The Limits of Reproductive Rights in Improving Women's Health

This article examines the migration of a transnational model for reproductive health reform. Highlighting the U.S. influence on women’s rights advocacy, the article shows how current reform strategies may embed the very problems they seek to avoid and undermine an approach that could better serve women’s health needs. The dominant model relies on international human rights law, which focuses on autonomy and equality rights in ways that reflect and, more frequently, reject U.S. jurisprudence. Taking South Africa’s abortion legislation as an example, the article argues that the dominant strategy fails for two reasons. First, issues that reformers seek to avoid, such as health care provider refusals, inevitably become obstacles to the law’s implementation. Second, by concentrating on which women for what reasons may terminate pregnancies, advocates and legislators ignore infrastructure and resource limitations that make newly legal health services impossible to deliver. The article concludes by illustrating how legislators and advocates might better serve women’s health needs by focusing on improvements to a country's primary health care system.