Women's healthcare raises fundamental questions about bodily autonomy, dignity and the responsibilities of states under the European Convention on Human Rights. Over time, the European Court of Human Rights has developed an increasingly significant body of case law in this area, engaging with issues such as informed consent, reproductive choice, forced sterilisation and the right to choose the circumstances of childbirth.
Drawing on her academic training in international human rights law and her ethnographic research on mothers' experiences of claiming rights and demanding accountability during childbirth in Tanzania and the UK, Dr Nohr will reflect on the development of this jurisprudence and the broader questions it raises for the protection of Convention rights. The lecture will offer an opportunity to consider how the Court's approach has evolved, the principles that have shaped its case law, and the gap that often remains between rights recognised in Strasbourg and women's lived experiences in clinics, hospitals and labour wards.
Dr Katrine Nohr, medical anthropologist and human rights scholar, examines the evolving jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on human rights in women's healthcare.