Contesting Citizenship: An intersectional feminist approach to abortion in international human rights law, with a focus on El Salvador and Ireland

The School of Law Research Seminar Series offers exciting insights into ongoing research projects within the law school and conducted by our external research partners. This seminar is hosted by the school’s Centre for Human Rights.

Our work is often transdisciplinary, dealing with law's relationship with broadly defined social justice, policy-making, science and much more. Join us for invigorating discussion!

In this session, we hear from Dr Rebecca Smyth, law lecturer at BCU. Rebecca is a Lecturer in Law, specialising in international human rights law. She focuses on women’s and LGBTQ* rights, and the (sometimes productive) tensions arising from historically oppressed groups engaging with the language and mechanisms of human rights. She looks forward to working with and providing a platform for community and civil society activists while at BCU. Rebecca has a multi- and interdisciplinary background, and her teaching experience ranges from preschool to adult education. While tutoring at the University of Edinburgh, she was nominated for two EUSA teaching awards, and she won the 2019 Politics and International Relations Tutor Prize.

In this session, Dr Smyth will give the following presentation, followed by an interactive Q&A:

Abstract

In October 2012, the death of Savita Halappanavar reignited the abortion debate in the Republic of Ireland. In March 2013, ‘el caso Beatriz’ drew international attention to the complete criminalisation of abortion in El Salvador. Making sense of the parallels between these two tragedies was the starting point for this thesis: how did the social, political, and legal context resulting in these harms come to be, and how could it be transformed? To explore these questions, I undertook an intersectional feminist analysis of citizenship and international human rights law (IHRL) in relation to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs), specifically abortion. I argued that feminist campaigns for the decriminalisation of abortion at the national level and the advancement of SRHRs within IHRL at the regional and international levels of the human rights system can be understood as interconnected, and as part of a broader, longstanding, and ongoing struggle for feminists to realise women’s full citizenship and human rights.

If you have any questions, contact Iyan Offor, the Research Seminar Series leader, at iyan.offor@bcu.ac.uk.