Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Who Decides: The Role Of Parental Rights In Abortion And Gender-Affirming-Care Decisions For Minors, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The American legal system presumes that children’s interests are best protected by their parents and, secondarily, by the state’s parens patriae authority. Yet this structure falters when parental authority and state power are infused with political and ideological agendas. This Essay examines how these dynamics have distorted decision-making authority in two contexts—minors’ access to abortion and gender-affirming medical care—and allowed children’s welfare and autonomy to be sacrificed to partisan aims. The law is inconsistent on the role of parental rights—typically empowering parents to grant or withhold consent to a minor’s abortion but categorically stripping them of the power to consent …

Pumpable Hours: Legal Protections For Lactating Individuals Through The Lens Of The Legal Profession, Elise Gonzalez

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

The Supreme Court denied women the right to be admitted to the legal profession in 1872. Since this ruling, women have entered the legal profession with force in growing numbers. Today, women comprise nearly 55% of law students across the country and 40% of practicing attorneys in the United States. Despite the growing number of women in the legal profession, women are often reminded of the profession’s sexist history, particularly during a period that is uniquely connected to women—motherhood.

Medicare Drug Price Negotiations: A Blueprint For Ethical Pricing Across The Healthcare System, Jacqueline Fox

FIU Law Review

In a healthcare system with scarce resources, profit that exceeds the value of what is being paid for cries out for justifications. The Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is a new program that allows Medicare to begin negotiating with drug companies to determine the maximum fair price for a small set of drugs. This Article argues that the methods for conducting these negotiations represent a significant step forward in a dramatic and important reordering of how we view the healthcare financing system, allowing us to consider rational, coherent concepts of value without …

Dignity Defended, Privacy Preserved: A Call For Improved Legal Safeguards To Shield Victims Of Intimate Crimes From Public Scrutiny, Madeline E. Brown

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Silent Suffering: Demanding Individual Accountability For Sexual Assault Against Disabled Children In School Environments, Stephanie Flores

Journal of Law and Policy

Disabled children are among the most vulnerable in society, particularly in school environments where they depend on the actions and care of others for their safety. These children face significantly higher risks of sexual abuse than their non-disabled peers, and school officials' negligence can exacerbate this danger. Despite the prevalence of such cases, the Fifth Circuit's refusal to recognize school officials’ liability under the state-created danger doctrine, as seen in Fisher v. Moore, deprives disabled children of adequate legal recourse under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The decision holds that school officials cannot be held personally liable for the peer-inflicted sexual …

Where There's A Will, There's A Way: Abortion Litigation In The States, Catherine Dowd

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Introduction—Bioethics After Dobbs, James Toomey

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comity & Federalism In Extraterritorial Abortion Regulation, Jensen Lillquist

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and held that states may regulate abortion in whatever manner they wish. In the wake of Dobbs, commentators and laypersons have focused primarily on its implications for reproductive rights and other fundamental rights—such as gay marriage. Less often discussed are the questions that arise regarding state extraterritorial jurisdiction. Since Dobbs, a patchwork of laws has developed: pro-life states have placed greater restrictions on abortion, while pro-choice states have sought to expand abortion access. Questions have arisen regarding whether and to what extent states may regulate the …

Abortion Access For Incarcerated People Post-Dobbs, Kate Bock

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has fundamentally altered the legal landscape regarding abortion access. Though abortion rights for all people across the United States have now been eliminated or are in jeopardy, incarcerated people are a particularly vulnerable group, given the way carceral institutions restrict autonomy and the drastic health implications of an unwanted pregnancy while confined. Before Dobbs, detained people retained the constitutional right to an elective abortion while incarcerated. To remedy violations of this right, women brought claims under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment. In a post-Roe world, however, incarcerated folks denied abortion …

Unshackled: Why Eliminating Health Disparities Requires That Our Criminal Justice System Set Incarcerated Mothers And Their Developing Children Free, Angela Dixon

