The Center for Reproductive Rights is partnering with Jindal Global Law School, one of the top law schools in India, to provide a reproductive law and justice clinic to undergraduate students.
In this one-year pilot program, which began in August, students will discuss India’s history of population control and stigma toward sexual and reproductive health and rights from intersectional, feminist, global, and legal perspectives.
Leading Indian activists and advocates in reproductive health and rights are teaching the clinic, including from the Center’s Asia Program, Jihan Jacob, Senior Legal Adviser, and Prabina Bajracharya, Capacity Building Manager, with guest lectures by other Center colleagues.
Brototi Dutta, the Center’s Advocacy Adviser for Asia, is part of the core faculty and coordinates the clinic with the Jindal Global Law School. With supervision from the clinic’s course instructors and with the Center’s support, students will produce an Advocacy Manual on Reproductive Rights for Indian judges, politicians, activists, and others.
“Legal advocacy is such an important tool in advancing the sexual and reproductive health and rights in the region,” said Dutta. “The Center is pleased to play a part in this important program in training a new generation of advocates.”
In Dutta’s unit on global abortion rights, students conducted comparative legal analyses of abortion laws in the United States, Nepal, Peru, Brazil, and Poland and watched documentaries depicting the reality pregnant people face on the ground.
The Center was involved in several cases discussed in the course, including Lakshmi v. Government of Nepal and Alyne da Silva Pimental v. Brazil. These landmark cases guaranteed women in Nepal access to safe and affordable abortion care; established that women and girls, particularly in Peru, have a human right to safe and legal abortion care.
Also facilitated required signatories of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, particularly Brazil, to address and reduce maternal mortality. These cases have made essential reproductive health care safer, more available, more affordable, and less stigmatized.
The goal of the global abortion rights course is to strengthen the legal institutional discourse on SRHR by providing students with a unique insight into the impact that legal advocacy can have on human rights and to help them develop as potential SRHR champions.
