Center for Reproductive Rights

This publication documents the forced pregnancy testing and expulsion of pregnant school girls in mainland Tanzania.

In the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court applied the core constitutional principle of privacy and liberty to a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy. In Roe, the Court held that the constitutional right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide whether to have an abortion.

The CEDAW Committee, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Human Rights Committee, and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have commented on the right to sexuality education and have generally framed it in the context of ensuring the right to health.

This Monitoring Tool provides a means for human rights experts responsible for overseeing compliance with international legal standards on human rights to monitor the implementation of specific State obligations in the field of reproductive rights.

This report is based on research and interviews conducted by the Center between June 2009 and February 2010. The Center gathered the experiences of 59 women through a combination of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions.

Gender-based discrimination remains one of the greatest threats to women's health and lives worldwide, despite domestic, regional, and international human rights guarantees of equality, reproductive and sexual rights, and a range of other rights.

Under international human rights law, states must demonstrate that they have taken steps to fulfill their obligations to ensure the right to health, and the related rights to life, non-discrimination, education and information by removing barriers to adolescents' access to sexual and reprodu