Reproductive Health: Morals, Margins and Rights

Reproductive interventions and technologies have the capacity to generate profound societal unease and to provoke hostile reactions underpinned by various moral concerns. This paper shows that this position currently goes relatively unchecked by the European Court of Human Rights, which allows the margin of appreciation and consensus doctrines significantly to limit the scope of reproductive rights under the right to respect for private and family life under Article 8. This occurs both in relation to the interest in avoiding reproduction at stake in abortion, and that in achieving it at stake in medically assisted reproduction. The paper demonstrates significant flaws in the Court's framing and deployment of these doctrines in its reproductive jurisprudence. It argues that, as regards existing and upcoming reproductive interventions and technologies, the Court should attend to the concept of reproductive health, long recognised in international conventions and policy materials.