Journal of Law and Health

Incarceration of pregnant nonviolent offenders takes not only the pregnant mother captive but also her unborn child. Kept in unnecessary captivity, these innocent children may experience adverse childhood experiences (“ACES”) or lifelong damage to their physical and mental health. The experiences may be the same for children born already to the mother, as they endure the suffering of parental separation during the mother’s absence. In terms of racial health disparities, such captivity presents at least a triple threat—harm to the health of the mother, harm to the health of the unborn fetus, and harm to the health of children born …

Medical Consensus On Gender Affirming Care's Critical Impact On Incarcerated Black Transgender Women, John Parsi

Journal of Law and Health

In Kosilek v. Spencer the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit adopted The World Professional Association of Transgender Health Standards of Care (WPATH SOC) as medical consensus on gender affirming care and held that Michelle Kosilek could access gender affirming care but that she did not meet the criteria for gender affirming surgery. In Gibson v. Collier the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit with a sparse record and no expert testimony denied Vanessa Lynn Gibson access to gender affirming surgery and incorrectly claimed that Kosilek did not support the WPATH SOC as representing the medical …

When “The Right To Life” Forgoes Quality Of Life: Examining The Public Policy Impacts Of Mississippi’S Abortion Ban On Women Post-Dobbs, Eleanor Condelles

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court eliminated the right to abortion. Its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. overturned Roe v. Wade and was the culmination of a decades-long attack on abortion rights and accessibility. Without a federal abortion standard, it is now up to each state to determine women’s access to abortion. This system will produce a tiered structure of abortion access, causing significant health and socioeconomic burdens for women generally and reinforcing fundamental social inequities. Women of means will find ways around the Dobbs decision; others, who lack finances, childcare, or the ability to travel …

Providing End-Of-Life Counseling: A Narrative Inquiry, Carol Hecht, Sibyl West

Adultspan Journal

This qualitative study aimed to address the gap in the research related to end-of-life counseling by exploring the experiences of counselors working with clients at end of life. While counseling literature and education are lacking regarding end of life, many counselors will work alongside clients approaching death. The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to better understand the nuanced experiences of counselors providing end-of-life counseling and (b) to explore the supports and preparations helpful for counselors to provide end-of-life counseling. A narrative approach, using the Listening Guide (Gilligan, 2015), was employed to analyze and present the stories of three …

Considerations Of Medicare Telehealth Services With Older Adults, Sonah Kho, Amanda Dediego

Adultspan Journal

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic set in motion a rapid expansion of mental health services offered via telehealth. With this rapid expansion came the need to examine how policy and practice should be shaped in a future where telehealth is considered common in counseling practice. For counselors to understand how to support older adult clients in using telehealth services, they must understand telehealth policy. Following the eligibility of licensed counselors to participate in Medicare, counselors need to stay abreast of regulatory changes regarding restrictions and regulations on use of telehealth for mental and behavioral health services, including video and …

Consumer Privacy And The Dobbs Disruption, Mason R. Clark

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The right to reproductive privacy is under attack in the United States, and it is losing ground. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that overruled Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protection of abortion and jeopardized privacy rights by proxy, reflects this losing posture. Scholarship in reproductive privacy varyingly critiques federal privacy initiatives, evaluates regulatory interventions, and proposes civil rights frameworks in response to Dobbs. This Article, however, pinpoints how Dobbs created a gaping hole in state consumer privacy laws even as they propagated across the United States. Currently, there are no state consumer privacy …

This Is A Call To Action For All Primary Care Providers: Do Better For Your Transgender Patients, Kate Castor

Theses and Graduate Projects

Background: Patients of all ages benefit from primary care. However, not everyone has equal access to primary care. Transgender patients often face a multitude of barriers to receiving basic healthcare.

Purpose: Improve health outcomes for transgender patients, enlighten providers on significant disparities, and offer solutions to these disparities faced by transgender community in the healthcare setting and when receiving cancer screening.

Methods: Literature review comprising results from Augsburg University Lindell Library databases, American Journal of Medicine, and Google Scholar.

