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Full-Text Articles in Law
Abortion Disorientation, Greer Donley, Caroline M. Kelly
Abortion Disorientation, Greer Donley, Caroline M. Kelly
Articles
The word “abortion” pervades public discourse in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But do people know what it means? Not only do law and medicine define it differently, but state legislatures have codified wildly different definitions of abortion across jurisdictions. This Article exposes inherent ambiguities at the boundaries of the term, particularly as it intersects with other categories of reproductive health care often viewed as separate, like pregnancy loss and ectopic pregnancy. By juxtaposing statutory text with real people’s experiences of being denied care in states with abortion bans, this Article reveals how those ambiguities …
Are Embryos Or Fetuses Brain Dead? Implications For The Abortion Debate, Greer Donley
Are Embryos Or Fetuses Brain Dead? Implications For The Abortion Debate, Greer Donley
Articles
Most state abortion definitions exclude the removal of a dead fetus, attempting to distinguish miscarriage and abortion care. But what does “dead” mean at the earliest stages of potential life? There is a consensus at the end of life that death not only encompasses the cessation of cardiac activity, but also brain death. This symposium essay considers whether life can exist before brain life begins and how that might impact the abortion debate. The most rudimentary brain waves cannot be detected in an embryo before roughly the eighth week of pregnancy; the capacity for feeling and consciousness begin much later. …
Contraceptive Equity: Curing The Sex Discrimination In The Aca's Mandate, Greer Donley
Contraceptive Equity: Curing The Sex Discrimination In The Aca's Mandate, Greer Donley
Articles
Birth control is typically viewed as a woman’s problem despite the fact that men and women are equally capable of using contraception. The Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate (Mandate), which requires insurers to cover all female methods of birth control without cost, promotes this assumption and reinforces contraceptive inequity between the sexes. By excluding men, the Mandate burdens women in four ways: it fails to financially support a quarter to a third of women that rely on male birth control to prevent pregnancy; it incentivizes women to endure the risks and side effects of birth control when safer options exist …
Baby M Turns 30: The Law And Policy Of Surrogate Motherhood, Eric A. Feldman
Baby M Turns 30: The Law And Policy Of Surrogate Motherhood, Eric A. Feldman
All Faculty Scholarship
This article marks the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court of New Jersey’s Baby M decision by offering a critical analysis of surrogacy policy in the United States. Despite fundamental changes in both science and society since the case was decided, state courts and legislatures remain bitterly divided on the legality of surrogacy. In arguing for a more uniform, permissive legal posture toward surrogacy, the article addresses five central debates in the surrogacy literature.
First, should the legal system accommodate those seeking conception through surrogacy, or should it prohibit such arrangements? Second, if surrogacy is permitted, what steps can be …
Collateral Consequences, Genetic Surveillance, And The New Biopolitics Of Race, Dorothy E. Roberts
Collateral Consequences, Genetic Surveillance, And The New Biopolitics Of Race, Dorothy E. Roberts
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article is part of a Howard Law Journal Symposium on “Collateral Consequences: Who Really Pays the Price for Criminal Justice?,” as well as my larger book project, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century (The New Press, 2011). It considers state and federal government expansion of genetic surveillance as a collateral consequence of a criminal record in the context of a new biopolitics of race in America. Part I reviews the expansion of DNA data banking by states and the federal government, extending the collateral impact of a criminal record—in the form …
Feminism, Law, And Bioethics, Karen H. Rothenberg
Feminism, Law, And Bioethics, Karen H. Rothenberg
Karen H. Rothenberg
Feminist legal theory provides a healthy skepticism toward legal doctrine and insists that we reexamine even formally gender-neutral rules to uncover problematic assumptions behind them. The article first outlines feminist legal theory from the perspectives of liberal, cultural, and radical feminism. Examples of how each theory influences legal practice, case law, and legislation are highlighted. Each perspective is then applied to a contemporary bioethical issue, egg donation. Following a brief discussion of the common themes shared by feminist jurisprudence, the article incorporates a narrative reflecting on the integration of the common feminist themes in the context of the passage of …
Critical Race Feminist Bioethics: Telling Stories In Law School And Medical School In Pursuit Of "Cultural Competency", Deleso Alford Washington
Critical Race Feminist Bioethics: Telling Stories In Law School And Medical School In Pursuit Of "Cultural Competency", Deleso Alford Washington
Journal Publications
This article examines how slavery and the concept of race intersect with gender to construct a distinct notion of science and technology that has been historically marginalized at best. The particular aspect of "science" that is explored is the development of the medical specialty of gynecology in the United States. The focal point of this article is to explore a means to address the impact of continuing to tell the narrative on the development of the medical specialty of gynecology in the United States without the benefit of a "herstorical" lens.
