Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Race, Sex And Genes At Work: Uncovering The Lessons Of Norman-Bloodsaw, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (“GINA”) is the first federal, uniform protection against the use of genetic information in both the workplace and health insurance. Signed into law on May 21, 2008, GINA prohibits an employer or health insurer from acquiring or using an individual’s genetic information, with some exceptions. One of the goals of GINA is to eradicate actual, or perceived, discrimination based on genetic information in the workplace and in health insurance. Although the threat of genetic discrimination is often discussed in universal terms - as something that could happen to any of us - the …

Scientific Understandings Of Postpartum Illness: Improving Health Law And Policy?, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

In its broadest sense, the Article examines the relationship between science and the law in the context of postpartum illness. From classical antiquity to the present day, physicians and scientists have investigated the causes, correlates, and consequences of the depressions and psychoses that develop in some women following their transition to motherhood. The scientific investigation of postpartum illness has been characterized by an open-ended search for knowledge with the recgonition that scientific findings published one day are subject to revision the next. Legislators and judges also have sought to understand postpartum illness as necessary to make laws that affect and …

Penetrating The Silence In Sierra Leone: A Blueprint For The Eradication Of Female Genital Mutilation, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Meghna Saxena, Anna Cave, Nasim Farjad, Helen Shin

Faculty Scholarship

The African grassroots movement to eradicate female genital mutilation (also known as “female genital cutting” and “female circumcision,” hereinafter “FGM”) is widespread. While many African countries and grassroots organizations have made great strides in their efforts to eliminate FGM, Sierra Leone lags behind. In Sierra Leone, FGM is practiced within the bondo secret society, an ancient, all-female commune located in West Africa and also known as the sande. The bondo society’s traditional role was to direct girls’ rites of passage into adulthood. In order to become a member of the bondo, a girl or woman must undergo various rituals, the …

Pregnant Man?: A Conversation, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth Emens, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family …

Body And Soul: Equality, Pregnancy, And The Unitary Right To Abortion, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This Article explores equality-based arguments for abortion rights, revealing both their necessity and their pitfalls. It first uses the narrowness of the "health exception" to abortion regulations to demonstrate why equality arguments are needed--namely because our legal tradition's conception of liberty is based on male experience, no theory of basic human rights grounded in women's reproductive experiences has developed. Next, however, the Article shows that equality arguments, although necessary, can undermine women's reproductive freedom by requiring that pregnancy and abortion be analogized to male experiences. As a result, equality arguments focus on either the bodily or the social aspect of …

Agenda: World Energy Justice Conference And Appropriate Technology Arcade, University Of Colorado Boulder. Center For Energy & Environmental Security, University Of Colorado Boulder. School Of Law

World Energy Justice Conference (October 23-24)

The 2009 CEES Energy Justice Conference took place at the University of Colorado Law School on October 23rd and 24th, 2009. It featured 11 sessions, more than 40 speakers, and attracted over 200 attendees. The Conference brought together leading international and U.S. decision-makers in politics, engineering, public health, law, business, economics, and innovators in the sciences to explore how best to address the critical needs of the energy-oppressed poor (EOP) through long-term interdisciplinary action, information sharing, and deployment of appropriate sustainable energy technologies (ASETs).

The Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law & Policy (CJIELP) at the University of Colorado Law …

Realizing Access To Sexual Health Information And Services For Adolescents Through The Protocol To The African Charter On The Rights Of Women, Ebenezer Durojaye

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Symposium Issue: Reproductive And Sexual Health And The African Women's Protocol, Charles Ngwena

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Stereotyping Women In The Health Sector: Lessons From Cedaw, Simone Cusack, Rebecca J. Cook

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Health And Reproductive Rights In The Protocol To The African Charter: Competing Influences And Unsettling Questions, Rachel Rebouché

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

"The Distant 'Big' Hospital": Linking Development, Poverty And Reproductive Health-A Gender Mainstreaming Approach, Edith Miguda

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Costs Of Multiple Gestation Pregnancies In Assisted Reproduction, Urska Velikonja

