Webinar recording now available

What do oral contraceptive pills have to do with human rights abuses in sport?

View this email in your browser On 6 May 2024, SRHM, in collaboration with Global Health Justice Partnership (GHJP) of Yale Law and Public Health Schools, conducted a webinar on the topic 'What do oral contraceptives have to do with human rights abuses in sports?'  This webinar comes at a crucial time, days before the European Court of Human Rights is supposed to examine double Olympic runner Caster Semenya's appeal on May 15, 2024, against regulations introduced by World Athletics, requiring female athletes with high testosterone levels to take oral contraceptives for testosterone suppression.  The event, and a commentary in the SRHM Journal authored by the panelists, highlight that reliance on mistaken assumptions about the effectiveness and harmlessness of oral contraceptive pills has distracted from the central harm that is associated with these regulations: that it is a coerced, medical, but not medically beneficial, bodily intervention. "Part of what enables this kind of end run around ethics and human rights is the widespread notion among many, not simply the courts themselves, but a broader cultural notion among journalists, among otherwise reasonable people, that oral contraceptives themselves are no big deal, and that they're a key to women's freedom, emancipation, choice, and other things. I don't argue with that. Our claim here is not, to be very specific, that oral contraceptives are bad. Our claim is the way that (courts are) instrumentalizing that broader cultural view, towards a very particular end, is designed to violate rights. And it's that movement, that, frankly, too many people have missed." "One of our hopes...is that a broader group of people understand the manipulation of certain facts and arguments towards the harm of other women." Katrina Karkazis COMMENTARY: What do oral contraceptive pills have to do with human rights abuses in sport?  Katrina Karkazis, PhD, MPH and Michele Krech, J.S.D Watch the recording at the link below and read more in our blog.  The audio recording will also be published on the SRHM podcast.  Moderator: Alice M. Miller, JD  Co-director of the Global Health Justice Partnership of Yale Law and Public Health Schools Panelists:  Katrina Karkazis, PhD, MPH Professor of Sexuality, Women's, and Gender Studies at Amherst College and a Senior Research Fellow with the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University   Michele Krech, J.S.D.  Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at University of Chicago Law School   Recorded statements: Dr. Otmar Kloiber  Secretary General of the World Medical Association   Dr. Payoshni Mitra  Athlete Rights Defender, Executive Director of Humans of Sport   Annet Negesa  Ugandan former middle-distance runner, three-time national champion, gold medallist at the 2011 All-Africa Games Join us on on social media to find out the latest SRHM news Copyright © 2024 Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, All rights reserved. Any questions? Email at info@srhm.org You do not want to receive any more updates? You can unsubscribe from this list