Law Commons^™

Minors, Parents, And Minor Parents, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

Does The Right To Elective Abortion Include The Right To Ensure The Death Of The Fetus?, Stephen G. Gilles

Stephen G Gilles

Is the right to an elective abortion limited to terminating the woman’s pregnancy, or does it also include the right to ensure the death of the fetus? Important as this question is in principle, in today’s world the conduct that would squarely raise it cannot occur in practice. The right to elective abortion applies only to fetuses that are not viable, which by definition means that they have been determined to have no realistic chance of surviving outside the uterus. Even if abortion providers used fetus-sparing methods rather than the fetus-killing methods they currently prefer, pre-viable fetuses would die within …

To Whom Do We Refer When We Speak Of Obligations To "Future Generations"? Reproductive Rights And The Intergenerational Community, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

This Article argues that an analysis of reproductive rights in the context of future generations yields three insights. First, potential people (who may or may not come into being) do not-by any prevailing approach to morality-have a right to be created by us. They may therefore be ethically "prevented" from coming into existence with what I call the "Offspring Selection Interest" ("OSI"). Second, the OSI is often conflated with the distinct reproductive rights interest in protecting one's body against unwanted intrusion, the "Bodily Integrity Interest" ("BII"), with resulting confusion for reproductive rights discourse. And third, once we distinguish the OSI …

Words That Deny, Devalue, And Punish: Judicial Responses To Fetus-Envy?, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

Abstract needed.

The Undue Burden: Parental Notification Requirements For Publicly Funded Contraception, Stephanie Bornstein

Stephanie Bornstein

This article analyzes the legal impact of legislative proposals in 1998 and 1999 to require parental notification for minors seeking publicly funded contraception. Part I explores the history of Title X and some of its amendments, the HHS interpretive “squeal rule,” and the federal courts' rejection of the HHS rule based on the congressional intent behind Title X. Part II focuses on the Parental Notification Act of 1998 and its likelihood for success against a constitutional challenge, based on an analysis of precedent on parental consent requirements for contraception and abortion. Part III discusses the change in the legislative and …

Abortion In South Africa And The United States: An Integrative, Contrastive Comparative Analysis Of The Effect Of Legal And Cultural Influences On Implementation Of Abortion Rights, Danielle Y. Blanks

Danielle Y Blanks

Despite similarly progressive abortion rights laws, women in South Africa and the U.S. experience completely different levels of access to legal and safe abortions. In this paper, I will seek to explain the reasons for this disparity by describing the ways in which natural law has influenced the application of law in the U.S. and South Africa while examining the role of cultural values in the realization of abortion rights. I will take an integrative approach to explain ideological similarities and a contrastive approach to denote the cultural differences that have led to a de facto marginalization of South African …

When Free Exercise Is A Burden: Protecting "Third Parties" In Religious Accommodation Law, Kara Loewentheil

Kara Loewentheil

During the 2014 U.S. Supreme Court term, the Court considered two challenges to the contraceptive coverage requirement of the Affordable Care Act. These cases attracted enormous attention, and brought a new urgency to the principle that requests for religious accommodations should be weighed against any burdens such accommodations would impose on “third parties,” who are more accurately termed “existing rights-holders.” However, neither courts nor scholars have provided a consistent or principled way of thinking through how to evaluate such burdens and how to weigh them against free exercise rights. This Article takes up that challenge, using the example of the …

The Consequences Of Abortion Restrictions For Women's Healthcare, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

This Essay challenges the false assumption that abortion care can be segregated from women’s medical care and targeted for special restrictions without any effects on women’s health more broadly. As a matter of medical reality, abortion cannot be isolated from the continuum of women’s healthcare. Yet policymakers and the public have failed to understand the interconnectedness of abortion with other aspects of women’s medical care. In fact, existing abortion restrictions harm women’s health even for women not actively seeking abortion care, but these impacts remain obscured. For example, antiabortion laws and policies have spillover effects on miscarriage management, prenatal care, …

Offspring And Bodies: Dependency And Vulnerability In The Constitutional Jurisprudence Of Reproductive Rights, Ann Shalleck

Ann Shalleck

In this article, the author responds to Sherry Colb’s argument in "To Whom Do We Refer When We Speak of Obligations to “Future Generations”? Reproductive Rights and the Intergenerational Community," (77 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1582 (2009)). Colb offered a new way to consider reproductive rights by delineating two distinct and not always overlapping interests at stake in giving meaning to and shaping the contours of the rights implicated in reproductive decisions. Through differentiating interests in bodily integrity and offspring selection, Colb disentangled underlying justifications for legal advocacy and judicial decisions and offered an interpretive frame through which to consider …