the introduction of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution in 1983, the focus will move to the analysis of the 2013 Act. The assessment will be twofold. On the one hand, at a national level, the alleged shortcomings of its practical impact will be illustrated. On the other hand, at the international level, the legislation will be evaluated in the light of its compliance with the Irish obligations under International Human Rights Law. Finally, it will be concluded that the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act has to be welcomed, since it fills a thirty-year lasting legislative gap, but it falls short of human rights requirements and does not bring any major practical improvement in the majority of women’s lives.
  • Item
    Abortion and euthanasia in the light of any relevant rules of international law : interpretation challenges for the European Court of Human Rights
    ( 2009) Villalibre Fernandez, Vanessa ; Kamminga, Menno
    This study will try to shed light on the use of international sources by the European Court of Human Rights and its influence on the interpretation of the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. During the last years, the Court frequently applies any relevant rules of international law applicable in the relations between the parties. In particular, its jurisprudence refers constantly to human rights treaties and European standards to establish the suitability of the Convention. However, this tendency is still limited concerning controversial notions. In this sense, two issues will be examined in order to illustrate the interpretation challenges for the Court in this field: voluntary abortion and euthanasia. From a thorough jurisprudential analysis, supported with doctrinal and legal references, it can be observed in the recent years the increase in the application of international instruments by the Court. This trend may entail a deep change in its interpretation methods as far as any relevant rules of international law are susceptible to be taken into account in order to clarify the rights under discussion.
  • Item
    Bringing Ginsburg to Strasbourg : an analysis of abortion as a gender equality right under the European Court of Human Rights
    ( 2022) Pijnenburg, Margot ; Salát, Orsolya
    In June 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that guaranteed women their constitutional right to abortion. One of the main reasons for this decision was its constitutional basis: the right to liberty, as embedded in the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution, does not include a right to abortion according to the majority opinion. That the right to abortion was founded on a highly unstable constitutional basis, had been asserted by many feminist legal theorists in the 70s and 80s who argued that abortion is first and foremost a matter of gender equality, not a right to liberty. In Europe, the overturn of Roe v. Wade has created a counterreaction that seeks to anchor women’s right to choose in national and supranational legislation. An important actor in this endeavor is the European Court of Human Rights as the judicial body appointed to interpret the corner stone of European human rights law, the European Convention on Human Rights. As in Roe v. Wade, the European Court of Human Rights conceptualizes abortion as a right to respect for private life, but has not yet found a right to abortion embedded in Article 8. The alarming fragility of the liberty argument as a basis for the right to abortion, demonstrated by the overturn of Roe v. Wade, pleads for the European Court of Human Rights to consider a different basis for the right to abortion: the prohibition of gender-based discrimination under Article 14. This work asks the question of how the European Court of Human Rights could conceptualize abortion as a gender equality right under its jurisprudential framework on equality, gender and reproduction. The body of American feminist legal theory, consisting of the writings of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Catherine MacKinnon and Reva Siegel, will be used to support the argument of abortion as a gender equality right. This work will then argue why and how the European Court of Human Rights already has the adequate jurisprudential framework with which to rule that anti-abortion laws and attitudes constitute gender-based discrimination under Article 14. To demonstrate what such a ruling would look like, this work will conclude by rewriting P. & S. v. Poland from a gender perspective, in which the Court would rule that Poland’s anti-abortion laws and attitudes violate women’s right to equality.
  • Item
    Framing a new paradigm for Irish abortion discourse: the move from deadlock to dialogue
    ( 2015) Nevin, Claire ; Agapiou-Josephides, Kalliope ; Hadjipavlou, Maria
    This thesis seeks to frame a new paradigm for Irish abortion discourse that will facilitate movement on the issue from the existing static position of polarisation and deadlock. It is proposed that reconsideration of the issues in more sensitive, nuanced and balanced terms would do much to progress an increased awareness of, and ultimately compliance with, international reproductive rights norms. This thesis suggests that, in order to move from deadlock to real dialogue, access to abortion must be reconsidered not merely in terms of individual rights-based arguments but crucially, as a universal human rights issue incorporating a broader social-good context that is inextricably linked with healthcare, justice, gender, equality and the caring ethic. In order to advance this new paradigm shift, including a review of the complex and deep-rooted cultural and historical reasons for Ireland’s current position, it is important to analyse Irish abortion discourse from varying perspectives including power dynamics, feminism, humanitarianism, national identity-formation and international human rights law. The new dialogue-facilitating discursive paradigm proposed by this thesis is one that will consider abortion as a universal human right and a social good that is indivisible from justice, equality and access to healthcare. The introduction of care ethics and compassion into the discourse would enable such a framework to emerge.
