Parameters Of The International Human Rights System In Cases Of Legalized Abortion

Abstract

This article aims to examine how human rights mechanisms stand before the right to legal abortion provided in domestic legislation, but denied to pregnant women even fulfilling the legal prerequisites and international treaty predictions, and contribute to the formulation of standards to ensure the reproductive rights of women and girls. The research proposes to answer the question of how the human rights arguments were articulated from each specific case and what are the legal parameters elaborated from the cases examined. It is hypothesized that these cases allowed not only the accountability of member countries, but the formulation of arguments that were becoming more complex, enabling the elaboration of important international legal parameters. Using a literature review methodology and the jurisprudence analysis of K.L. against Peru of the UN Human Rights Committee (2005); Paulina del Carmen Ramírez Jacinto v. Mexico, of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2007), and LC v. Peru, of the CEDAW Committee (2011), it examines situations that have denied abortion in the case of an anencephalic fetus, pregnancy abortion due to rape and therapeutic abortion. In all three cases, local laws allowed abortion in the circumstances faced by the victims, but the procedure was not performed. Thus, it is argued that international human rights jurisprudence has contributed to the advancement of the international regulatory framework, but remains a challenge in the domestic sphere.