Through a field-based study in four states–Delhi, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu–the “Legal Barriers to Accessing Safe Abortion Services in India: A Fact-Finding Study” aims to understand and document the way in which the Indian Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, and other laws operate as barriers to accessing safe abortion care. The study and the report […]
Nepal accepts recommendations from its Universal Periodic Review before the UN Human Rights Council to protect the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls.
The Center has been working to advance reproductive health and rights in Nepal since 2000, including the landmark case Lakshmi v. Nepal that recognized abortion as a constitutional right.
The joint submission made by the Center and its local partners in July 2020 for Nepal’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council.
The Supreme Court of Nepal has issued several positive judgments and landmark decisions in the field of reproductive health and rights. These judgments and decisions have helped ensure women’s reproductive health and rights under the Constitution and laws in Nepal. However, only by practicing and experiencing these rights in practical ways will these rights and […]
In a landmark decision issued on May 20, 2009, Nepal’s Supreme Court directed the government – specifically the Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, the Ministry of Health and Population, the Ministry of Law, Justice, and Constituent Assembly Affairs, and the Ministry of Women, Children, and Social Welfare – to enact a comprehensive […]
Lakshmi v Government of Nepal Supreme Court of Nepal (2008) Issue: The petition challenged the Nepal government’s failure to ensure adequate access to safe abortion services despite the decriminalization of abortion on broad grounds in 2002. Center Position: Nepal’s existing abortion law, in permitting abortion on request during the first trimester without the need for spousal consent, […]
The Center for Reproductive Rights Asia team is playing a significant role this month at Safe Abortion Dialogue-Asia, a virtual conference focused on developing strategies to reduce barriers and expand access to safe abortion care in the region.
This fact sheet highlights continued criminalization of women for seeking abortion beyond prescribed legal conditions despite progressive legislation that came into force in 2018. The Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Rights (SMRHR) Act aims to respect, protect, and fulfill woman’s reproductive health rights and recognizes access to abortion as a right to reproductive health. However, it […]
This briefing paper discusses some gaps in jurisprudence by the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women with respect to the sexual and reproductive rights of adolescents in view of social and legal realities in the South Asia region. The paper makes recommendations to United Nations treaty monitoring bodies for improving standards in their Concluding Observations to South Asian countries and General Comments that would strengthen guarantees for adolescents’ sexual and reproductive rights.
