Law Commons^™

The Health Exception, Monica E. Eppinger

All Faculty Scholarship

The abortion doctrine laid out in Roe v. Wade permits a procedure necessary to preserve the life or the health of the pregnant woman, setting out what has come to be called the “life exception” and the “health exception.” This Article investigates the background and antecedents of the health exception, identifying three periods of formation and change up to the drafting of the Model Penal Code in 1959. It argues that theories of health lie at the heart of legal doctrine, shaping common-law treatment of abortion and persisting in nineteenth- and twentieth-century statutes. This account reveals origins of a health …

The Constitutional Right To Make Medical Treatment Decisions: A Tale Of Two Doctrines, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court has taken very different approaches to the question whether individuals have a right to make autonomous medical treatment choices, depending on the context. For example, in cases concerning the right to choose ¿partial-birth¿ abortion and the right to use medical marijuana, the Supreme Court reached radically different results, based on radically different reasoning.

More recent developments, including last Term's decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, have only highlighted the doctrinal confusion and the need for a resolution. In light of this pressing need, the goal of this Article is to view all of the constitutional cases touching on …