Women's Health and the Limits of Law: Domestic and International Perspectives

by Irehobhude O. Iyioha (Editor)

Overview

Despite some significant advances in the creation and protection of rights affecting women’s health, these do not always translate into actual health benefits for women. This collection asks: 'What is an effective law and what influences law’s effectiveness or ineffectiveness? What dynamics, elements, and conditions come together to limit law’s capacity to achieve instrumental goals for women’s health and the advancement of women’s health rights?' The book presents an integrated, co-referential and sustained critical discussion of the normative and constitutive reasons for law’s limited effectiveness in the field of women’s health. It offers comprehensive and cohesive explanatory accounts of law’s limits and for the first time in the field, introduces a distinction between formal and substantive effectiveness of laws. Its approach is trans-systemic, multi-jurisdictional and comparative, with a focus on six countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and international human rights case law based on matters arising from Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Peru and Bolivia.

The book will be a valuable resource for educators, students, lawyers, rights advocates and policymakers working in women’s health, socio-legal studies, human rights, feminist legal studies, and legal philosophy more broadly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351002363
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Series:	Routledge Research in Human Rights Law
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	322
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Irehobhude O. Iyioha, LL.B., LL.M., BL., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Canada and an Associate Adjunct Professor at the Dossetor Centre, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta. She has held teaching positions at the Faculties of Law at Western University, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the recipient of the 18th World Congress on Medical Law Award from the World Association for Medical Law for her seminal work on legal effectiveness and the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Award, 2017 for scholarly work that makes a substantial contribution to legal literature for her theory of Substantive (Legal) Effectiveness.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Within and Beyond the Hedge: Form, Substance and the Limit of Laws on Women’s Health
2. Law, Normative Limits and Women’s Health: Towards a Jurisprudence of Substantive Effectiveness
3. On Feminism, Morality and Human Rights: Assessing the Effectiveness of United Kingdom’s FGM Act
4. Abortion Law in China: Disempowering Women under the Liberal Regulatory Model
5. Forced Sterilizations: Addressing the Limitations of International Rights Adjudication through an Intersectional Approach
6. Tilted Interpretations: Reproductive Health Law and Practice in the Philippines
7. Economics and the Limits of Law: An International Analysis of Persistent Gaps in Women’s Reproductive Health
8. Indigenous Feminist Legal Theory: A Multi-Juridical Analysis of the Limits of Law for Indigenous Women Living with HIV in Canada
9. Domestication and Reception of International Reproductive Health Law and the Limits of Law: Perspectives from Nigeria and South Africa
10. On the Margins of Law: Examining the Limits of Legislative Initiatives on Maternal Mortality in South Africa and Nigeria

Editorial Reviews

"The authors of this edited volume are to be congratulated for insightfully addressing the complex challenges of translating well-intended laws and policies on women’s health into effective outcomes."

Rebecca J. Cook, C.M, J.D., J.S.D., F.R.S.C.
Professor of Law Emerita, University of Toronto

The authors of this edited volume are to be congratulated for insightfully addressing the complex challenges of translating well-intended laws and policies on women’s health into effective outcomes.

—Rebecca J. Cook, Professor of Law Emerita,
University of Toronto, Canada

Women’s Health and the Limits of Law: Domestic and International Perspectives is an important book. Dr. Iyioha (ed.) and the book’s contributors provide a critical analysis of the promise of, and limits to, the role of law in furthering women’s health. This thoughtful and provocative book will be of interest to scholars, policy-makers, and advocates who are concerned with women’s health, human rights, feminist jurisprudence, intersectionality, and global perspectives on health.

—Mary Anne Bobinski, Professor and Dean,
School of Law, Emory University, USA

This edited collection is timely, original and a true interdisciplinary contribution. The whole collection is structured on a strong, common theoretical foundation that provides a novel lens through which to view and understand the deeply entrenched debates within feminism regarding culture, gender, and legal orders around the globe. This book contains a broad range of topics and perspectives on a wide variety of subjects related to women’s health, and brings together a diverse and accomplished group of scholars to address empirical, political, legal and cultural aspects of women’s health in a global context. It will add to the scholarly debates within legal theory, feminism, health law and ethics, and will be of interest to students, researchers, academics and law-makers around the globe.

—Dr. Angela Cameron, Associate Professor,
Sheryl Greenberg Chair of Women and the Legal Profession, Faculty of Law,
University of Ottawa, Canada

From the Publisher