Justice for Women and Girls: Five Global Wins to Celebrate this International Women’s Day

To mark International Women’s Day and the UN’s 70th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the Center is celebrating our biggest wins on securing access to justice for women and girls.

March 6, 2026
Center for Reproductive Rights

Ensuring women’s access to justice is key to the Center’s mission of protecting reproductive rights around the world. It is also a central pillar of International Women’s Day (IWD) and the theme of this year’s session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), taking place March 9-19 at the United Nations.

CSW is an annual opportunity for the global community to take stock of progress on gender equality, to identify challenges and roadblocks, and to set goals for the future. This year Center leaders and partners will join human rights experts on panels across the session, as well as hosting two public side events that examine the intersection of women’s access to justice and their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/news/international-womens-day-five-wins/

06.03.2026

Commentary

A.R. v. Poland

Center for Reproductive Rights

European Court of Human Rights

International Women's Day

Termination of Pregnancy Act

UN Commission on the Status of Women

When Legal Uncertainty Violates Reproductive Rights

A.R. v. Poland and the Dynamics of Transnational Legal Mobilization

27 November 2025
Karolina Kocemba

In 2020, the Polish Constitutional Court prohibited abortion sought on the grounds of fetal defects. While the ruling was announced, it was not published for three months, creating a period during which neither pregnant people nor medical providers could be certain of the current legal situation, which could change at any time. Accordingly, on 13 November 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in A.R. v. Poland, ruled that this instability failed to meet the legal certainty required under Article 8 of the ECHR. The situation arose from the delayed and, at that time, unpredictably timed publication, and was intensified by the ongoing constitutional crisis.

Crucially, the case reveals a deeper dimension of legal uncertainty, as both pro-choice and anti-choice actors were actively involved in the A.R. case, seeking to shape the law in opposite directions. The resulting uncertainty is thus not only a product of institutional dysfunction but increasingly a terrain of transnational contestation shaped by competing forms of legal mobilization. This dynamic, in turn, is reflected in the European-level initiative My Voice, My Choice, which explicitly aims to stabilise standards where national systems have become fragmented and uncertain.

Continued: https://verfassungsblog.de/legal-uncertainty-reproductive-rights/

European court rules Poland violated rights of woman who traveled abroad for abortion

Nov 13, 2025
Notes on Poland

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Poland violated the rights of a pregnant woman who had to travel abroad to obtain an abortion after her foetus was diagnosed with a birth defect. It is the second time that the court has issued a judgment against Poland relating to its near-total abortion ban.

The ECHR found that the woman’s right to private and family life was violated by the legal uncertainty created by the delay between the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (TK) ruling of October 2020, which banned abortion in cases of birth defects, and its implementation by the government over three months later.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/11/13/european-court-rules-poland-violated-rights-of-woman-who-traveled-abroad-for-abortion/