Author
Dr KAVYA SALIM
Organisation/Institution
VIDYASHILP UNIVERSITY, BENGALURU
Country
INDIA
Panel
Women and Law
Title
Reproductive Futures and Judicial Innovation: A study on India’s Feminist Reproductive Justice Jurisprudence
Abstract
Reproductive justice has increasingly emerged as a lens to evaluate human rights obligations under international law; however, its articulation within Global South legal systems remains under-examined in mainstream international legal scholarship. This paper examines India’s evolving reproductive rights jurisprudence through a feminist, intersectional, and international law–informed framework, situating domestic judicial reasoning within broader global debates on autonomy, equality, and state responsibility. Drawing on landmark decisions such as Suchita Srivastava v. Chandigarh Administration, Devika Biswas v. Union of India, to the case of posthumous reproduction in Sakshi Rajan Patekar v. State of Maharashtra (Bombay High Court, 2025), this paper examines India’s evolving feminist reproductive justice jurisprudence. It demonstrates how Indian courts have begun to reshape reproductive rights as integral to dignity, bodily autonomy, decisional privacy, and non-discrimination (principles deeply connected to international human rights norms, including CEDAW, ICCPR, and ICESCR) and how the courts have made a significant shift towards a broader, feminist, and justice-oriented understanding of reproductive rights in India. It positions the examination of the judicial decisions as a catalyst for a broader Asian conversation on reproductive autonomy, gender equality, and the socio-legal future of family formation in the region.
Biography
Dr Kavya Salim is an Assistant Professor of Law at the School of Legal Studies and Governance, Vidyashilp University, Bengaluru. She is an accomplished legal academic specialising in Human Rights Law and Public Health Law. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Law from the Central University of Kerala, where her interdisciplinary research focused on “Public Health Interventions to Control Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Human Rights Dimensions.” She earned her Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Human Rights Law from the National Law Institute University, Bhopal, graduating first in her batch in the two-year program. She completed her B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) from the School of Indian Legal Thought, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. Her academic training is deeply rooted in constitutional Law, human rights, and public health law, with strong foundations in both theory and applied legal research. Dr Salim’s foundational experience includes serving as a Research Associate on a major project under the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), Ministry of Home Affairs. This project, conducted at the National Law Institute University, Bhopal, examined crimes against women in northern India, providing her with significant empirical and legal exposure to systemic gaps in law enforcement, the functioning of the criminal justice system, and the need for victim-sensitive approaches. She has delivered invited lectures and has written research articles on libertarian values, infectious disease control laws, mental healthcare, AI in healthcare, menstrual health and reproductive justice, sexual harassment law, vaccine mandates, and criminal investigation processes. She has consistently contributed as a resource person for interdisciplinary workshops and seminars on Law, public health, AI, and human rights. She is also an active academic consultant for Indian national-level AI-legal hackathons.
