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Health Law and Policy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Gender and law

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Putting The Fetus First — Legal Regulation, Motherhood, And Pregnancy, Emma Milne Jun 2020

Putting The Fetus First — Legal Regulation, Motherhood, And Pregnancy, Emma Milne

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The fetus-first mentality advocates that pregnant women and women who could become pregnant should put the needs and well-being of their fetuses before their own. As this Article will illustrate, this popular public perception has pervaded criminal law, impacting responses to women deemed to be the “irresponsible” pregnant woman and so the “bad” mother. The Article considers cases from Alabama and Indiana in the United States and from England in the United Kingdom, providing clear evidence that concerns about the behavior of pregnant women now hang heavily over criminal justice responses to women who experience a negative pregnancy outcome or …


Abortion And Informed Consent: How Biased Counseling Laws Mandate Violations Of Medical Ethics, Ian Vandewalker Jan 2012

Abortion And Informed Consent: How Biased Counseling Laws Mandate Violations Of Medical Ethics, Ian Vandewalker

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

If we slightly change the facts of the story about the discouraging doctor, it becomes a story that happens every day. Abortion patients face attempts to discourage them from terminating their pregnancies like those the imaginary doctor used, as well as others-and state laws mandate these attempts. While the law of every state requires health care professionals to secure the informed consent of the patient before any medical intervention, over half of the states place additional requirements on legally effective informed consent for abortion. These laws sometimes include features that have ethical problems, such as giving patients deceptive information. Unique …


An Emerging Ethical And Medical Dilemma: Should Physicians Perform Sex Assignment Surgery On Infants With Ambiguous Genitalia?, Hazel Glenn Beh, Milton Diamond Jan 2000

An Emerging Ethical And Medical Dilemma: Should Physicians Perform Sex Assignment Surgery On Infants With Ambiguous Genitalia?, Hazel Glenn Beh, Milton Diamond

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article discusses the development of a surgical approach to treating intersex infants and others with genital anomalies that began in the late 1950s and 1960s and became standard in the 1970s. Although professional literature has recently questioned the surgical approach to the treatment of infants, controversy surrounding treatment persists and the medical community now is divided. How sex reassignment surgery for intersex infants became a routine recommendation of practitioners and how parents were persuaded to consent to such radical surgeries provide a cautionary tale that is relevant to both medicine and law.


Legislative Approaches To Reducing The Hegemony Of The Priestly Model Of Medicine, Nancy K. Kubasek Jan 1997

Legislative Approaches To Reducing The Hegemony Of The Priestly Model Of Medicine, Nancy K. Kubasek

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article presents the case that the legal culture in many ways undergirds the priestly model's hegemony over the therapeutic relationship between a woman and her doctor. To the extent that law provides this fundamental support, it legitimizes the mistreatment of women, especially with respect to their reproductive health. The implications are that the movement toward a more just legal culture necessitates the extirpation of this support.