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The URPP “Human Reproduction Reloaded” is delighted to announce the guest lecture "Reproductive Autonomy and the European Court of Human Rights: Assessing Gender Sensitivity and National Implementation of European Case law on Reproductive Rights" by Noa Vreven.
Noa is PhD researcher and research and teaching assistant at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp in Belgium under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Elise Goossens. Her doctoral research examines the extent to which the current framework of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is adequate in protecting reproductive autonomy in a gender-sensitive manner.
The lecture will be in person on Thursday, 14 November 2024, from 12.15 - 2.00 pm at the University of Zurich in room KOL-H-321.
This research project explores the potential of reproductive autonomy as a guiding principle for a critical and comprehensive evaluation of the European Court of Human Rights’ reproduction case law. Up until now, the Court has lacked explicit engagement with reproductive autonomy as a key component of reproductive rights and health. Additionally, it does not refer to reproductive rights as human rights and instead adopts a fragmented approach based on existing rights, despite frequent rulings in this regard. Moreover, the present framework and recent legal developments raise questions concerning the Court’s potential to address the role of gender in reproductive issues, as well as the effective impact of its case law on national reproductive rights protection. In light of this, a multi-layered analysis of the European reproductive rights landscape that integrates various reproductive issues, considers both the European and national legal orders, and combines legal and gender perspectives, is lacking but highly relevant. This project aims to fill this gap by assessing the adequacy of the Court’s framework in protecting reproductive autonomy in Council of Europe Member States in a gender-sensitive manner. It evaluates the protection of this notion in case law on abortion, contraception, forced sterilisation and medically assisted reproduction through legal and feminist methodologies and uses comparative law to assess States’ alignment with the Court’s standards.