Reproductive Health: Morals,Margins and Rights |
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| Authors: | Rosamund Scott |
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| Institution: | Professor of Medical Law and Ethics and Co‐Director, Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. The author jointly (together with Professor Stephen Wilkinson, Lancaster University) holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award entitled ‘The Donation and Transfer of Human Reproductive Materials’ 2013‐18 (Grant No 097894/Z/11/Z) and would like to thank the Trust for its support of her research. She is also grateful both to Stephen Wilkinson and to the MLR referees for helpful comments on an earlier version. |
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| Abstract: | Reproductive interventions and technologies have the capacity to generate profound societal unease and to provoke hostile reactions underpinned by various moral concerns. This paper shows that this position currently goes relatively unchecked by the European Court of Human Rights, which allows the margin of appreciation and consensus doctrines significantly to limit the scope of reproductive rights under the right to respect for private and family life under Article 8. This occurs both in relation to the interest in avoiding reproduction at stake in abortion, and that in achieving it at stake in medically assisted reproduction. The paper demonstrates significant flaws in the Court's framing and deployment of these doctrines in its reproductive jurisprudence. It argues that, as regards existing and upcoming reproductive interventions and technologies, the Court should attend to the concept of reproductive health, long recognised in international conventions and policy materials. |
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| Keywords: | abortion Article 8 ECHR margin of appreciation and consensus doctrines medically assisted reproduction new reproductive technologies reproductive health |
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