Access to safe, legal abortion is increasingly seen as an integral part of women’s human rights. It is extensively litigated in the US, where a right to safe legal abortion has evolved, as part of women’s constitutional right to privacy, in the jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court. In many parts of the world, unsafe abortion is a major cause of maternal mortality. Most international human rights instruments, however, do not mention abortion. Access to safe legal abortion, therefore, is discussed in the context of other rights such as the right to life, the right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment, and freedom from discrimination.
A notable exception is the Protocol on Women’s Rights, part of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. This protocol has recently come into force. Article 14.2, headed ‘Health and Reproductive Rights’, provides: “States parties shall take appropriate measures to protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the foetus.”
