Backlash or Widening the Gap?: Women’s Reproductive Rights in the Twenty-First Century

Dorota Anna Gozdecka
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Dorota Anna Gozdecka: Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland

Laws, 2020, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: This article examines legal challenges to women’s reproductive rights in Ireland and the United States, arguing that backlash against reproductive rights is a consequence of the long unsettled position of women’s reproductive freedom in liberal democracies and the catalogue of rights. It examines the legal foundations of reproductive rights and their perceived conflicts with other values, such as religion, and focuses on the current legal challenges to women’s bodily autonomy regarding choice and motherhood. It demonstrates the many contexts in which women have not acquired full reproductive freedom, and explores the nature of the current backlash. It argues that the nature of the backlash is not simply a reclamation of what has been legally guaranteed, but instead a deepening of the preexisting divides within reproductive justice globally.

Keywords: reproductive rights; access to abortion; global gag rule; populism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:9:y:2020:i:1:p:8-:d:323072

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