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Full-Text Articles in Law and Gender

Baring Inequality: Revisiting The Legalization Debate Through The Lens Of Strippers' Rights, Sheerine Alemzadeh Jan 2013

Baring Inequality: Revisiting The Legalization Debate Through The Lens Of Strippers' Rights, Sheerine Alemzadeh

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The debate over legalization of prostitution has fractured the feminist legal community for over a quarter century. Pro-legalization advocates promote the benefits attending government regulation of prostitution, including the ability to better prosecute sex crimes, increase public health and educational resources for individuals in the commercial sex trade, and apply labor and safety regulations to the commercial sex industry in the same manner as they are applied to other businesses. Some anti-legalization advocates identify themselves as "new abolitionists," and argue that government recognition of prostitution reinforces gender inequality. Often, this debate is framed in the hypothetical: What would happen if …


Outing The Majority: Gay Rights, Public Debate, And Polarization After Doe V. Reed, Marc Allen Jan 2013

Outing The Majority: Gay Rights, Public Debate, And Polarization After Doe V. Reed, Marc Allen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Reed that Washington citizens who signed a petition to eliminate legal rights for LGBT couples did not have a right to keep their names secret. A year later, in ProtectMarriage.com v. Bowen, a district court in California partially relied on Reed to reject a similar request from groups who lobbied for California Proposition 8-a constitutional amendment that overturned the California Supreme Court's landmark 2008 gay marriage decision. These holdings are important to election law, feminist, and first amendment scholars for a number of reasons. First, they flip the traditional …


The North Carolina Woman’S Right To Know Act: An Unconstitutional Infringement On A Physician’S First Amendment Right To Free Speech, Ryan Bakelaar Jan 2013

The North Carolina Woman’S Right To Know Act: An Unconstitutional Infringement On A Physician’S First Amendment Right To Free Speech, Ryan Bakelaar

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The North Carolina Woman’s Right to Know Act represents the crossroads of the Supreme Court’s First Amendment, informed consent, and abortion-related jurisprudence. The Act requires physicians to perform an obstetric ultrasound, verbally convey specific information regarding ultrasonographic findings, and communicate a host of other information to patients seeking abortions. The purported goal of the Act is to ensure that physicians obtain appropriate informed consent from such patients. By compelling a physician to convey this information, the State violates the physician’s First Amendment rights. Indeed, the State may not compel an individual to convey the State’s ideological message. Further, any statute …


Tango Or More - From California's Lesson 9 To The Constitutionality Of A Gay-Friendly Curriculum In Public Elementary Schools, Amy Lai Jan 2011

Tango Or More - From California's Lesson 9 To The Constitutionality Of A Gay-Friendly Curriculum In Public Elementary Schools, Amy Lai

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In August 2009, a group of parents in California filed a lawsuit, Balde v. Alameda Unified School District, in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. They alleged that the Alameda Unified School District refused them the right to excuse their children from a new curriculum, Lesson 9, that would teach public elementary school children about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) families. The proposed curriculum included short sessions about GLBT people, incorporated into more general lessons about family and health, once a year from kindergarten through fifth grade. Kindergarteners would learn the harms of teasing, while fifth graders …


The Lactating Angel Or Activist? Public Breatsfeeding As Symbolic Speech, Elizabeth Hildebrand Matherne Jan 2008

The Lactating Angel Or Activist? Public Breatsfeeding As Symbolic Speech, Elizabeth Hildebrand Matherne

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The only way to combat this stigma against public breastfeeding is through the act of breastfeeding in public. The author proposes that breastfeeding is a powerful act of symbolic speech vital for discarding one of the lingering shackles of women's inequality that triggers first amendment protection. Breastfeeding in public addresses this stigma by treating two ills at once: 1) greater public exposure to the practice decreases the severity of society's reactions, and 2) the less stares and confrontation that publicly nursing mothers receive, the more likely they will be to breastfeed, whenever or wherever their baby is hungry. This will …


Keynote Address: Reproductive Rights Under Siege: Responding To The Anti-Choice Agenda Conference. University Of Michigan Law School. March 5, 2004, Nancy Northup Jan 2004

Keynote Address: Reproductive Rights Under Siege: Responding To The Anti-Choice Agenda Conference. University Of Michigan Law School. March 5, 2004, Nancy Northup

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

It is great to be here with a new generation that is advocating for reproductive rights and responding to the extraordinary anti-choice agenda we currently face. I am not going to talk about that agenda directly tonight because I know that you know it. You know about the judicial appointments, you know about the parental consent laws, you know about the denial of funding for low-income women, you know about the global gag rule.


Advocacy In Whispers: The Impact Of The Unsaid Global Gag Rule Upon Free Speech And Free Association In The Context Of Abortion Law Reform In Three East African Countries, Patty Skuster Jan 2004

Advocacy In Whispers: The Impact Of The Unsaid Global Gag Rule Upon Free Speech And Free Association In The Context Of Abortion Law Reform In Three East African Countries, Patty Skuster

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2001, President George W. Bush restricted the participation in democratic processes for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) abroad by reinstating a policy restricting family planning funding granted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The restriction sharply curtailed the ability to speak and to associate freely for organizations working to preserve women's health and lives. For this reason, I refer to the restriction as the Global Gag Rule (GGR). Organizations in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya had begun to identify the problems associated with their countries' restrictive abortion laws. In these three countries, as elsewhere in the world, illegal abortions …