- Title
- International legal protection of women's reproductive rights: a comparative analysis of abortion laws and policies in four jurisdictions-Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and U.S.A.
- Creator
- Abiodun, Adeleke Funminiyi
- Subject
- Abortion -- Law and legislation
- Subject
- Reproductive right
- Date
- 2010-10
- Type
- Doctoral theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/25839
- Identifier
- vital:64491
- Description
- The subject matter of abortion law is extremely broad and multi-disciplinary. While naturally having its basis in criminal and constitutional law of individual states, the global development of abortion discourse has been influenced by the need to protect the reproductive rights of women as a sub-set of international human rights laws; thereby advocating not only the decriminalisation of abortion but also, that individual State should take affirmative actions in promoting abortion as a right for every woman. However, that induced abortion is a punishable criminal act or a “protectable” woman’s reproductive right remains controversial due to the plethora of perspectives, beliefs and reservations held by different groups of people which are multi-dimensional and contradictory. This thesis therefore attempts a comparative study of abortion laws and policies in four jurisdictions: Nigeria and Ghana, operating criminalised abortion laws, South Africa and United States which operate liberalised/permissive abortion laws and policies. The study basically examines the legal status and reproductive rights of women to legal and safe abortion within the existing legal framework of national laws of the four selected jurisdictions vis-à-vis the legal protection offered by various international instruments on human rights. While we show that strict and restrictive abortion laws, and also, failure of States to create conditions for safe abortion constitute infractions of the reproductive rights of women, we submit further that over-liberalisation of abortion laws and policies could also amount to infringement of the basic rights of other people, thus there is need to ensure a legal and acceptable balance. The study finally acknowledges the role of international human rights laws in the protection of women’s right to legal and safe abortion but asserts that there can be no universally acceptable morality to which the whole world could subsume in term of women’s right to abortion due to the interplay of socio-cultural, religious, and moral affiliations of the people in different communities.
- Description
- Thesis (LLD) -- Faculty of Law, 2010
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (xxix, 389 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Law
- Language
- English
- Rights
- rights holder
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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Collections
UFH Nelson R Mandela School of Law
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | Mr_Adeleke_Joint-_Thesis.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |