Advancing gender equality in access to health care
Abstract
Verónica Undurraga and Rebecca J. Cook, "Article 12," The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: A Commentary, ed. Patricia Schulz et al., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2023) 459-485.
This chapter shows how the CEDAW Committee, through its concluding observations on reports of States parties, its general recommendations, and its views and recommendations in the communications and inquiry procedures, has elaborated the obligations to eliminate ‘discrimination against women in the field of health care’, including the multiple forms of intersectional discrimination. It explores how the Committee’s interpretations have rippled into regional human rights systems and, for example, national court decisions.
Professor Verónica Undurraga, Faculty of Law, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
Verónica Undurraga is a law professor at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, in Chile, were she teaches courses in the areas of constitutional law, human rights law, and gender. Professor Undurraga received her law degree and her PhD. from Universidad de Chile, and her LLM degree from Columbia University, NY. Her research focuses on comparative and transnational abortion law, constitutionalism and gender, discrimination and personal autonomy.
Professor Emerita Rebecca Cook, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Rebecca J. Cook (JD, JSD), is Professor Emerita in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Medicine and the Joint Centre for Bioethics, and is co-director, International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program. She has served on various advisory boards, including for the World Health Organization, and continues to serve on the editorial advisory board of the Human Rights Quarterly, and is the ethical and legal issues co-editor of the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. She is a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and is the recipient of the Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize and the Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Contribution to Women's Health by the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
She has authored or co-authored amicus briefs on international and comparative reproductive health law for various courts, including to the Supreme or Constitutional Courts of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and the U.S., and the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She has over 200 publications, including her most recent book: Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective: Cases and Controversies, co-edited with J. Erdman and B. Dickens (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), and published in Spanish (El Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas and el Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016).
