Poverty and abortion rights in international law

Joanna N. Erdman

Chapter 23 in Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty, 2026, pp 398-414 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter tracks the connections between poverty and abortion rights in the UN human rights system to show how the economics of reproduction have shaped abortion rights, and how abortion rights have engaged with economic justice. Anchored in treaty body communications, which largely involve young poor girls in Latin America, the chapter focuses on the economic conditions that shape their reproductive lives and their claims for justice. Guided by these claims, the chapter identifies three emergent themes in the jurisprudence: depenalization and state violence, access to care and systemic failure, and structural reform that recognize state responsibility for reproductive life together with the right of every person to create their own. Drawing on these themes, the chapter calls for future research on the abortion right in international law as a right to live free from poverty in a new economic order with reproduction and care as the basis of life.

Keywords: Abortion rights; Economic justice; Treaty body communications; State violence; Care systems; Structural reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035350506
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