Law Commons^™

Griswold, Geduldig, And Hobby Lobby: The Sex Gap Continues, Maya Manian

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In her article, The (Non)-Right to Sex, Professor Mary Ziegler excavates the fascinating legal history of the “sex gap” — the historical failure to address sexual liberty — in the constitutional canon and offers an important cautionary tale for contemporary advocacy of marriage equality. By surfacing lost efforts to expand sexual liberty, and by linking that liberty to intersectional concerns about class, gender, and racial equality, Professor Ziegler both explains why sexual freedom has received such limited constitutional protection and shows how incrementalist litigation strategies aimed at progressive legal change have inadvertently strengthened the state’s power to delimit sexual expression. …

My Body, Not My Say: Regulation Of Reproductive Freedom In America, Kisha K. Patel

Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies Summer Fellows

Women’s bodies have been legislated for years. Many people associate regulation beginning in 1973 when Roe V. Wade was decided, however legislation has affected women for much longer. These infringements on women’s rights create a major roadblock in gender equality. During summer fellows I researched how the law regulates aspects of American women's lives particularly in reproductive freedom (birth control, day-after pill, abortion, maternity discrimination). Conducting this research included thorough research of 48 pieces of congressional legislation from the 114^th Congress that limit women's reproductive freedom through abortion bans, non-accessible health care, and cuts in federal spending towards Planned …

State Court Protection Of Reproductive Rights: The Past, The Perils, And The Promise, Dawn E. Johnsen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Encouraging Maternal Sacrifice: How Regulations Governing The Consumption Of Pharmaceuticals During Pregnancy Prioritize Fetal Safety Over Maternal Health And Autonomy, Greer Donley

Articles

Pregnant women are routinely faced with the stressful decision of whether to consume needed medications during their pregnancies. Because the risks associated with pharmaceutical drug consumption during pregnancy are largely unknown, pregnant women both inadvertently consume dangerous medications and avoid needed drugs. Both outcomes are harmful to pregnant women and their fetuses. This unparalleled lack of drug safety information is a result of ill-conceived, paternalistic regulations in two areas of the law: regulations governing ethical research in human subjects and regulations that dictate the required labels on drugs. The former categorizes pregnant women as “vulnerable” and thus precludes them from …

Normalizing Disability In Families, Mary Crossley

Articles

In “Selection against Disability: Abortion, ART, and Access,” Alicia Ouellette probes a particularly vexing point of intersection between ART (assisted reproductive technology) and abortion: how negative assumptions about the capacities of disabled persons and the value of life with disability infect both prospective parents’ prenatal decisions about what pregnancies to pursue and fertility doctors’ decisions about providing services to disabled adults. This commentary on Ouellette’s contribution to the symposium titled “Intersections in Reproduction: Perspectives on Abortion and Assisted Reproductive Technologies" first briefly describes Ouellette’s key points and her article’s most valuable contributions. It then suggests further expanding the frame of …

Multidimensional Advocacy As Applied: Marriage Equality And Reproductive Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Talking about marriage equality and reproductive rights advocacy together presents an interesting, and sometimes puzzling, assortment of challenges and opportunities. Both involve efforts to secure legal protections and social recognition that are fundamentally important to those who need them yet also deeply provocative to their opponents. For both, too, advocacy takes place on a shifting terrain shaped by competing views of sexuality, autonomy, equality, personhood, and more.

Yet the two advocacy efforts have experienced very different receptions over time. Just over two decades ago, the Supreme Court expressly affirmed that women have a constitutional right to seek an abortion and …