Chile allowed therapeutic abortion (cases in which the mother’s life was in danger) from 1931 until 1989, the last year of the Pinochet military dictatorship. After Pinochet stepped down, Chile underwent a democratic transition in 1990 that was heavily reliant on a moral fundamentalist mentality, primarily influenced by the Catholic Church and conservative political parties. It has been widely argued that after the democratic transition, the previously strong and united women’s movement lost much of its visibility and cohesiveness due to its progressive fragmentation. This thesis holds that the women’s movement in Chile is not dead, but instead there are numerous small movements that apply different methods in an attempt to change abortion legislation in Chile. Through the dissemination of secondary research and first-person interviews conducted over a period of six months in Chile, the results show that Chilean third-wave feminists have re-shaped the women’s movement in an effort to introduce innovative ideas and tactics to advance abortion rights. Nonetheless, these new voices have also created tensions between new and old feminists further dividing the movement and limiting their ability to effect real change in regards to the abortion debate in Chile.

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Examines the actual reasons for sterilization of women living with HIV/AIDS and examines the reproductive rights of women living with HIV/ AIDS in light of existing legislation. Gives an overview of how the problem has been dealt with in other jurisdictions. Also discusses the human rights instruments and mechanisms addressing such violation of women's rights. / A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Law University of Pretoria, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Law (LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa). Prepared under the supervision of Odile Lim Tung, Faculty of Law and Management, University of Mauritius, Mauritius. / LLM Dissertation (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa -- University of Pretoria, 2009. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

Women’s rights have been recognized by national, regional and international human rights instruments. In Africa particularly, both the African Charter and the African Women Protocol provide for the right to health. However, the continent offers the highest rate of women suffering from fistula. This paper aims to answer the question whether the current level of governments’ response to the plight of victims of obstetric fistula, complies with the requirements of international human rights law. It looks at whether the consideration of victims of fistula from a right-based approach will contribute to affordability and free access to treatment for women suffering from the disease / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2008. / A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Law University of Pretoria, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Law (LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa). Prepared under the supervision of Prof. Doutor Gilles Cistac, of the faculty of law, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

This thesis is based on the premise that reproductive rights and environmental sustainability have synergistic interests: human population growth increases environmental impact and access to family planning triggers reduced fertility levels. Despite increasing scientific evidence indicating that the size of the global population matters for environmental sustainability, and by extension, that fulfilling reproductive rights may be beneficial for the latter, the linkages between reproductive rights and environmental sustainability have been largely understudied, ignored, and left out of environmental policy and reproductive rights agendas. Because of the complexity of this interdisciplinary field and its associated ethical questions, many researchers and policy makers have chosen to avoid this sensitive and polarizing issue altogether. However, capitalizing on these linkages could represent significant opportunity to advance the reproductive rights and environmental movements, and increase the prominence, legitimacy, and funding of global family planning services, in particular. This thesis uses an action research approach to explore the current framing of the reproductive rights and environmental sustainability linkage, study the perceptions of stakeholders of both the reproductive health and rights and environmental sustainability movements on this issue, and elaborate a strategic communication roadmap to promote its operationalisation.

