Human Rights and the Contraceptive Imperative

A Health & Law Talk with Professor Joanna Erdman, MacBain Chair in Health Law and Policy, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University

Professor Erdman will be presenting her work twice at McGill:

9 March 2016, 13h-14h30 (lunch served at 12h45), IHSP, Charles Meredith House, 1130 ave des Pins Ouest

And as a special seminar organized for students:

10 March 2016, 12h30-14h (lunch served at 12h15), NCDH 316, Faculty of Law (entry via 3660 Peel)

Space is limited, kindly RSVP at rghl.law [at] mcgill.ca 

(if RSVP'ing for the March 10 seminar, please indicate Student Event RSVP in the subject line)

Abstract

This paper examines the upsurge in global advocacy on and for human rights in family planning, and claims that like so many other fields in human rights, family planning has become depoliticized. Its language of choice and access occludes primary causes of violations, the precarious conditions of the labor market, the sexual division of care work, and the gender dimensions of economic restructuring which structure peoples’ lives and often leave pregnancy as the only source of social and economic security. The human rights agenda turns rather to more manageable projects in health service delivery, protecting the individual from harm versus offering a program of social justice. Human rights in family planning are defined by the guarantee of choice and access within socio-economic constraints, each individual empowered as a responsible agent and accountable for their own well-being. This is the same belief that sustains economic relations of social inequality, including the disparagement and disillusionment of the state and of public health systems as social institutions. Human rights in family planning have become estranged from political empowerment and collective action, delinking reproduction from economic resources, secure livelihoods and participation in public life.

Speaker

Joanna Erdman is an assistant professor and the inaugural MacBain Chair in Health Law and Policy at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. Her research focuses on sexual and reproductive health law in a transnational context. She has published in leading journals on harm reduction in safe abortion, the regulation of emergency contraception, and human papillomavirus vaccines policy, and she is the co-editor of the recent collection, Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective: Cases and Controversies (UPenn Press, 2014). Joanna chairs the Global Health Advisory Committee of the Public Health Program, Open Society Foundations and the Gender and Rights Panel of the Human Reproduction Programme, World Health Organization. Joanna received her BA and JD degrees from the University of Toronto and her LLM from Harvard, and completed a fellowship at Yale Law School.

(Co-sponsored with the IHSP and the Canada Research Chair in Collaborative Culture in Health Law and Policy )