In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

196 W omen’s He alth: Accommodating Difference Carmel Shalev, Israel My interest in the area of women’s health started in the 1980s, when I was a graduate law student. At that time freedom of choice in abortion was a major constitutional issue, new frontiers were being reached through innovations in assisted medical reproduction, and feminist theory was just starting to develop. After completing my studies in the United States at Yale Law School, I returned to Israel and became involved as an academic and activist in women’s rights and reproductive health. I was working in these areas at the Ministry of Justice when two major laws were passed in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) on patient rights and national health insurance, which expanded my interest to the general area of health rights. During that period, I was invited to join Israel’s delegation to an international meeting in preparation for the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing and was subsequently nominated and elected to the CEDAW Committee. One of the central areas of controversy at Beijing was women’s health, a key factor in the overall status of women, and in the follow-up to that conference I was urged by NGO colleagues to lead the Committee in formulating a general recommendation on this matter. In the process, I focused on the reporting of governments on this sensitive subject and collaborated with fellow members and activists from international and local NGOs around the world to formulate a document that would reflect our common concerns and understandings and set standards of health and human rights in relation to women. In this essay I attempt to paint a picture of the human rights issues that arise in the area of women’s health, based on the understanding that I gained from serving on the Committee. There are myriad forms in which women’s health rights have been violated in different parts of the world. I am well aware that more could have been said here on many matters, such as the rights of girl infants, children, and adolescents, or the rights of disabled and elderly women. The subjects I address within the limits of this short essay reflect my own interests, preferences, and views about which things matter most (Shalev 2000). women’s health: accommodating difference l 197 The Right to Health Health is a human right; it is neither a commodity nor a privilege. Yet the right to health is a rather elusive concept, since our health is not entirely up to us but depends on multiple factors—including heredity and environment —that are not subject to our control. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) refers to health in the same breath as well-being, as part of a right to an “adequate” standard of living. Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is fraught with similar vagueness in recognizing the right to enjoy the “highest attainable” standard of physical and mental health.1 Then comes Article 12 of the CEDAW Convention, which tells us that States have a duty to eliminate discrimination against women in the area of health. What does this mean? A breakthrough in the discourse on the right to health occurred in the 1990s. At least three factors led to this. First, innovations in medical technology in the latter quarter of the twentieth century—organ transplants , imaging diagnostics, and infertility treatments, to mention just a few—had put the subject of health in the public eye all over the world. Second, the paternalistic model of doctor-patient relations, according to which the physician knew best regarding what was in the patient’s interest , had made way for a new model of sharing in medical decision-making —one that was based on the notion of patient autonomy and choice and closely associated with the principle of liberty, a central pillar of the human rights regime. Third, by the end of the Cold War, the attention of international human rights scholars and activists was shifting from the classic realm of civil and political rights that characterized Western democracies, to embrace the more complex and challenging area of social, economic, and cultural rights, of which the right to health is a prime example. The area of women’s health underwent a similar process of change in the second half of the twentieth century. The invention of the contraceptive pill in the middle of the century...

Share