Dr Lucía Berro Pizzarossa

Dr Lucía  Berro Pizzarossa

Birmingham Law School
British Academy International Fellow

Lucía Berro Pizzarossa is a British Academy International Fellow at Birmingham Law School and an Affiliated researcher of the Global Health and Rights Project at The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Her project sits at the intersection of law, social movements and human rights and applies a socio-legal approach to explore how abortion law and regulation impact SMA practices; how SMA practices affect abortion law and regulation; how SMA practices have impacted international human rights law and global health governance.

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Qualifications

  • PhD, University of Groningen, The Netherlands (2019)
  • Post-Graduate Course on Public Policy Design, Universidad Austral, Argentina (2019)
  • Post-Graduate Degree on Women's Rights, Universidad Austral, Argentina (2018)          
  • MJur, Oxford University, United Kingdom (2014)
  • Bachelor in Laws, Universidad de la República (UDELAR), Uruguay  (2011)

Biography

Lucía joined the University on a British Academy International Fellowship in 2024. Previously, Lucía was a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and held post-doctoral positions at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at the University of Georgetown and the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen.

She holds a Ph.D. in International Law from the University of Groningen, an MJur. from the University of Oxford, and an L.L.B. from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. She also holds a post-graduate diploma in public policy design and a post-graduate diploma in women’s rights from Universidad Austral, Argentina.

In 2020, she was awarded the Rubicon grant by the Dutch Research Council (NOW) to undertake a two-year research project on sexual and reproductive rights. In 2019, she received a prize from the Dutch Network Women Professors (LNVH) under the Distinguished Women Scientists Fund. She has also obtained a British Academy Visiting Fellowship to the London School of Economics and an INSPIRE Grant from the European Union to develop part of her doctoral project at the Socio-Economic Right Project at the Dullah Omar Institute at the University of Western Cape in South Africa.

Lucía has previously worked with several grassroots organizations and has consulted for multilateral organizations including UNICEF, WHO, and the International Commission of Jurists.

Her academic work has been published in renowned peer-reviewed journals such as Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, Harvard Health and Human Rights, and BMC International Health and Human Rights.

Research

Lucía’s research lines are inspired by the ever-changing puzzle pieces that make up the global landscape of abortion, social movements, human rights, and the law. She generates new knowledge by exploring tensions between (legal) principles, values, norms, and international human rights standards, and by applying empirical-legal methods to understand the impact of laws on people’s trajectories to care, including in settings like Kenya, Uruguay, and Poland. Her most recent research projects included an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on abortion in Africa, an evaluation of 10 years of implementation of the Uruguayan abortion law and an exploration of abortion activism in Africa. Lucía’s research agenda is built on partnerships with key stakeholders from the policy-making arena, social movements (various grassroots organizations), and international bodies (i.e. WHO). 

Her current British Academy project aims to uncover the entangled relationships between SMA and abortion law and regulation and, by so doing, to set the agenda for legal scholarship’s engagement with SMA. Applying a socio-legal approach that mixes qualitative and doctrinal legal analysis, Lucía will explore how abortion law and regulation impact SMA practices; how SMA practices affect abortion law and regulation; how SMA practices have impacted international human rights law and global health governance. This project builds on existing feminist work that challenges medico-legal models to suggest a new understanding of abortion care that confounds the paradigms on which existing legal frameworks are built. 

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Berro Pizzarossa, L, Coast, E, Kareithi, W & Duffy, D 2025, '‘[E] ven in our fear […] we wanted to do this’: feminist organising for abortion in Africa as palimpsestic', Culture, Health and Sexuality.