This thesis conveys the history of reproductive politics in Oregon through the life of Dr. Jessie Laird Brodie (1898-1990). Brodie was a key figure in this history from the 1930's until the 1970's, mainly through the establishment of family planning programs through social and medical channels in Oregon and throughout Latin America. Oregon's reproductive legislation walked a fine line between conservatism and progressivism, but in general supported reproductive healthcare as a whole in comparison to the rest of the United States and Latin America. The state passed controversial contraceptive legislation in 1935 that benefited public health, but also passed eugenic laws, specifically a 1938 marriage bill, that attempted to limit specific population's reproductive control. By the time family planning was solidly rooted in the national and international sociopolitical discourse in the 1960's, due to the advent of the "pill," population control rhetoric, and the Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) Supreme Court decision, eugenic laws were virtually obsolete. Portland's history suggests that leaders in local reproductive politics sought to appeal to a diverse clientele but were restricted to the confines of federal funding mandates, specifically the war on poverty, that were fueled by postwar liberalism in an increasingly global age. The first chapter concentrates on the history of women's health and reproduction in Oregon prior to the 1960's. Dr. Jessie Laird Brodie's experiences with families in poverty during medical school in the 1920's disheartened her and motivated her to seek ways for these women to efficiently and affordably access birth control information. In response to public health concerns, she helped get positive contraception legislation passed in Oregon in the 1930's that set guidelines and restrictions for manufacture of contraceptives. This law was the first of its kind in the country and set a precedent for other states to follow. Brodie also supported a marriage bill in the 1930's that mandated premarital syphilis and psychological testing, in the hopes that it would lead couples to seek contraceptive, or "hygienic," advice from their physicians as efforts to establish a birth control clinic had failed up to this point. The second chapter focuses on Brodie's continued involvement in Oregon in the 1940's and 1950's, a period marked by a high tide of pronatalism in the U.S., and how she took Oregon's vision for women to a national and international level. Locally, she was involved with the E.C. Brown Trust, an organization dedicated to sex education, and was the President for the Pacific Northwest Conference on Family Relations, a group focused on the postwar family adjustments of higher divorce rates and juvenile delinquency. In 1947, Brodie was one of the founding members of the Pan-American Medical Women's Alliance, an organization created to provide a professional arena for women physicians throughout the Americas to discuss problems specific to women and children. Involvement with these groups helped her gain recognition nationally and in the late 1950's she served as President, and then Executive Director, of the American Medical Women's Association. Lastly, the third chapter looks at the establishment and growth of Planned Parenthood Association of Oregon (PPAO) in the 1960's under Brodie's leadership and her foray into the international establishment of family planning programs through the Boston-based Pathfinder Fund, an organization whose mission involved bringing effective reproductive healthcare to developing countries. Brodie acted as Executive Director for PPAO, where she was able to use her medical expertise and connections to bring the new organization credibility and respect throughout Oregon that they lacked before her involvement because the board was mainly comprised of a younger generation on the brink of second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution. In her career with Pathfinder she assessed the needs for family planning in Latin American and Caribbean countries and facilitated the establishment of programs in the region, largely in cooperation with the U.S. federal government and the Population Council. The conclusion offers a brief history of Dr. Brodie's continued involvement in the local and international communities beyond 1975 and the awards she received highlighting her career in the battle for effective healthcare for all women. In short, this thesis argues that legal and rights-based contestations that were prevalent in other regions of the U.S. and throughout the world were not characteristic of Oregon, allowing Brodie and PPAO to bring birth control to the state with relatively limited opposition.

Protection of reproductive rights in the case law of European Court of Human Rights Abstract Irrespective of the fact that reproduction and sexuality are very intimate issue for each person, reproductive rights very often face restrictions, doubts, and attacks. This is also the case in Europe. Hence this paper deals with the topic of protection of reproductive rights in Europe, more specifically with the stance on the protection of these rights by the European Court of Human Rights. The aim of this paper is to explore the stance of ECHR on the protection of these rights. The author of the paper asks the research question: What is the position of ECHR regarding the protection of reproductive rights? At the same time, the paper points out to certain defects in the Czech legal regulation which could, arguably, lead to violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. The paper uses the method of critical analysis on the decisions of ECHR and evaluates the significance of these decisions. The paper uses the case law of ECHR as the primary source while drawing on subsidiary sources such as international organizations' documents or academic articles. Reproductive rights are examined through the human-rights approach with the emphasis on the women's rights in this area. This paper is divided into three parts....

This research focuses on the possibility of discrimination towards men and any violation of men's right to parenthood. In modern times, the obsolete prejudices about men and their detachment from the upbringing of children started fading; thus is urged to examine the actual situation of men in the matter. That is to say, this paper addresses the issue from its ontological definition to the stipulated by legal bodies. It reviews the data about fathers’ (singles or in a same-sex relationship) personal experiences and society's reception of this new form of family. It compares the situation between men and women, analyzes the information, and intends to discover if there is any pattern that reflects a bias against men and the desire to become a father.

The dominant Sandinista party discourse of Nicaragua designates the family as the country’s base social institution, but the prevailing machismo threatens the family’s structure. Men - fathers - leave, either literally as migrant laborers or in the abandonment of their family responsibilities. In order to counteract the men’s socially sanctioned absence, the state deploys a hegemonic expectation of motherhood in the passage of its complete abortion ban, one of the strictest in the world. All forms of abortion, including saving the life of the mother, are banned in Nicaragua and both doctors and women are heavily penalized if an abortion is performed. The denial of this vital health service becomes much more threatening in the context of Nicaragua’s increased maternal mortality and the highest adolescent fertility rate in Latin America. However, this thesis focuses on abortion within the social context of idealized maternity; here, abortion is not simply the removal of a fetus but a rejection of motherhood, a dangerous option to normalize when women are seen as those primarily responsible for the family's well-being. This study draws on seven weeks of fieldwork in early 2016 in Managua, Nicaragua and interviews with sixteen women to advance the argument that the abortion ban is a form of reproductive governance implemented to maintain a hegemony of maternal expectations in order to preserve the family.

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