The June 2017 issue of Harvard University’s Health and Human Rights, an interdisciplinary, open access journal, will be dedicated to intersections between abortion and human rights, and in particular the use of legal mobilization around abortion rights at domestic and international levels, edited by Alicia Ely Yamin, Paola Bergallo and Marge Berer. Topics could include:
- Conceptual and theoretical analysis of the developments on abortion law and human rights in international and constitutional law throughout the world.
- Socio-legal studies of legal mobilization and counter-mobilization on abortion rights exploring the role of actors such as the women’s and the human rights movement, health providers, conservative and religious groups, legal support structures, and political players. The studies could focus on the dynamics of national, sub-national, regional, transnational or international struggles for and against the right to abortion.
- The challenges and outcomes of implementing abortion law and policy reforms through high impact litigation, abortion guidelines, social mobilization strategies and/or the harm reduction model put forward by physicians.
- The effects and impacts – for example, in women, groups, public opinion, policies, rules and other contexts – of the different legal strategies for abortion deployed by progressive and conservative movements.
- A critical examination of the experience and policies of particular countries as they have attempted to expand access to abortion through legal reforms and health policies.
- Comparisons of health and legal abortion reforms adopted in different countries of the world. Sub-national comparisons within countries or between sub-national experiences of different countries.
- The impact and consequences of policies criminalizing abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth and other reproductive rights for women and health care providers.
- Efforts to seek redress on behalf of women who have been denied legal abortions or suffered from the consequences of unsafe abortions and on behalf of health care professionals who have been punished for providing safe abortions.
- The feasibility, pros and cons of different approaches to decriminalization of abortion, taking account of current law and policy, the legal, public health, regulatory, cultural and psychosocial dimensions of criminalization, and the extent of support for law reform.
Submissions due by 1 November 2016 (max word length 7,000 words, including refs)Author guidelines ; Questions: Alicia Ely Yamin