  • Item
    Gender and reproductive autonomy: are there second-class citizens in Europe?
    ( 2008) Grekula, Katja-Helena ; Beleza, Teresa
    The aim of this study is to clarify the pre-conditionality of reproductive autonomy and women’s citizenship in Europe in the light of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights2. Women’s reproductive autonomy has often been denied in the name of the moral and ethical concerns and nationalistic discourses. However, in Europe there is a strong consensus on gender equality which covers also reproductive autonomy. The Court has tried to balance in its verdicts the competing rights of individuals and the state. It has tried to set boundaries on the question of to what extent pluralistic modern democracies must tolerate intolerance. Despite its shortcomings the Court has played an important role in securing a minimum standard of the protection though realities of the women’s reproductive autonomy are still defined by the state. My approach to reproduction has been non-biological and therefore I have not made a definite distinction between biological and social parenthood. In this study, I have treated the concept of citizenship in the light of critical feminist research seeing it as a wider concept than referring only to public rights and duties but rather as forming the autonomous space in society which allows a person to lead her life as she wishes.
  • Item
    Right to abortion: a new fundamental right? From a resolution to an EU fundamental right
    ( 2023) Schulz, Anna Maria ; Albers, Eva
    In reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade in 2022, the EU Parliament calls in its resolution P9_TA(2022)0302 for the right to abortion to be included in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This work analyses the quality of the proposal by the EU Parliament against criteria set up by Philipp Alston. This thesis also investigates why abortion is still regarded as a sensitive issue today, before it illustrates how the ECJ and ECtHR have dealt with abortion in the past, citing and summarizing the most important case law on the matter. The analysis of the case law is subject matter in numerous Articles in academic literature – but whether the EU resolution P9_TA(2022)0302 offers a potential solution has not been assessed. In order to answer this question, this thesis uses the doctrinal research method, focusing on EU primary law, the case law of the ECJ and the ECtHR, the forementioned EU resolution and related academic literature. Finally, it will be concluded that the right to abortion does in fact fulfill most of the criteria for setting up a new EU fundamental right. However, the specific proposal by the EU Parliament is unlikely to meet broad approval by EU Member States. Moreover, the EU currently lacks competence to enshrine the right to abortion into the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Ultimately, it is concluded that the resolution is more of a symbolic gesture than a proposal which can be actually implemented in practice.
  • Item
    Sexual and reproductive health and rights during the covid-19 pandemic in Poland, the UK, and the Netherlands
    ( 2021) Baiker, Manuela ; Lind, Anna-Sara
    The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unforeseen challenges to human rights as states attempt to curb the spread of the virus. In light of the disproportionate consequences of the pandemic on women, this thesis examines the impact of COVID-19 on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Poland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Through an analysis of human rights obligations, this thesis questions the extent to which states may use restrictions and derogations to respond to the crisis. By comparing legal and regulatory changes affecting SRHR during the pandemic in three case studies, positive and negative developments are identified and commented upon from a human rights perspective. Through the case studies, this thesis highlights that COVID-19 represented a window of opportunity for both welcome progress and unlawful regress in the area of SRHR. Finally, it argues that a fair and just answer to the difficult balancing question between public health and human rights can only be found if human rights are placed at the center of response efforts. Thus, this thesis suggests and explores the application of a feminist human rights-based approach to public health emergencies. Key words: COVID-19, sexual and reproductive rights, public health, derogations, abortion, telemedicine.
