Can international law protect abortion rights? Drawing from past work on domestic mechanisms that give international law teeth, we argue that a strong civil society composed of women's groups and groups concerned with women's rights leads the government to comply with its international human rights commitments to women, specifically their right to abortion. Unlike that past work, though, we draw attention to the ways in which civil society can leverage the depth of their government's international legal commitment. Highly legalized commitments—those characterized by higher obligation, precision, and delegation—should help groups mobilize and give them access to international legal forums that can credibly threaten the government. Based on this argument, we expect countries that have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women's Optional Protocol, a highly legalized treaty, to protect women's rights to abortion when women's civil society participation is high. Estimating several statistical models to test our expectations, the results lend credence to the argument. Highly legalized commitments allow civil society actors to hold governments accountable to those commitments leading to more liberalized abortion rights protections.

中文翻译：

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国际人权法与妇女获得人工流产的机会


国际法可以保护堕胎权吗？根据过去关于赋予国际法效力的国内机制的研究，我们认为，一个由妇女团体和关注妇女权利的团体组成的强大公民社会，会促使政府遵守其对妇女的国际人权承诺，特别是她们的堕胎权。然而，与过去的工作不同的是，我们提请注意公民社会如何利用其政府的国际法律承诺的深度。高度合法化的承诺——那些以更高的义务、精确性和授权为特征的承诺——应该有助于团体动员起来，并让他们有机会进入可以可信地威胁政府的国际法律论坛。基于这一论点，我们预计已批准《消除对妇女一切形式歧视公约》这一高度合法化条约的国家，将在女性公民社会参与度高的情况下保护妇女的堕胎权。估计几个统计模型来测试我们的预期，结果为这一论点提供了可信度。高度合法化的承诺使公民社会行为者能够让政府对这些承诺负责，从而使堕胎权保护更加自由。