Faculty Scholarship

The United States, unlike most developed countries, does not regulate its fertility industry. Rather, it vests control over the industry to professional organizations and to market forces. While lack of regulation has produced a vibrant market for fertility services, it has also produced an undesirable consequence: a high rate of multiple gestation pregnancies, including twin pregnancies. This Article summarizes the data on the medical, psychological, and financial costs associated with multiple pregnancies to the parents, the children, and American society. It suggests that the current U.S. regulatory regime has not only failed to address these costs as they surfaced but …

Cutt Ing Funds For Oral Contracept Ives: Violation Of Equal Protection Rights And The Disparate Impact On Women’S Healt Hcare, Rachel V. Rose

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Pursuing The Perfect Mother: Why America's Criminalization Of Maternal Substance Abuse Is Not The Answer- A Compartive Legal Analysis, Linda C. Fentiman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In this Article the author will examine not only the substantive legal differences between the United States, Canada, and France, but will also explore how these legal rules fit within a broader social, political, and religious setting. This Article will pursue four lines of inquiry. First, it will briefly chronicle the history of criminal prosecution of pregnant women in America and show how these prosecutions have become markedly more aggressive over the last twenty years. Second, it will situate these prosecutions in the full context of American law and culture, demonstrating how the fetus has received increasing legal recognition in …

Calling A Spade A Spade: Maternal Mortality As A Human Rights Violation, Luisa Cabal, Morgan Stoffregen

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Medical Hope, Legal Pitfalls: Potential Legal Issues In The Emerging Field Of Oncofertility, Gregory Dolin, Dorothy E. Roberts, Lina M. Rodriguez, Teresa K. Woodruff

All Faculty Scholarship

The article will begin its discussion by identifying the values at stake in the field of oncofertility. These values include the constitutional protection of the rights of women and minors to bear children and to use reproduction-assisting technologies, as well as the feminist critique of gendered expectations that may pressure women to use these technologies.

Part III will focus on the medical options of oncofertility. It will also discuss some conditions that may lead otherwise fertile and young patients to lose their ability to bear children as a side-effect of necessary medical treatment. The article will then proceed to discuss …

Surrogacy And The Politics Of Commodification, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In 2004, the Illinois legislature passed the Gestational Surrogacy Act, which provides that a child conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and born to a surrogate mother automatically becomes the legal child of the intended parents at birth if certain conditions are met. Under the Act, the woman who bears the child has no parental status. The bill generated modest media attention, but little controversy; it passed unanimously in both houses of the legislature and was signed into law by the governor.

This mundane story of the legislative process in action stands in sharp contrast to the political tale of …

How Planned Parenthood V. Casey (Pretty Much) Settled The Abortion Wars, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

More than twenty-one years after Robert Bork's failed Supreme Court nomination and seventeen years after Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the rhetoric of abortion politics remains unchanged. Pro-choice interests, for example, argue that states are poised to outlaw abortion and that Roe v. Wade is vulnerable to overruling. In this Essay, I will debunk those claims. First, I will explain how Casey's approval of limited abortion rights reflected an emerging national consensus in 1992. Second, I will explain why the Supreme Court is unlikely to risk political backlash by formally modifying Casey- either by restoring the trimester test …

Social Factoring The Numbers With Assisted Reproduction, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In late winter 2009, the airwaves came alive with stories about Nadya Suleman, the California mother who gave birth to octuplets conceived via assisted reproductive technology. Nadya Suleman and her octuplets are the vehicles through which Americans express their anxiety about race, class and gender. Expressions of concern for the health of children, the mother’s well-being, the future of reproductive medicine or the financial drain on taxpayers barely conceal deep impulses towards racism, sexism and classism. It is true that the public has had a longstanding fascination with multiple births and with large families. This is evidenced by a long …

Marketing Mothers' Milk: The Commodification Of Breastfeeding And The New Markets For Breast Milk And Infant Formula, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This paper explores the commodification of women and biological processes, the confusion of scientific evidence with social agendas, and the conflict between marketing and public health. I assert that key actors in the healthcare marketplace - government, businesses, and doctors – have acted to enable weak medical and scientific evidence to be manipulated by ideological and profit-making partisans in a poorly regulated market. I focus on the unique role of the medical profession, which has acted with government and the private sector to shape the markets in human milk and infant formula. In a striking parallel to the pharmaceutical industry, …