Health Equity, Hpv And The Cervical Cancer Vaccine, Joanna Erdman
Health Equity, Hpv And The Cervical Cancer Vaccine, Joanna Erdman
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
This article explores the relationship between technological innovation and health inequity. It examines in particular the relationship between the vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, the cause of cervical cancer, and inequity in cervical cancer incidence and mortality. In Canada, screening programs have drastically reduced the incidence of cervical cancer, but their benefits have been unequally distributed. Prevention efforts have disproportionately failed women of disadvantaged social groups. Technological innovation alone will not remedy this inequity. The HPV vaccine merely expands the available means for reducing or increasing health inequity depending on its implementation. For this reason, the article looks beyond …
The Patient, The Doctor, The Fetus, And The Court-Compelled Cesarean: Why Courts Should Address The Question Through A Bioethical Lens, Thomas Williams
The Patient, The Doctor, The Fetus, And The Court-Compelled Cesarean: Why Courts Should Address The Question Through A Bioethical Lens, Thomas Williams
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
Court-ordered Cesarean sections are a relatively recent phenomenon in the intersection of law and medicine. Existing jurisprudence utilizes a legal balancing test when addressing conflicts that arise between physicians and patients regarding obstetrical treatment and care. The authors contend that courts' analyses lack a fundamental element - a bioethical framework. Therefore, the authors believe that in order to better assess such conflicts, courts should incorporate a bioethical framework such as the Georgetown mantra to help complement their legal analyses.
Testing Testing, Carl E. Schneider
Testing Testing, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
Last year, Congress passed the Ryan White Care Act Amendments of 1996. The amendments authorize ten million dollars for each fiscal year from 1996 through 2000 for counseling pregnant women on HIV disease, for "outreach efforts to pregnant women at high risk of HN who are not currently receiving prenatal care," and for voluntary testing for pregnant women. The amendments compromise a central question: whether prenatal and neonatal AIDS testing should be compelled. The compromise is complex. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is instructed to establish a system for states to use to discover and …
Feminism, Law, And Bioethics, Karen H. Rothenberg
Feminism, Law, And Bioethics, Karen H. Rothenberg
Faculty Scholarship
Feminist legal theory provides a healthy skepticism toward legal doctrine and insists that we reexamine even formally gender-neutral rules to uncover problematic assumptions behind them. The article first outlines feminist legal theory from the perspectives of liberal, cultural, and radical feminism. Examples of how each theory influences legal practice, case law, and legislation are highlighted. Each perspective is then applied to a contemporary bioethical issue, egg donation. Following a brief discussion of the common themes shared by feminist jurisprudence, the article incorporates a narrative reflecting on the integration of the common feminist themes in the context of the passage of …
Choice, Conscience, And Context, Mary Crossley
Choice, Conscience, And Context, Mary Crossley
Articles
Building on Professor Michael H. Shapiro's critique of arguments that some uses of new reproductive technologies devalue and use persons inappropriately (which is part of a Symposium on New Reproductive Technologies), this work considers two specific practices that increasingly are becoming part of the new reproductive landscape: selective reduction of multiple pregnancy and prenatal genetic testing to enable selective abortion. Professor Shapiro does not directly address either practice, but each may raise troubling questions that sound suspiciously like the arguments that Professor Shapiro sought to discredit. The concerns that selective reduction and prenatal genetic screening raise, however, relate not to …