Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Keynote Address: Reproductive Rights Under Siege: Responding To The Anti-Choice Agenda Conference. University Of Michigan Law School. March 5, 2004, Nancy Northup

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

It is great to be here with a new generation that is advocating for reproductive rights and responding to the extraordinary anti-choice agenda we currently face. I am not going to talk about that agenda directly tonight because I know that you know it. You know about the judicial appointments, you know about the parental consent laws, you know about the denial of funding for low-income women, you know about the global gag rule.

Curbing Reliance On Abortion In Russia, Meghan Stewart

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Advocacy In Whispers: The Impact Of The Unsaid Global Gag Rule Upon Free Speech And Free Association In The Context Of Abortion Law Reform In Three East African Countries, Patty Skuster

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2001, President George W. Bush restricted the participation in democratic processes for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) abroad by reinstating a policy restricting family planning funding granted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The restriction sharply curtailed the ability to speak and to associate freely for organizations working to preserve women's health and lives. For this reason, I refer to the restriction as the Global Gag Rule (GGR). Organizations in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya had begun to identify the problems associated with their countries' restrictive abortion laws. In these three countries, as elsewhere in the world, illegal abortions …

Regulating Teenage Abortion In The United States: Politics And Policy, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Thirty-four US states currently require pregnant minors either to notify their parents or get their consent before having a legal abortion. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of theses statutes provided that minors are also given an alternative mechanism for abortion approval that does not involve parents. The mechanism used is the 'judicial bypass hearing' at which minors persuade judges that they are mature and informed enough to make the abortion decision themselves. While most minors receive judicial approval, the hearings intrude into the most personal aspects of a young woman's life. The hearings, while formally civil in nature, …

Assisting Minors Seeking Abortions In Judicial Bypass Proceedings: A Guardian Ad Litem Is No Substitute For An Attorney, Elizabeth S. Graybill

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade,' minors have been particularly affected by the efforts of pro-life activists and state legislatures who have curtailed abortion rights by lobbying for and passing legislation that restricts reproductive freedom. Forty-three states have enacted laws requiring a minor either to obtain consent from or to notify one or both parents before undergoing an abortion, and thirty-three of these statutes are currently enforceable. The Supreme Court has recognized the right of parents to be involved in a child's upbringing and the prerogative of the state to limit a minor's freedom to make major life …

The Right Of Refuse: A Call For Adequate Protection Of A Pharmacist's Right To Refuse Facilitation Of Abortion And Emergency Contraception, Donald W. Herbe

Journal of Law and Health

The purpose of this Note is not to argue for or against either the pro-life or pro-choice positions. The purpose of this Note is to shed light on a serious moral dilemma that faces many pharmacists today, to call for universal acceptance in the pharmacy profession of a right of conscience, and to suggest adequate state and national legislative measures that would protect and prevent pharmacists from having to act contrary to their basic moral convictions. Section I provides background regarding present day abortive and contraceptive drug therapies and the role of the pharmacist in providing such medications. Section II …

The Limits Of Law At The Limits Of Life: Lessons From Cannibalism, Euthanasia, Abortion, And The Court-Ordered Killing Of One Conjoined Twin To Save The Other, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The subject is law at the beginning and end of life. Most of my work is in the area of general health law: law and medicine, public health law, and health and human rights. But this is my favorite subject area, and I expect you to ask me the hardest questions you can. I am not saying I can answer them, but if I cannot that is my fault, not yours. I am going to make a pretty broad argument today about law and medicine; specifically about how new medical technology and medical practice standards have eclipsed religion (and sometimes …

Torts: Nealis V. Baird: The Oklahoma Supreme Court Extends Fetal Rights In Wrongful Death Suits But Leaves Important Questions Unanswered, Cory Hicks

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

“Partial-Birth Abortion” And The Supreme Court, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Aortion has long been, and remains, the most politicized medical procedure in the United States. It has been the subject of more state and federal legislation than all other medical procedures combined. The U.S. Supreme Court, which almost never hears cases about medical procedures, has regularly heard cases over the past 25 years concerning the constitutionality of various state laws designed to limit abortion. Thus, it was only a matter of time before the Court would hear a case on the constitutionality of laws restricting so-called partial-birth abortion. When the Court heard a challenge to Nebraska's law, statutes relating to …

Inverting The Viability Test For Abortion Law, Bruce Ching

Journal Articles

The abortion controversy is likely to become even more pressing with the development of technological advancements that enhance the chances for fetal survival of the abortion procedure. This essay explores the consequences of recognizing that keeping the fetus alive does not depend on keeping the fetus in utero.