Lesbians, Gays, And People Living With Hiv: Facing And Fighting Barriers To Assisted Reproduction, Bebe J. Anderson

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

Numerous discriminatory barriers limit the ability of gays, lesbians, and people living with HIV to participate in assisted reproduction. Many of these barriers are created by laws and regulations, such as state laws criminalizing sperm donation by people living with HIV, and insurance regulations that are interpreted to limit infertility coverage to persons who have engaged in unprotected heterosexual intercourse that has not resulted in pregnancy. Other barriers are rooted in policies or practices of individual entities or individuals. For example, a gay man in Florida and a lesbian in California denied fertility services due to their sexual orientation have …

Goodman & Epstein, Listening To Battered Women: A Survivor-Centered Approach To Advocacy, Mental Health And Justice, Julie Goldscheid

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Misinformed Consent: Non-Medical Bases For American Birth Recommendations As A Human Rights Issue, Lisa L. Chalidze

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bah V. Mukasey, Sandrine Dehaeze

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Social Factoring The Numbers With Assisted Reproduction, Bridget J. Crawford, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

In early 2009 the airwaves came alive with sensational stories about Nadya Suleman, the California mother who gave birth to octuplets conceived via assisted reproductive technology. Nadya Suleman and her octuplets are vehicles through which Americans express their anxiety about race, class and gender. Expressions of concern for the health of children, the mother's well-being, the future of reproductive medicine or the financial drain on taxpayers barely conceal deep impulses towards racism, sexism and classism. It is true that the public has had a longstanding fascination with multiple births and with large families. This is evidenced by a long history …

Remarks: Neuroscience, Gender, And The Law, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

These remarks, delivered at the Neuroscience, Law, and Government Symposium held at the University of Akron School of Law in 2009, explore how stakeholders are using advances in the neuroscience of three gender-specific and gender-prevalent conditions (the postpartum mood disorders, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and eating disorders) to secure health care benefits under group health plans and individual health insurance policies and to push for the inclusion of these conditions in mental health parity legislation.

Decisional Dignity: Teenage Abortion, Bypass Hearings, And The Misuse Of Law, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

How might we think about reforming abortion regulation in a world in which the basic legality of abortion may, as a matter of constitutional law, at last be relatively secure? I have in mind the era just upon us in which the overturn of Roe v. Wadeno longer looms so threateningly over the reproductive rights community in the United States and is no longer necessarily its central concern. There is now a general and seemingly well-founded optimism that under the Obama administration, those who support and rely on reproductive rights will not have to pray nightly for the health …

"Trap"Ing Roe In Indiana And A Common-Ground Alternative, Dawn E. Johnsen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Public discourse over abortion overwhelmingly focuses on whether the Supreme Court will overrule Roe v. Wade and states will again ban abortion. But at least since 1992, when the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe's "central holding," certain moderate- sounding abortion restrictions - sometimes framed as reasonable compromise regulations - have posed a greater threat to women's reproductive health and liberty. This Essay examines one increasingly popular form of restriction: laws that regulate providers of abortion services in the name of advancing women's health, without actual health justification. Little-noted efforts to enact such restrictions in Indiana, during the …

Remarks: Neuroscience, Gender, And The Law, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

These remarks, delivered at the Neuroscience, Law, and Government Symposium held at the University of Akron School of Law in 2009, explore how stakeholders are using advances in the neuroscience of three gender-specific and gender-prevalent conditions (the postpartum mood disorders, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and eating disorders) to secure health care benefits under group health plans and individual health insurance policies and to push for the inclusion of these conditions in mental health parity legislation.

Virginity Testing And South Africa's Hiv/Aids Crisis: Beyond Rights Universalism And Cultural Relativism Toward Health Capabilities, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I explore the tension between the politics of culture and the rights of women and girls to equality, privacy, and sexual autonomy in the context of epidemic disease. Specifically, this Article examines the political debate surrounding the resurgence of virginity testing, its widespread popular support in certain communities, and the South African government's recent efforts to prohibit the practice. This Article argues that the current debate over virginity testing, which focuses on abolition or accommodation of the practice, is misguided and polarizing. It argues that these perspectives on the debate increase the likelihood that the problem causing …