University of Botswana Law Journal - PULP

THE RIGHT TO MATERNAL HEALTH CARE 77
world is a human rights catastrophe. Recognizing the right to maternal health
care as a human right is a way to prevent maternal mortality globally. The right
to maternal health care already exists in international law. This paper has
attempted to elucidate ways in which both states and individuals wishing to
advocate for maternal health care could use existing international human rights
law to further develop the legal regime for the right to maternal health care, and
use a human rights-based approach to eliminate preventable maternal
mortality. I have focused on the right to maternal health care, separating the
right to maternal health care from the right to health and from the right to
maternal health generally. While realizing the right to maternal health care will
advance the right to maternal health, my narrower focus has been on the right
to health care during pregnancy and childbirth. Because health care during
pregnancy and childbirth is known to prevent maternal mortality, I have
attempted to determine policy alternatives to advocate for improved access to
health care services during pregnancy and childbirth by using international
human rights law. I used the United States as an example to demonstrate that
states, particularly wealthy and powerful states like the U.S., have the ability
to affect change beyond their borders. Recognizing that the right to maternal
health care is a human right recognizes that women have the right to determine
which health care services are appropriate to their family planning, pregnancy,
confinement and the post-natal period, and asserts that states have an
affirmative duty to protect this positive human right by providing women with
maternal health care services. States and individuals can and should work
together to develop international human rights law to prevent maternal
mortality.
Recognizing the right to maternal health care as a human right places
an affirmative duty on states to provide maternal health care to pregnant
women. Countries without the internal capacity to provide maternal health
care may argue against such an affirmative duty, especially if a country
doesn’t have the ability to meet such a duty. Nonetheless, such aspirational
duties are frequently codified in international law in the human rights context.
The Millennium Development Goals, “which range from halving extreme
poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary
education, all by the target date of 2015,” 149 are all aspirational goals that
place duties on states. The codification of the Millennium Development Goals
provides a “blueprint” agreement for all of the world’s countries and the
world’s leading developmental institutions to work to meet the needs of the
world’s poorest. 150 For states that aren’t able to meet the Millennium
Development Goals on their own, the international community feels
149 United Nations, Millennium Development Goals: Background, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
bkgd.shtml (last visited 17 April, 2010).
150 Id.