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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Gender Injustice Of Abortion Laws, Joanna Erdman
The Gender Injustice Of Abortion Laws, Joanna Erdman
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
This commentary is a response to Katarzyna Sękowska-Kozłowska’s article on the treatment of criminal abortion laws as a form of sex discrimination under international human rights law through a study of the communications, Mellet v. Ireland and Whelan v. Ireland. The commentary offers a reading of these communications, and specifically the sex discrimination analysis premised on inequalities of treatment among women, as an engagement with the structural discrimination that characterises abortion laws, and asa radical vision for gender justice under international human rights law.
Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson
Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Research shows that women, healthcare providers, and even policy makers worldwide have limited or inaccurate knowledge of the abortion law and policies in their country. These knowledge gaps sometimes stem from the vague and broad terms of the law, which breed uncertainty and even conflict when unaccompanied by accessible regulation or guidelines. Inconsistency across national law and policy further impedes safe and evidence‐based practice. This lack of transparency creates a crisis of accountability. Those seeking care cannot know their legal entitlements, service providers cannot practice with legal protection, and governments can escape legal responsibility for the adverse effects of their …
Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson
Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Research shows that women, healthcare providers, and even policy makers worldwide have limited or inaccurate knowledge of the abortion law and policies in their country. These knowledge gaps sometimes stem from the vague and broad terms of the law, which breed uncertainty and even conflict when unaccompanied by accessible regulation or guidelines. Inconsistency across national law and policy further impedes safe and evidence‐based practice. This lack of transparency creates a crisis of accountability. Those seeking care cannot know their legal entitlements, service providers cannot practice with legal protection, and governments can escape legal responsibility for the adverse effects of their …
Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights In Canada, Joanna Erdman
Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights In Canada, Joanna Erdman
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
This article endeavours to understand the feminist activism from which constitutional abortion rights in Canada were born in the landmark Supreme Court case of R v Morgentaler 1988, and the influence of these rights on continued feminist activism for reproductive justice. Part I reviews abortion practice in the ‘back-alley’ prior to and immediately after the 1969 criminal reform with attention to the direct service activism of liberation feminists in their campaign to repeal the abortion law as a matter of constitutional justice. Part II turns to adjudication in the courts to study how judicial reasoning channelled these constitutional claims, exploring …
Updated Who Guidance On Safe Abortion: Health And Human Rights, Joanna Erdman, Teresa Depiñeres, Eszter Kismodi
Updated Who Guidance On Safe Abortion: Health And Human Rights, Joanna Erdman, Teresa Depiñeres, Eszter Kismodi
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Since its first publication in 2003, the World Health Organization's “Safe abortion: technical and policy guidance for health systems” has had an influence on abortion policy, law, and practice worldwide. To reflect significant developments in the clinical, service delivery, and human rights aspects of abortion care, the Guidance was updated in 2012. This article reviews select recommendations of the updated Guidance, highlighting 3 key themes that run throughout its chapters: evidence-based practice and assessment, human rights standards, and a pragmatic orientation to safe and accessible abortion care. These themes not only connect the chapters into a coherent whole. They reflect …
Moral Authority In English And American Abortion Law, Joanna Erdman
Moral Authority In English And American Abortion Law, Joanna Erdman
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
In R. (on the application of Axon) v. Secretary of State for Health & Another, the English High Court affirmed that young women are entitled to seek and receive sexual health care, including abortion care, without parental notification. This chapter examines the Court’s use of comparative constitutional authorities in its reasoning, focusing on the rejection of American authorities. Contrast and rejection, it is argued, can be an exercise in self-reflection, revealing how a court understands its own constitutional approach. Aversive constitutionalism presents opportunities to deconstruct claimed similarities and differences in constitutional approaches, to uncover and contest characteristics and assumptions otherwise …
In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman
In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
The decriminalization of abortion in Canada ensured neither its availability nor accessibility as an integrated and publicly funded health service. While Canadian women are increasingly referred to or seek abortion services from single-purpose clinics, their exclusion from public health insurance often render these services inaccessible. This article considers denied funding for clinic abortion services from the perspective of the Canadian constitutional guarantee of sex equality. The article focuses on the 2004 Court of Queen's Bench's judgment in Jane Doe I v. Manitoba, which framed denied public funding for clinic abortion services as a violation of women's equality rights under the …
Prenatal Management Of Anencephaly, Rebecca Cook, Joanna Erdman, Martin Hevia, Bernard Dickens
