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Full-Text Articles in Health Law and Policy

Illness, Injury And Medical Deportations At The Frontier: The Canadian Legal Regime For Health Care Protections For Agricultural Migrant Workers, Constance Macintosh May 2018

Illness, Injury And Medical Deportations At The Frontier: The Canadian Legal Regime For Health Care Protections For Agricultural Migrant Workers, Constance Macintosh

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper explores how health interests and rights play out in the temporary agricultural worker regime. In particular, it illustrates how a system that–as discussed below–is formally positioned as granting such workers the same rights as nationals, may not in practice provide equivalent or meaningful protections. The assessment is not just about the social exclusion challenges that often undermine the ability or possibility of migrant workers to activate their legal rights (which is the usual critique of why post-national citizenship writing is overly optimistic), but about how the legal and regulatory system itself misses the mark.


Understandings Of Self-Managed Abortion As Health Inequity, Harm Reduction And Social Change, Joanna Erdman, Kinga Jelinska, Susan Yanow Jan 2018

Understandings Of Self-Managed Abortion As Health Inequity, Harm Reduction And Social Change, Joanna Erdman, Kinga Jelinska, Susan Yanow

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This commentary explores how self-managed abortion (SMA) has transformed understandings of and discourses on safe abortion and associated health inequities through an intersection of harm reduction, human rights and collective activism. The article examines three primary understandings of the relationship between SMA and safe abortion: first SMA as health inequity, second SMA as harm reduction, and third SMA as social change, including health system innovation and reform. A more dynamic understanding of the relationship between SMA, safe abortion and health inequities can both improve the design of interventions in the field, and more radically reset reform goals for health systems …


Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights In Canada, Joanna Erdman Jan 2018

Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights In Canada, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article endeavours to understand the feminist activism from which constitutional abortion rights in Canada were born in the landmark Supreme Court case of R v Morgentaler 1988, and the influence of these rights on continued feminist activism for reproductive justice. Part I reviews abortion practice in the ‘back-alley’ prior to and immediately after the 1969 criminal reform with attention to the direct service activism of liberation feminists in their campaign to repeal the abortion law as a matter of constitutional justice. Part II turns to adjudication in the courts to study how judicial reasoning channelled these constitutional claims, exploring …


Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson Jan 2018

Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Research shows that women, healthcare providers, and even policy makers worldwide have limited or inaccurate knowledge of the abortion law and policies in their country. These knowledge gaps sometimes stem from the vague and broad terms of the law, which breed uncertainty and even conflict when unaccompanied by accessible regulation or guidelines. Inconsistency across national law and policy further impedes safe and evidence‐based practice. This lack of transparency creates a crisis of accountability. Those seeking care cannot know their legal entitlements, service providers cannot practice with legal protection, and governments can escape legal responsibility for the adverse effects of their …


Template Policy Re: Access To Medical Assistance In Dying In Publicly-Funded Institutions, Jocelyn Downie Jan 2018

Template Policy Re: Access To Medical Assistance In Dying In Publicly-Funded Institutions, Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Patients are being denied access to assessments for, and provision of, medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in publicly-funded institutions in Canada. Health authorities should implement policies that prohibit forced transfer for MAiD (assessments and provision) unless it can be achieved without undue delay or harm to the patient (as determined by the MAiD Program, not the institution). This is a template policy that health authorities could adopt to ensure access to a legal health service in all publicly-funded institutions (including faith-based institutions) under their authority.


A Critique Of Canadian Jurisprudence On The Therapeutic Privilege Exception To Informed Consent, Michael Hadskis Jan 2018

A Critique Of Canadian Jurisprudence On The Therapeutic Privilege Exception To Informed Consent, Michael Hadskis

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The Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark decisions in Hopp v Lepp and Reibl v Hughes furnished a general analytical framework for informed consent actions that remains fully intact today. This article sets its gaze on a specific aspect of the framework, dubbed “therapeutic privilege,” that permits physicians to deviate from their general duty to disclose material, treatment-related risks to competent patients. Specifically, the privilege allows information about material risks to be withheld or generalized if physicians believe their patients are “unable to cope” with receiving such information. It is argued that the Supreme Court’s terse and vaguely-articulated exception to truth …


An Alternative To Medical Assistance In Dying? The Legal Status Of Voluntary Stopping Eating And Drinking (Vsed), Jocelyn Downie Jan 2018

An Alternative To Medical Assistance In Dying? The Legal Status Of Voluntary Stopping Eating And Drinking (Vsed), Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) has received considerable attention from many in the field of bioethics. Philosophers, theologians, lawyers, and clinicians of all sorts have engaged with many challenging aspects of this issue. Public debate, public policy, and the law have been enhanced by the varied disciplinary analyses. With the legalization of MAiD in Canada, some attention is now being turned to issues that have historically been overshadowed by the debate about whether to permit MAiD. One such issue is voluntary stopping eating and drinking (VSED) as an alternative to MAiD. In this paper, I will apply a legal lens …


The Legal Status Of Deep And Continuous Palliative Sedation Without Artificial Nutrition And Hydration, Jocelyn Downie, Richard Liu Jan 2018

The Legal Status Of Deep And Continuous Palliative Sedation Without Artificial Nutrition And Hydration, Jocelyn Downie, Richard Liu

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Deep and continuous palliative sedation combined with the withholding or withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration (collectively termed “PSs̄ANH”) is an important aspect of high-quality end-of-life care. It is one means of alleviating suffering. Unfortunately, the legality of this practice has been under-researched and PSs̄ANH is not yet appropriately regulated in Canada. In this paper, we explore the legal status of PSs̄ANH where it (1) will not hasten death (Type 1 PSs̄ANH); (2) might, but is not certain to, hasten death (Type 2 PSs̄ANH); or (3) is certain to hasten death (Type 3 PSs̄ANH). It is clear that Type 1 …


Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson Jan 2018

Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Research shows that women, healthcare providers, and even policy makers worldwide have limited or inaccurate knowledge of the abortion law and policies in their country. These knowledge gaps sometimes stem from the vague and broad terms of the law, which breed uncertainty and even conflict when unaccompanied by accessible regulation or guidelines. Inconsistency across national law and policy further impedes safe and evidence‐based practice. This lack of transparency creates a crisis of accountability. Those seeking care cannot know their legal entitlements, service providers cannot practice with legal protection, and governments can escape legal responsibility for the adverse effects of their …


Social Science Evidence In Charter Litigation: Lessons From Carter V Canada (Attorney General), Jocelyn Downie Jan 2018

Social Science Evidence In Charter Litigation: Lessons From Carter V Canada (Attorney General), Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this paper, I offer the reflections of an academic who wandered well out of her wheelhouse. While I have graduate training in both philosophy and law, I am not an expert on the use of social science and humanities evidence in litigation. But, through the course of working on Carter v Canada (Attorney General), I had the opportunity to participate directly in the process of marshalling, preparing, analyzing, and critiquing the evidence. My hope is that, through this paper, I can bring a perspective that may be useful both for practitioners who might (or, I would say, should) be …