The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 was granted Royal Assent in the UK on 18 November 2008. This article will look at two specific areas addressed in the new Act and ask what the human rights issues were under the old law and whether the changes adequately address these issues. By looking at case law under the European Convention on Human Rights, the article will attempt to evaluate whether either the old law or the new law can be considered compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In Tysiac v. Poland (2007) the Strasbourg Court ruled in favour of the applicant (who had been denied access to a lawful therapeutic abortion), finding that Poland had failed to comply with its positive obligations to safeguard the applicant's right to effective respect for her private life under Article 8. Exploring this controversial judgment, the author assesses the claim that Tysiac marks a 'radical shift' on the part of the Court in creating a 'right to abortion'. The author argues that while Tysiac makes an important addition to abortion jurisprudence, the notion it founds such a 'right' greatly overstates the legal significance of this case.
Most law school courses approach reproductive rights law from a purely domestic perspective, as an extensive survey of casebooks and course material reveals. The authors argue that a transnational perspective can enhance the teaching of sexual and reproductive health in all of the law school courses and doctrinal settings in which this topic in treated. While the topic of “Global Sexual and Reproductive Rights” can be presented in a free-standing course, transnational perspectives should also be integrated across the curriculum where sexual and reproductive rights are discussed. Expanding reproductive rights pedagogy to address transnational perspectives will aid in exposing a wide range of students to transnational material, will expand students’ preparedness to analyze such materials, and will better reflect the debates on sexual and reproductive health currently taking place outside of law school classrooms.
Despite appearances in public debate, there is a surprising amount of consensus across the political spectrum on two basic components of reproductive rights: the O.S.I. (the offspring selection interest) and the B.I.I. (the bodily integrity interest). In this article, Colb suggests that it is important to keep these two often-overlapping interests distinct in thinking about calls for reproductive rights. To illustrate the pitfalls of conflating the O.S.I. and the B.I.I., Colb takes up frozen embryo disputes between sperm and egg donors and intra-couple conflicts about abortion. She concludes that although opponents on the abortion issue are unlikely to reach a consensus, the scope of their disagreements can be narrowed and better defined by treating the O.S.I. and the B.I.I. as the independent and severable interests that they truly are.