Minors As Medical Decision Makers: The Pretextual Reasoning Of The Court In The Abortion Cases, J. Shoshanna Ehrlich

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

By examining the Court's failure to consider the allocation of authority between parents and children in the critical realm of medical decision making, this article exposes the irrationality of the Court's acceptance of limitations on the abortion rights of minors and reveals the pronatalist thrust of the parental involvement decisions. The article begins by looking at how the Roe Court characterized abortion as a medical decision, followed by a discussion about the medical decision-making rights of minors. Rooted in this medical paradigm, the article then turns to the parental involvement cases to examine the Court's failure to consider the medical …

Richmond Medical Center For Women V. Gilmore: Virginia Partial-Birth Abortion Act's Clarity Extinguishes Physician Standing, Lee Ann Lezzer

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Rights Discourse And Neonatal Euthanasia, Carl Schneider

Book Chapters

At the heart of our difficulty in approaching neonatal euthanasia lie the intractable questions it raises: What is human life? When is death preferable to life? What do parents owe their children? What does society owe the suffering? Those moral questions could hardly be more perplexing, yet they are further complicated when they must be resolved not informally and case by case, but through generally applicable social rules. This is so for numerous reasons. For instance, the wide range of deeply held opinions about neonatal euthanasia makes rules hard to formulate, and the wide range of factual situations in which …

Liberalism And Abortion, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

First in a groundbreaking book, Breaking the Abortion Deadlock: From Choice to Consent, published in 1996, then in various public fora, from academic conference panels to Christian radio call-in shows, and now in a major law review article entitled My Body, My Consent: Securing the Constitutional Right to Abortion Funding, Eileen McDonagh has sought to redefine drastically our understanding of the still deeply contested right to an abortion, and hence, of the nature of the constitutional protections which in her view this embattled right deserves. Her argument is complicated and subtle, but its basic thrust can be readily …

Crossing The Line: The Political And Moral Battle Over Late-Term Abortion, Rigel C. Oliveri

Faculty Publications

This paper focuses on the political and moral debate surrounding two pieces of federal legislation which sought to criminalize a particular late term abortion technique scientifically known as "intact dilation and extraction," and popularly known as "partial birth abortion." The Congressional "Partial Birth Abortion" Bans of 1996 and 1997 inflamed the already emotionally charged contest over abortion rights. The intense lobbying and advocacy efforts put pro-choice activists in the uncomfortable position of having to defend one of the most extreme positions on the abortion-rights spectrum. The advocacy was further complicated by the fact that very few women obtain late term …

Public Reason, Abortion, And Cloning, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Every society, liberal or illiberal, takes a public stand on the question whether abortion is or is not a form of criminal activity. If that question were left to private judgment, people who judge it homicide would be entitled to use force to prevent their fellow citizens engaging in it.

The need for the law and public policy to take a stand has become more and more obvious for two reasons. The first has to do with the standard purpose of abortion, as that term is commonly used: to end the life of a fetus/unborn child. As Jeffrey Reiman argues …

Partial-Birth Abortion, Congress, And The Constitution, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The political debate over abortion during the past 25 years has shifted among various dichotomous views of the world: life versus choice, fetus versus woman, fetus versus baby, constitutional right versus states' rights, government versus physician, physician and patient versus state legislature. Hundreds of statutes and almost two dozen Supreme Court decisions on abortion later, the core aspects of Roe v. Wade, 1 the most controversial health-related decision by the Court ever, remain substantially the same as they were in 1973. Attempts to overturn Roe in both the courtroom and the legislature have failed. Pregnant women still have a constitutional …

Ru 486 Examined: Impact Of A New Technology On An 0 Id Controversy, Gwendolyn Prothro

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Abortion is an extremely divisive issue in American politics and culture. Prothro begins this Article by analyzing the current legal standards governing reproduction, which draw a sharp distinction between abortion and contraception. Prothro then examines the function of RU 486, demonstrating that it acts both as a contraceptive and as an abortifacient. Because of this dual capacity, RU 486 does not fit neatly into the current legal framework. Prothro concludes this Article by arguing that RU 486 should force the Supreme Court to create a new framework for the "procreative right." Prothro argues that this new framework should treat the …

Valuing Intrauterine Life, Samuel W. Calhoun

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Prenatal Genetic Screening: The Enigma Of Selective Abortion, David Stoller

Journal of Law and Health

This paper examines the issues of pre-natal genetic testing and its ethical and legal concerns. Part II details the scientific techniques involved in pre-natal genetic testing. Part III discusses the Human Genome Project and its influence on the choices available to prospective parents. Part IV analyzes the moral and ethical issues raised by pre-natal genetic screening. Part V presents the legal issues raised by pre-natal genetic screening. Finally, Part VI concludes and offers a prospective on the future of these technologies.

