The Privacy–Equality Synthesis: Framing Reproductive Rights in India

Abstract

Reproductive rights are typically framed as engaging one’s constitutional right to privacy. However, with increasing contestations around the right to privacy, the right to equality has been proposed as an alternate frame. Often, a choice tends to be constructed between the two. Challenging this, some argue for both privacy and equality to be included in framing constitutional reproductive rights. This approach places emphasis on the combined presence of the two rights. Indian constitutional law offers a third, distinct possibility, moving beyond mere rights addition to reading rights in ‘synthesis’. The synthesis pays close attention to the site of dynamic rights interaction, highlighting the effects of the rights on one another. This method of rights analysis, and its latent potential, remains dormant within constitutional doctrine in India. Resurrecting it, and studying examples of abortion and maternal mortality, I frame reproductive rights through the synthesis between privacy and equality. In functioning as a magnifier, a catalyst and a backstop, the synthesis alters the constitutional imagination of reproductive rights in India while, simultaneously, advancing an insightful paradigm for constitutional reproductive rights globally and rights analyses generally.