Women's Health and the Limits of Law

Despite some significant advances in the creation and protection of rights affecting womens health, these do not always translate into actual health benefits for women. This collection asks: 'What is an effective law and what influences laws effectiveness or ineffectiveness? What dynamics, elements, and conditions come together to limit laws capacity to achieve instrumental goals for womens health and the advancement of womens health rights?' The book presents an integrated, co-referential and sustained critical discussion of the normative and constitutive reasons for laws limited effectiveness in the field of womens health. It offers comprehensive and cohesive explanatory accounts of laws limits and for the first time in the field, introduces a distinction between formal and substantive effectiveness of laws. Its approach is trans-systemic, multi-jurisdictional and comparative, with a focus on six countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and international human rights case law based on matters arising from Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Peru and Bolivia. The book will be a valuable resource for educators, students, lawyers, rights advocates and policymakers working in womens health, socio-legal studies, human rights, feminist legal studies, and legal philosophy more broadly.