After Farley V. Sartin: The Consequences Of Declaring A Nonviable Fetus A Person For The Purpose Of Wrongful Death, Stacie L. Lude

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ireland's Abortion Information Act Of 1995, Keith S. Koegler

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

On May 12, 1995, the Supreme Court of Ireland upheld an act making it legal to disseminate information concerning abortion services abroad, provided that the information does not advocate or promote the termination of the pregnancy. While the Abortion Information Act of 1995 is likely to make it easier for an Irish woman to obtain an abortion overseas, it does not change the circumstances under which a woman may obtain an abortion in Ireland. Under the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, as interpreted by the Irish Supreme Court, abortion is illegal except where the pregnancy poses a substantial risk …

The Politics Of Human-Embryo Research: Avoiding Ethical Gridlock, George J. Annas, Arthur Caplan, Sherman Elias

Faculty Scholarship

[...]abortion is about more than politics; it is fundamentally about ethics, morals, equality, and religion, and how we think about abortion reveals much about how we are likely to think about other life-and-death issues in contemporary American medical practice. Because politics as currently practiced seems so unprincipled, there have been sporadic attempts to redefine abortion-related issues as ethical questions and to set up national panels and advisory groups to examine various practices and make recommendations about their ethics.

The Legality And Morality Of Using Deadly Force To Protect Unborn Children From Abortionists, Charles E. Rice, John P. Tuskey

Journal Articles

Is killing abortionists as they arrive at abortuaries to perform regularly scheduled abortions a legally justifiable use of force in defense of another person's life? Under commonly accepted criminal law principles of justification, a person normally is entitled to use force—even deadly force—when necessary to save a person's life from an aggressor bent on taking that life. But because Roe and its progeny have made abortion a constitutionally protected right, courts would predictably hold that using force against an abortionist is not legally justified, despite the fact that the motive for that force is to defend innocent human life.

Even …

Life's Sacred Value—Common Ground Or Battleground, Alexander Morgan Capron

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom by Ronald Dworkin

Siberian Tigers And Exotic Birds: Ronald Dworkin's Map Of The Sacred, Hester Lessard

Dalhousie Law Journal

At its most abstract, Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom is a meditation on the nature of individual freedom. However, as author Ronald Dworkin explains at the end of Chapter One, he believes in doing philosophy in much the same way common law jurists believe in doing law-from the inside out-that is, by starting with a concrete problem and then proceeding to the more general questions raised by that problem. According to Dworkin, this generates a theory that is appropriately tailored to the issue, "Savile Row" so to speak, rather than "Seventh Avenue," and thus a …

The Constitutional Law Of Abortion In Germany: Should Americans Pay Attention?, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

What I plan to do here is to tell you the story of Germany's legal approach to abortion and offer some tentative conclusions about what we Americans might learn from the German experience. My story centers mainly on the constitutionality of efforts in Germany to remove legal restrictions on abortion. In the United States, the story has a different twist, for there it centers on the constitutionality of efforts to impose legal restrictions on abortion. Both stories are fascinating accounts of constitutional decisionmaking, revealing as much about the values of the two societies as about the role of judicial review …

The Supreme Court's Narrow View On Civil Rights, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The right to choose abortion, although recently significantly curtailed from its original scope,' is a federally protected liberty interest of women, and is at least protected against the imposition of "undue burdens" by state and local government.² Some of the most serious threats to women's ability to choose abortion have come not from government regulation, but from private, national, organized efforts to prevent abortions. In addition to seeking change through the political system, some of these organizations, most notably Operation Rescue, have focused on the providers of abortion, and have attempted to prevent abortions by forcibly closing abortion clinics …

Rust V. Sullivan: Redirecting The Katzenbach V. Morgan Power, Paul Chuey

Seattle University Law Review

By deferring to the discretion of another branch of the federal government on a question of constitutional interpretation, the Rust Court implicitly resurrects and reshapes the long ignored doctrine of Katzenbach v. Morgan. Despite their different substantive issues, these two cases have a similar effect on the federal judiciary's role in constitutional interpretation. Section I of this Note describes the facts and history surrounding Rust and Morgan. Section II examines the Rust doctrine of judicial deference in the context of Morgan. Section III examines the Rust Court's approach to the First Amendment issues raised by the regulation …

The Supreme Court, Abortion, And The Jurisprudence Of Class, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

The US Supreme Court's decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey both protects a woman's liberty to choose to terminate her pregnancy and permits the state to make it more difficult for her to exercise her choice. In their opinion on the case, Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter eloquently defend constitutional protection of the right to make intimate decisions like continuing or ending a pregnancy. At the same time, they permit the state to try to persuade pregnant women not to have abortions and to make abortion harder to obtain and more costly, as long as the state's …