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Reproductive Rights as a Human Rights Challenge With Special Focus on Abortion: Insights From Poland and Slovenia
Abstract
Women's right to abortion has recently been disputed after the judgment of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal of 22nd October 2020 and the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States of 24th June 2022. These two decisions are regarded as restricting the right to abortion with the aim to protect the right to life of a foetus. Especially the Polish judgment resulted in massive protests in Poland, however in 2022 there was another attempt to limit women right to abortion by making it equal to murder. Therefore, it needs to be analysed what actually is the current status of women's right to abortion as part of reproductive rights, comparing the experiences of Poland and Slovenia. The research analyses the new developments regarding women's right to abortion and it strongly concentrates on the most recent case law and its impact on global understanding of basic human rights.
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Background
Global estimates of unsafe abortions have been produced for 1995, 2003, and 2008. However, reconceptualisation of the framework and methods for estimating abortion safety is needed owing to the increased availability of simple methods for safe abortion (eg, medical abortion), the increasingly widespread use of misoprostol outside formal health systems in contexts where abortion is legally restricted, and the need to account for the multiple factors that affect abortion safety.
Methods
We used all available empirical data on abortion methods, providers, and settings, and factors affecting safety as covariates within a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate the global, regional, and subregional distributions of abortion by safety categories. We used a three-tiered categorisation based on the WHO definition of unsafe abortion and WHO guidelines on safe abortion to categorise abortions as safe or unsafe and to further divide unsafe abortions into two categories of less safe and least safe.
Findings
Of the 55· 7 million abortions that occurred worldwide each year between 2010–14, we estimated that 30·6 million (54·9%, 90% uncertainty interval 49·9–59·4) were safe, 17·1 million (30·7%, 25·5–35·6) were less safe, and 8·0 million (14·4%, 11·5–18·1) were least safe. Thus, 25·1 million (45·1%, 40·6–50·1) abortions each year between 2010 and 2014 were unsafe, with 24·3 million (97%) of these in developing countries. The proportion of unsafe abortions was significantly higher in developing countries than developed countries (49·5% vs 12·5%). When grouped by the legal status of abortion, the proportion of unsafe abortions was significantly higher in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws than in those with less restrictive laws.
Interpretation
Increased efforts are needed, especially in developing countries, to ensure access to safe abortion. The paucity of empirical data is a limitation of these findings. Improved in-country data for health services and innovative research to address these gaps are needed to improve future estimates.
Funding
UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction; David and Lucille Packard Foundation; UK Government; Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
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 its focus to analyzing Australian law and practice within the framework of
these rights. It considers the importance of decriminalizing abortion and regulating it as a
standard medical procedure. It discusses the need to remove legal and practical restrictions
on access to abortion, including financial obstacles and anti-abortion protestors. Further, it
comments on the importance of facilitating access; for example, by keeping accurate health
data, securing continuity of health care, increasing the availability of medical abortion, and
ensuring appropriate care is provided to the most marginalized and vulnerable women.
The ending of pregnancy is an issue that keeps attracting great attention even today, at the beginning of the 21st century. Since the 1970s, abortion legislation has moved steadily towards liberalization, especially in developed countries around the world. In Europe, only a few countries still prohibit abortion on request. Yet neither the current legislation nor the relevant case law of supreme and constitutional courts have brought about consensus on the justification thereof. An exceptionally delicate matter made so by a wealth of moral, ethical, philosophical, medical, religious, economic, legal and other aspects, abortion is a bone of contention in the general public and many an expert community. The reasoning provided in constitutional reviews of law is lambasted in equal measure by the pro-choice and the pro-life camps, the latter of which are felt in presence and influence despite the ever-growing liberalization. The paper primarily examines the matter of abortion in comparative and Croatian constitutional law and legislation from the perspective of human rights.
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