Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law

University of Tennessee College of Law

Series

2011

Equal protection

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Teaching Values, Teaching Stereotypes: Sex Ed And Indoctrination In Public Schools, Jennifer S. Hendricks Sep 2011

Teaching Values, Teaching Stereotypes: Sex Ed And Indoctrination In Public Schools, Jennifer S. Hendricks

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Many sex education curricula currently used in public schools indoctrinate students in gender stereotypes. As expressed in the title of one article: “If You Don’t Aim to Please, Don’t Dress to Tease,” and Other Public School Sex Education Lessons Subsidized by You, the Federal Taxpayer (Jennifer L. Greenblatt, 14 TEX. J. ON C.L. & C.R. 1 (2008)). Other lessons pertain not only to responsibility for sexual activity but to lifelong approaches to family life and individual achievement. One lesson, for example, instructs students that, in marriage, men need sex from their wives and women need financial support from their husbands. …


Body And Soul: Equality, Pregnancy, And The Unitary Right To Abortion, Jennifer S. Hendricks Sep 2011

Body And Soul: Equality, Pregnancy, And The Unitary Right To Abortion, Jennifer S. Hendricks

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores equality-based arguments for abortion rights, revealing both their necessity and their pitfalls. It first uses the narrowness of the “health exception” to abortion regulations to show why equality arguments are needed—because our legal tradition's conception of liberty is based on male experience, and we have no theory of basic human rights grounded in women's reproductive experiences. Next, however, the Article shows that equality arguments, although necessary, can undermine women's reproductive freedom because they require that pregnancy and abortion be analogized to male experiences. The result is that equality arguments focus on either the bodily or the social …