Conclusions: Everyone can do better for their transgender patients, but primary care providers should take extra care cultivating relationships with these …

Bridging Silos: Environmental And Reproductive Justice In The Climate Crisis, Sara A. Colangelo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The climate crisis is a perilous yet underexamined example of the intersection of environmental injustice and reproductive injustice. The physical manifestations of the climate crisis affect key elements of reproductive justice: women’s rights to have children, to not have children, and to parent children in healthy, sustainable communities. Reams of studies document climate disaster-driven gender violence, loss of access to healthcare and reproductive services, as well as direct and deadly health effects of climate change on maternal health, fetal development, infants, and children. Despite these profound impacts, the environmental and reproductive justice movements remain largely siloed, particularly in the legal …

A Model For Understanding Cedaw’S Impact On Implementing Gender Equality Reforms: Lessons From Canada And India, Amanda L. Stephens

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article provides a model for examining the impact of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (“CEDAW”) on implementing gender equality reforms using Canada and India, two CEDAW State Parties, as case studies. It also explores the influence of heteropatriarchy, deeply-rooted cultural norms perpetuating gender inequality, on hindering CEDAW’s ratification in the United States, as well as CEDAW’s effectiveness in implementing reforms in Canada and India. The analysis showcases how non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) in these countries have nevertheless achieved limited successes through their mobilization of CEDAW to address specific gender injustices, such as gender …

Gender Regrets: Banning Abortion And Gender-Affirming Care, Noa Ben-Asher, Margot J. Pollans

Utah Law Review

Conservative politicians, lawmakers, and media have generated a national moral panic about transgender children and youth that has resulted, as of early 2024, in restrictions or bans on GAC for minors in twenty-four states. In these bans and the advocacy around them gender-affirming care for minors is presented as harmful, ideological, unnecessary, and likely to lead to future regret. The role of regret in the movement to ban gender-affirming care parallels the role of regret in the ongoing conservative campaign to ban abortion. In the years between Roe v. Wade (1973) and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), politicians …

Preempting Red State Restrictions On The Use Of Fda-Approved Drugs In Gender-Affirming Care?, Lars Noah

Utah Law Review

Some observers recently have wondered whether actions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) could federally preempt increasingly common state restrictions on gender-affirming care, particularly prohibitions on the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in adolescent patients. In theory, such a legal strategy might sidestep the need to lodge increasingly unsuccessful challenges under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supremacy Clause offers little assistance, however, in attempting to get around these state laws. Indeed, even if the FDA eventually approved such uses for currently marketed drugs, implied preemption doctrine as currently configured probably would not do the trick, though securing …

Panel Presentation, The Criminalization Of Trans Lives And Health Care: Provider And Patient Perspective, Dana N. Johns

Utah Law Review

Bans on gender affirming care are going to take a group of individuals who, as a whole, are already marginalized and already at risk. And then within that group, it’s going to segregate them even more because you’re going to have the people who can do that. You’re going to the families who can take their kids eight hours to another state. Then you’re going to the family that can’t because they can’t pay out of pocket, or they can’t take off work or they can’t make it to a state where their child can get care. These laws will …

Examining The Constitutionality Of Legislative Medical Care Bans For Transgender Youth, John Mejia

Utah Law Review

As should be abundantly clear by this Article, the stakes of bans on genderaffirming health care for transgender adolescents are existential. The recent flood of state-law bans is a low point in the ongoing fight to ensure that all people truly enjoy the liberties and protections guaranteed by our state and federal constitutions. Stories like Utah’s are more likely the rule, not the exception. Legislatures around the country are rushing to push through this legislation as quickly as possible, seemingly to catch their opponents off guard. The overwhelming majority of federal district courts to consider these laws find them repulsive …

Emotion Regulation Strategies And Perceived Emotional Intelligence: The Effect Of Age., Iwanna Sepiadou

Adultspan Journal

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between perceived emotional intelligence and the reported use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. We also investigated the possible effects of age on the aforementioned variables. The total sample consisted of 379 people (158 men, 220 women, 1 unreported). Across participants, 273 were young (20-39 years old) and 106 were middle-aged (40-65 years old). We found statistically significant positive correlations between the dimensions of perceived emotional intelligence and the reported use of cognitive reappraisal and negative primarily correlations between the dimensions of perceived emotional intelligence and the reported use of …