Prenatal Management Of Anencephaly, Rebecca Cook, Joanna Erdman, Martin Hevia, Bernard Dickens
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
About a third of anencephalic fetuses are born alive, but they are not conscious or viable, and soon die. This neural tube defect can be limited by dietary consumption of foliates, and detected prenatally by ultrasound and other means. Many laws permit abortion, on this indication or on the effects of pregnancy and prospects of delivery on a woman's physical or mental health. However, abortion is limited under some legal systems, particularly in South America. To avoid criminal liability, physicians will not terminate pregnancies, by induced birth or abortion, without prior judicial approval. Argentinian courts have developed means to resolve …
Prenatal Management Of Anencephaly, Rebecca J. Cook, Joanna Erdman, Martin Hevia, Bernard M. Dickens
Prenatal Management Of Anencephaly, Rebecca J. Cook, Joanna Erdman, Martin Hevia, Bernard M. Dickens
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
About a third of anencephalic fetuses are born alive, but they are not conscious or viable, and soon die. This neural tube defect can be limited by dietary consumption of foliates, and detected prenatally by ultrasound and other means. Many laws permit abortion, on this indication or on the effects of pregnancy and prospects of delivery on a woman's physical or mental health. However, abortion is limited under some legal systems, particularly in South America. To avoid criminal liability, physicians will not terminate pregnancies, by induced birth or abortion, without prior judicial approval. Argentinian courts have developed means to resolve …
Barriers To Access To Abortion Through A Legal Lens, Jocelyn Downie, Carla Nassar
Barriers To Access To Abortion Through A Legal Lens, Jocelyn Downie, Carla Nassar
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
In addressing whether the procedure for obtaining abortions was operating equitably across Canada, the 1977 Badgley Report concluded that for many women, access to abortion was “practically illusory.” Sadly, although abortion on request became legally permissible for Canadian women in 1988, access to a safe and legal abortion remains practically illusory for many women today. A woman seeking an abortion in Canada must overcome numerous barriers. She must find a way to secure for herself some of the limited resources that our health care system provides for abortion. She must also expend her own, often scarce, personal resources: her time, …
Judicial Reasoning About Pregnancy And Choice, Jocelyn Downie, Chris Kaposy
Judicial Reasoning About Pregnancy And Choice, Jocelyn Downie, Chris Kaposy
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Women in Canada are at risk of abortion becoming increasingly difficult to access. In its landmark 1988 ruling, R. v. Morgentaler, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the prohibition of abortion in section 251 of the Criminal Code on the grounds that it violated a section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees, among other things, "security of the person". However, all of the justices who ruled that section 25 unconstitutional nonetheless claimed that protecting the fetus is a valid objective of federal legislation, leaving open the possibility that a different and carefully crafted law against abortion …
Achieving Transparency In Implementing Abortion Laws, Rebecca Cook, Joanna Erdman, Bernard Dickens
Achieving Transparency In Implementing Abortion Laws, Rebecca Cook, Joanna Erdman, Bernard Dickens
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
National and international courts and tribunals are increasingly ruling that although states may aim to deter unlawful abortion by criminal penalties, they bear a parallel duty to inform physicians and patients of when abortion is lawful. The fear is that women are unjustly denied safe medical procedures to which they are legally entitled, because without such information physicians are deterred from involvement. With particular attention to the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee, the Constitutional Court of Colombia, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal, and the US Supreme Court, decisions are explained that show the responsibility …
In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman
In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
The decriminalization of abortion in Canada ensured neither its availability nor accessibility as an integrated and publicly funded health service. While Canadian women are increasingly referred to or seek abortion services from single-purpose clinics, their exclusion from public health insurance often render these services inaccessible. This article considers denied funding for clinic abortion services from the perspective of the Canadian constitutional guarantee of sex equality. The article focuses on the 2004 Court of Queen's Bench's judgment in Jane Doe I v. Manitoba, which framed denied public funding for clinic abortion services as a violation of women's equality rights under the …
Emergency Contraception, Abortion And Evidence-Based Law, Rebecca Cook, Bernard Dickens, Joanna Erdman
Emergency Contraception, Abortion And Evidence-Based Law, Rebecca Cook, Bernard Dickens, Joanna Erdman
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Courts and legal tribunals increasingly decline to serve as religious or moral guardians, and require social evidence to support litigants' claims. Recent cases on emergency contraception and abortion are examined to show how judicial interpretations can take account of evidence of the impact that different understandings of the law will have for how ordinary people can plan their lives and reproductive choices. In an emergency contraception case, an interpretation was rejected that would have criminalized choices that millions of decent, law-abiding physicians, pharmacists and women routinely make. In an abortion case, three judges unanimously rejected a government ministry's defence of …