  • Item
    The spiral model of socialisation of human rights norms reviseted : the struggle against the blanket ban on therapeutic abortion in Nicaragua 2006-2010
    ( 2010) Seppanen, Maaria ; Koff, Harlan
    The purpose of this study has been to test the spiral model of socialisation of human rights norms into domestic legislation and practice. The empirical test case is Nicaragua where the parliament voted to repeal the legal therapeutic abortion exemption, present in legislation from the early 19th century, from the criminal code in October 2006, only about a week before the 2006 general elections and for electoral motives. The term therapeutic abortion refers to interruptions of pregnancy in cases where the pregnancy puts in danger the woman’s life and in cases where an interrupted pregnancy widens the choice of curative medical treatments for the woman that would put in danger the life of the embryo/foetus. The objective is to see how the spiral model fits into this empirical case concerning women’s rights in the sphere of reproduction and reproductive rights. Particular emphasis has been placed on studying the role of development cooperation donors present in Nicaragua as transnational agencies, and their relations to civil society organisations and the government; this aspect of the ‘affair’ of therapeutic abortion has not been studied previously. According to the spiral model of socialisation of human rights norms, transnational contacts are instrumental for bringing about change. The model is based on the idea that domestic opposition forces bypass the national state and through their transnational contacts are able to exercise pressure on the domestic government both ‘from below’ and ‘from above’. In this process, instrumental rationality evolves into argumentative rationality through discursive devices such as persuasion, naming and shaming and, finally, with dialogue. The phases of the spiral are repression when the spiral starts, denial when human rights norms and their universality may be denied by the government which appeals to another value in international law, national sovereignty. The third phase is tactical concessions when the repressive government starts making concessions but gets self-entrapped in its own discourse on human rights. The following phases, not yet relevant in this empirical case would be prescriptive status and rule-consistent behaviour. Because the case is about the reversal of an existing situation (backlash situation), the phase of repression is situated at the point when the backlash happened. Additional notions used in the study are world time and ‘double discourse’, a typically Latin American situation where there is a breach between repressive official attitudes and policies, and private behaviour recurring to a wide range of liberties in contradiction with law. Nicaragua has signed all major international and regional human rights treaties, and has issued a standing invitation to special procedures. The Nicaraguan constitution guarantees total equality between women and men, and the violations of international treaties can be brought to domestic courts of justice. According to civil society organisation, national and international, the total abortion ban violates women’s right to life and health, and to health care and privacy. A conservative estimate about the number of victims of the new criminal code is that over one hundred women have died because they were denied medical treatment because of medical personnel’s fear of harming the foetus and being prosecuted for abortion even in cases when the pregnancy is interrupted unintentionally. The ban on therapeutic abortion is also an issue of social inequality, as it affects mostly poor women. The Nicaraguan women’s and feminist movements have wide contacts with international nongovernmental organisations and universities since the Sandinista time in 1980’s, and have been able to activate networks very efficiently. Unconstitutionalitymotions and amicus curiae 3 briefs have been presented at the domestic Supreme Court of Justice and the case of therapeutic abortion has been taken in to instances of regional and United Nations treaty bodies and the Human Rights Council. Donors originally pressured the political establishment to postpone the vote after the elections but in vain. Later due to the repression against women’s organisation and the political opposition, donors support civil society organisation but also the government in an attitude which is perceived by NGOs as ambivalent or lacking courage. Sweden and Denmark have announced a phasing out of development aid to Nicaragua, at least partially due to the ban on therapeutic abortion. The new criminal code with a blanket ban on abortion has been criticised by the periodic reviews of CEDAW, ICCPR, ICESCR, CAT and the UPR of the Human Rights Council. On an empirical level, the spiral model has not progressed from the phase of denial and there are only some indications that a phase of tactical concessions may be settling in, in the form of the system of double discourse. The spiral seems to go in a circle where repression, denial and, perhaps, concessions co-exist. The reasons for this situation are several. The situation of democracy in Nicaragua is blocked due to political deals between major politicians; there is no independent judiciary, no impartial electoral system and increasingly little space for political opposition. The domestic opposition is too weak because all major political parties and the economic elite is against therapeutic abortion. Religious influence is strong, and the ban on the therapeutic exemption from the criminal code marked the political rise of what has been called an anti-feminist backlash, promoted also for personal reasons of the presidential couple. A further factor is that the Nicaragua of Pres. Daniel Ortega is unconditionally supported by Venezuela and Hugo Chávez. Nicaragua has ceased to consider the international community of human rights respecting nations as its group of reference and identification. On a more theoretical level, the single most important reason for the blocked spiral is the notion of issue characteristics. In questions of reproductive rights and particularly abortion, it is difficult to construct unified opposition to the therapeutic abortion ban. Tactical concessions, assuming that the phase is settling in, do not have the same impact on the strength of domestic opposition nor are tactical concessions as easy as in cases of grave political repression: in abortions, if one permits one, it is difficult to justify why not to permit others. Exposure of the double discourse system may also lead to restraining individual, though illegal, choices. In legal argumentation, strongly invested in by the domestic opposition, there is another particularity which makes dialogue difficult. The hortative nature of Latin American criminal codes with thick normative contents makes that the issue is not regarded as a technical or public health matter but rather as a clash between two contradictory world views. World time may also play a role: in times of increasing religious fundamentalism, Nicaragua can become a forerunner in limiting women’s reproductive and other rights. For all these reasons it can be said that the spiral model is better suited to cases of grave violations of human rights than to struggles for women’s reproductive rights.