Decoding Dobbs: A Typology To Better Understand The Roberts Court's Jurisprudence, Katie Yoder

Honors Projects

The U.S. Supreme Court first recognized Substantive Due Process (“SDP”) in the early twentieth century. In Lochner v. New York, the Court established that there are certain unenumerated rights that are implied by the Fourteenth Amendment.Though SDP originated in a case about worker’s rights and liberties, it quickly became relevant to many cases surrounding personal intimate decisions involving health, safety, marriage, sexual activity, and reproduction.Over the past 60 years, the Court relied upon SDP to justify expanding a fundamental right to privacy, liberty, and the right to medical decision making. Specifically, the court applied these concepts to allow for freedoms …

The Politics Of Gender Affirming Healthcare: A New Battleground For Morality Policy?, Reaves Robinson

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Morality policy as a discipline saw its peak during the transformative years at the turn of the 21^st century; however, there has been very little scholarship to follow new social policy issues that have arisen in the past two decades. Anti-transgender policy, specifically, can be considered under the morality policy scope following years of LGBTQ+ scholarship that fell under the morality policy umbrella. In 2023 alone, more than 200 pieces of anti-transgender legislation were introduced in state legislatures across the nation. A trend among the increasingly popular policy realm can be seen from gender affirming healthcare bans, where almost …

Murder And A Mother’S Love: Understanding Maternal Altruistic Filicide And Reshaping The Legal System’S Approach To Mentally Ill Mothers Who Kill Their Children, Morgan Woodbridge

Journal of Law and Policy

Every year, thousands of children are killed by their parents. Some of these killings are committed by mentally ill mothers who believe that death is in their children's best interest. This category of killings is called maternal altruistic filicide. Numerous studies have found that mothers who commit altruistic filicide are severely mentally ill and have histories of psychiatric illness, trauma, and suicidality. Despite this, mothers who commit altruistic filicide are often railroaded through the criminal legal system without access to adequate mental health care. Traditional legal procedures designed to assist the mentally ill, such as the insanity defense or the …

Establishing Consent: The Role Of Women Representatives In Passing Informed Consent Laws, Sophia Stockham

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

What predicts the adoption of informed consent laws for pelvic exams within the United States? As of January 2023, 22 states have adopted informed consent laws for pelvic examinations on women, with eleven being under Democratic control, six being Republican control, and five with divided control between the legislature and gubernatorial level at the time of adoption. Little attention, however, has been given to women’s health mandates outside the issue of abortion and to variation among state partisan adoption regarding informed consent for pelvic exams. This paper examines the impact of partisanship, the percentage of women in the legislature, and …

On The Human Right To Healthy Menstruation, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This short essay introduces the Bellagio Declaration on the Human Right to Healthy Menstruation, a statement signed by an interdisciplinary group of academics, artists, policymakers, clinicians, and practitioners in 2024. The Declaration frames the human right to healthy menstruation as including (1) non-discrimination on the basis of menstruation; (2) dignity in all matters related to menstruation; (3) access to facilities, resources, and supplies that facilitate the management of menstruation in a manner that is affordable and safe and that fosters a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment; (4) lifelong access to timely and medically accurate information about all aspects of menstruation; …

Without Due Process Of Law: The Dobbs Decision And Its Cataclysmic Impact On The Substantive Due Process And Privacy Rights Of Ohio Women, Jacob Wenner

Journal of Law and Health

Since the overturning of prior abortion precedents in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there has been a question on the minds of many women in this country: how will this decision affect me and my rights? As we have seen in the aftermath of Dobbs, many states have pushed for stringent anti-abortion measures seeking to undermine the foundation on which women’s reproductive freedom had been grounded on for decades. This includes right here in Ohio, where Republican lawmakers have advocated on numerous occasions for implementing laws seeking to limit abortion rights, including a 6-week abortion ban advocated …

Public Health Consequences Of Appellate Standards For Hostile Work Environment Claims, Lauren Krumholz

Washington Journal of Social & Environmental Justice

No abstract provided.