Bornstein, M, Young, YY, Pizzarossa, LB, Cohen, MJ & Maina, J 2023, 'Documenting activism and advocacy around medication abortion in Central, East, and West Africa', African Journal of Reproductive Health, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 84-94. https://doi.org/10.29063/ajrh2023/v27i1.8

Pizzarossa, LB, Maziwisa, M & Durojaye, E 2023, 'Self-Managed Abortion in Africa: The Decriminalization Imperative in Regional Human Rights Standards', Health and Human Rights, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 171-183. <https://www.hhrjournal.org/2023/05/14/self-managed-abortion-in-africa-the-decriminalization-imperative-in-regional-human-rights-standards/>

Shochet, T, Berro Pizzarossa, L, Larrea, S, Blum, J, Jelinska, K, Comendant, R & Sagaidac, I 2023, 'Self-managed abortion via the internet: Analysis of one year of service delivery data from Women Help Women', Gates Open Research, vol. 7, 41. https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.14369.1

Nandagiri, R & Berro Pizzarossa, L 2023, 'Transgressing biomedical and legal boundaries: The “enticing and hazardous” challenges and promises of a Self-Managed Abortion multiverse', Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 100, 102799. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2023.102799

Tiew, A, Berro Pizzarossa, L, Jastaniah, I & Jayaweera, RT 2022, 'The impact of COVID-19 on safe abortion access in Africa: An analysis through a framework of reproductive justice and lens of structural violence', Frontiers in Global Women's Health, vol. 3, 958710. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2022.958710

Berro Pizzarossa, L 2018, 'Legal barriers to access abortion services through a human rights lens: the Uruguayan experience', Reproductive health matters, vol. 26, no. 52, 1422664. https://doi.org/10.1080/09688080.2017.1422664

Chapter

Pizzarossa, LB, Hervey, T & de Ruijter, A 2023, Abortion law in Europe: The promise and pitfalls of human rights and transnational trade law in the face of criminalization with exceptions. in M Ziegler (ed.), Research Handbook on International Abortion Law. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 374-393. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839108150.00031

Berro Pizzarossa, L 2023, Sexual and reproductive health and rights in the Istanbul Convention: an unfulfilled promise in the context of global backlash. in S De Vido & M Frulli (eds), Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence: A Commentary on the Istanbul Convention. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 888-902. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839107757.ch93

Pizzarossa, LB, Constantin, A & Giudice, L 2022, The David and Goliath tale of Uruguay’s tobacco control measures: Lessons for the region and beyond. in E Durojaye & L Murungi (eds), International Human Rights Law and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control: Lessons from Africa and Beyond. Taylor and Francis, pp. 245-271. <https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003264248/international-human-rights-law-framework-convention-tobacco-control-ebenezer-durojaye-lucyline-murungi>

López-Gómez, A, Couto, M & Pizzarossa, LB 2021, "Push and pull": The rocky road to the legalization of abortion in Uruguay. in Abortion and Democracy: Contentious Body Politics in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. 1 edn, Taylor and Francis, pp. 117-135. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003079903-6

Comment/debate

Yanow, S, Pizzarossa, LB & Jelinska, K 2021, 'Self-managed abortion: Exploring synergies between institutional medical systems and autonomous health movements', Contraception, vol. 104, no. 3, pp. 219-221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.contraception.2021.06.006

Berro Pizzarossa, L & Nandagiri, R 2021, 'Self-managed abortion: a constellation of actors, a cacophony of laws?', Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 23-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/26410397.2021.1899764

Review article

Coast, E, Nandagiri, R, Atay, H, Ganatra, B, Johnson, H, Alhassan, N, Banke-Thomas, A & Berro Pizzarossa, L 2025, 'Abortion and well-being: A narrative literature review', SSM - Qualitative Research in Health, vol. 7, 100508. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2024.100508

Pizzarossa, LB & Skuster, P 2021, 'Toward Human Rights and Evidence-Based Legal Frameworks for (Self-Managed) Abortion: A Review of the Last Decade of Legal Reform', Health and Human Rights, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 199-212. <https://www.hhrjournal.org/2021/06/16/toward-human-rights-and-evidence-based-legal-frameworks-for-self-managed-abortion-a-review-of-the-last-decade-of-legal-reform/>

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