  • Item
  • Item
    Subversive swallowing : the self-help abortion as a site of stigma and resistance in the anti-choice state. The case of Northern Ireland
    ( 2016) Mc Guinness, Elizabeth ; Melo, Helena : Pereira de
    Where the state controls reproduction, the ‘self-help abortion’ controls right back. Between a past which saw pregnancy as punishment and a present which sees pregnant bodies as public property, the issue of abortion in Northern Ireland has been shrouded by censure, silence and stigma. Meanwhile, caught between the foetal fetishisation of anti-choice abstraction on one end and idle establishments both sides of the pond on the other, women have found themselves in a quasi-colonial state of reproductive exile. For those with means, amnesty can be found by crossing borders on the ‘abortion trail,’those without- face trial. Under remnants from the era of Victorian prudism, women have been criminalised for the procurement of abortion pills. Along with the ideological maelstrom wrought in the wake of prosecutions, a new form of stigma was witnessed; that of the ‘self-help abortion.’This thesis seeks to advance an understanding of ‘self-help abortion stigma’ building on Kumar et al’s 2009 conceptualisation of abortion stigma. It examines how self-help abortion stigma is reproduced and replicated in the anti-choice state across community, institutional and organisational levels. Equally it is considered how self-help abortion stigma is resisted in Northern Ireland. It proposes that the self-help abortion can be seen as a counter-hegemonic tool to reclaim reproductive control in the anti-choice state. It proposes a paradigm shift that would frame self-help abortion not as a reality to be accepted but a potential to be embraced.
  • Item
    To be born or not to be born? : the paradox of the Catholic Church in the Philippines
    ( 2014) Fuhrmann, Alexienne ; Motoc, Iulia
    While I was in the Philippines in 2012 (the 3rd Catholic Country in the world), I observed the fight of “pro-life” community, leaded by the Catholic Church, against the Reproductive Health Bill. This Bill was described as a major change for the country, allowing and promoting contraception for all Filipinos. The Bill was voted and passed into law in December 2012. With this thesis, I am trying to see the real impact of this law. More than just analysing the law, this thesis is going further by regarding the real impact that a “pro-life” activism can have on a population in a developing country, especially the ones that they want to protect: children. By acting as a lobby against the right to contraception and abortion, is the Catholic Church really defending the supreme interest of the child? By using an interdisciplinary approach (employing law, sociology, psychology and political sociology), this thesis will prove that arguing against contraception is leading to an increase of poverty, itself leading to an increase of networks and so to child abuse, exploitation and trafficking. Also, lobbying against abortion puts life of women in danger, as they can be subject to many problems during pregnancy and they became stigmatised by the society and doctors. Finally, this thesis proves that “pro-life” community is more “pro-birth”, and protect the foetus more than the future child.
  • Item
    When whispers turned to scream. Path to the 2020 near abortion ban and the role of the Catholic Church
    ( 2024) Zasada, Julia ; Rybar, Marek
    This thesis examines the profound influence of the Catholic Church on Poland's increasingly restrictive abortion laws, culminating in the near-total ban of 2020. It explores how, despite Poland's transition to democracy post-1989, women's reproductive rights have paradoxically regressed, with abortion laws becoming more stringent than during the communist era. The study begins by contrasting the concept of abortion as a human right with the Catholic Church's stance on the sanctity of life. It then analyzes the Church's methods of exerting influence, both direct and indirect, on Polish society and politics. The research delves into the historical and cultural foundations of the Church's power in Poland, including the 'Polak-Katolik' identity and the legacy of Pope John Paul II. By examining the Church's role in shaping abortion legislation in postcommunist Poland, with particular focus on its relationship with the Law and Justice party and the 2020 Constitutional Tribunal verdict, this thesis argues that the Catholic Church's impact extends far beyond overt political action, permeating Polish cultural identity and moral frameworks. This comprehensive analysis provides crucial insights into the complex dynamics of religion, politics, and reproductive rights in contemporary Poland.